In a video by I am Other, a man interviews people in an urban city in the episode Stereotypes: Hipsters. The channel on Youtube is dedicated to discussing the people in our communities that don’t define themselves as normal, but the Others. The viewer interviews a wide range of people in this city, from shopkeepers to the homeless. He also talks to young people who fit the stereotype of the hipster themselves. The interviewer sheds light on the stereotypes that surround hipsters and anyone who stands out in a city. He gathers the opinions of others and sometimes uses triggers to get a reaction out of them. He does a great job of using words like “Trust fund baby” to trigger responses from the people he interviews and as we can see it isn’t hard to find out what people really think about hipsters. He goes up to people and asks them what the difference is between them and a hipster, if they know any stereotypes about hipsters or if they are in fact a hipster.
The tone of the video seems a little sardonic and comedic, but the message shines through that people hold serious stereotypes about hipsters. The interviewer himself dresses like a hipster in order to ‘trigger’ some of the comments he gets from the people he talks to.
In another video by I am Other, the interviewer goes to London for another episode about hipsters. In Stereotypes: Hipsters vs. Chavs, the interviewer talks to others about Chavs, a movement very similar to Hipsters. The interviewer is less sardonic with the people he talks to and gets more answers to the questions he’s asking. He asks people to describe both Hipsters and Chavs, compare them and to list some of the stereotypes associated with them.
A lot of the people don’t realize that the interviewer is mostly joking with them and they tend to reveal a lot of their biases and perspectives whether they be heavy handed or not. Some of the individuals also don’t realize that he’s trying to point out the hypocrisy in what they are saying versus what they are doing. Many of the people being interviewed in both videos describe hipsters and the type of people they are, yet they look a lot like what they describe. Many of them try to justify it by saying they weren’t in fact hipsters, chav or “fake”, as they so often put it.