20
Hipsters, the 90s and the Fragmentation of the Mainstream
"In the ’90s, when we were afraid of ‘selling out,’ we hated the gatekeepers, the mainstream corporate culture that assimilated and corrupted the underground. Now that the mainstream has fragmented, we see it as just another tool to get our message across, and our animosity has been forced to move on to another bugbear that is, like mass culture, ultimately a version of ourselves: the fake hipster."
Before I looked it up, I was rather terrified bugbear was the new bedbug.
I would prefer bugbears. They sound warm and cuddly, and most importantly NOT IN MY BED.
And then there are bedbears, but that's a whole other thing.
Pinups
Hey guys, if anyone wants in on the ground floor of my "STEVE ALBINI WAS RIGHT" tee-shirt business, let me know. "Shit's gonna be huge."
Free Limited Edition Jumpsuit (embroidered "Way To Go, ________" for the first 666 approved membership applications.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l78xnecCf31qdoghio1_500.png
The fipster. The fakester. The hipstake.
That last sounds like something you'd order at a theme restaurant, along with Brooklyn fries and PBR-flavored cheesecake.
The hipsqueak?
"They dislike fake hipsters, generally"
"They eschew anything that could be marketed via T-Shirt at Urban Outfitters, generally"
"WAY TO GO, GEDDY LEE!" –Some dudebro with a Gmail account
"They like all this machinery making modern music generally."
"WAY TO GO AL JOURGENSEN"
No no no no no no no no no no.
I'll admit I spent an unreasonable portion of my deformulative years reading MRR and trying to figure out (or rather, trying to inform other people that they didn't know) what punk rock was, really. I never figured it out, because, of course, it's nothing, really. It's a malleable accumulation of signifiers that imply adherence to certain ethos or ethoses, except when it didn't. So it only made sense to people who already had the same assumptions about those signifiers—it was the gibberish codetalk between friends in the tree fort. The reason MRR and Punk Planet and whoa-naked-ladies Flipside and this-is-what-happens-when-you-deny-hippies-pot HaC constantly sniped the shit out of each other was that everyone was unable to figure out there was more than one tree fort.
It's the same thing with hipsters, only more so. The fragmentation of the mainstream also means it's less channeled in the ways in which its absorbed. Which makes everyone the head of their tree fort.
So a term of belonging such as hipster is now a shorthand term for not much, a lazy blanket with which to smother any actual commonality under assumed commonality. The term is (and was always intended to be) disparaging and condescending when used from the "outside," but worse when used as self-identification. It's assholish when someone decides to dismiss you without particularly regarding you; it's pathetic when you don't take the time to regard yourself.
And turning on a "fake hipster" is just another way of yelping (and Yelping!) from your tree fort of one.
"They like to still read MRR in print generally."
Hmm, yes. Once again, the crisis is about Authenticity.
Am I the only one bored with hipsters (real or fake)?
Indeed. Are they any good? Can you trade them for something useful, like oil? Cram them in shipping container, with woodchips and send them to China to be turned into Ikea style pressboard shelving units?