Mark Greif says that “Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition” in his article published to The New York Times. His theory presents that this peacock effect of trying to be more cultured than the person next to you is part of our society and its values. Classes use culture as a means of trying to one-up each other. Think of it this way, someone of a rich background might say that a working class individual would never understand high culture. They might say that they have uncultured values and that they could never appreciate fine art or the work they do. Now someone of a lower class might say that this rich individual was a pompous asshole who’s never worked a day in his life and who doesn’t understand the feeling of watching football on Sunday with a cold beer in your hand. Mark Greif believes he understand why this occurs in society and he also believes that this event plays a larger part than we think in the world around us. “The things you prefer — tastes that you like to think of as personal, unique, justified only by sensibility — correspond tightly to defining measures of social class: your profession, your highest degree and your father’s profession.” Mark thinks that our tastes are conditioned into us by our mentors, peers and our class. He bases this theory on the french philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdie had this idea that society was extremely petty and superficial. He thought that we all cared about our image and standing a lot more than we let on. And this doen’t only extend to the rich and upper class, but everyone else as well. The working class and middle class suffer from the same process of thinking. Hipsters are no different. Greif believes that hipsters are a result of a generation of college educated individuals who were taught class and tastes from their professors and the university. Once these individuals graduated they found themselves in an economic downfall and a jobless environment that didn’t appreciate their skills. They then thought to distinguish themselves from the uneducated crowd by developing ‘taste’ much different and more ‘cultured’ than the other groups. They believe this alternate lifestyle and taste to be ‘superior in spirit.’ ” Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters.” He also believes that hipster reinforce their own status by constantly changing and distinguishing themselves from others. “Hipster neighborhoods are crossroads where young people from different origins, all crammed together, jockey for social gain.” Hipster subgroups also jockey for control over one another by distinguishing themselves from each other depending on their socioeconomic backgrounds. Some individuals might right off wealthy-upper class individuals as “trust-fund hipsters” or liberal arts individuals as “having too much time on their hands”. This is all common place in our society and it creates a ever changing social hierarchy of what’s cool and what isn’t.