Wrath at hipsters misguided
Reader Find
- 2
- 24
0
I’m sick of people deriding hipsters. It seems to me, the people most vehemently anti-hipster doth protest too much. What exactly makes us so uneasy about everything the term ‘hipster’ embodies? Many people will spout off some drivel about class, gentrification, and such. But at best, most of these explanations seem like after-the-fact, cobbled-together excuses to maintain an irrational prejudice.
Everyone who lives in and loves Oakland, Williamsburg, Wicker Park, South Philly, or even uptown Minneapolis would like to claim it as their own — that their neighborhoods are so desirable makes them feel threatened by a constant influx of young people mostly of the creative class. I understand the resentment towards people who seem superficial, people who come en masse and change the culture of a place, but the term hipster itself — a term with an ephemeral definition at best — seems dangerously close to slurs thrown at immigrants. It assumes that one culture is authentic and one is not, a line of thinking not too far off from far-right groups that believe in a “real America.”
The commonly understood narrative of gentrification is that a cheap neighborhood populated mainly by working class and underprivileged people attracts artists and musicians looking for low rents. Their presence makes the area more palatable for more affluent people, who then begin moving in and inviting certain types of businesses, jacking up rents, and eventually the initial residents are priced out. A lot of hatred then is directed at those original artists and musicians that moved in. They are hipsters, the vanguard of an invading force. Yet this hatred is misguided.
Firstly, one of the reasons why affluent people are competing for these spaces is that across America, people are finding it easier and more economical to live in the city rather than move out to the suburbs once they reach a certain station in life. The LES was cool and cheap in the 80s and early ’90s because the investment bankers all aspired to move to the burbs. These days, the bankers that still have jobs are happy to stay in Manhattan. Secondly, where would those creative types looking for cheap rent go if they didn’t go where the rent is cheap?
My answer to the last question is to move to a smaller city, where the affluent, the creative, and the working classes are not yet fighting so intensely over their tiny territories, where people don’t necessarily hate you merely for wearing skinny jeans or big glasses, and where one can make music and art without the constant fear that doing so makes one a hipster.
14 comments
Tyler Monday 13 July 2009
The “hatred” towards hipsters is not directed at those original artists and musicians who move into an area like Williamsburg. It is directed towards the mass flocking of kids claiming to be part of the scene, while often having zero positive effect on the neighborhood, both culturally and socially. They often are neither artists or musicians, and assimilate themselves into that environment in order to convince others of their belonging in the scene.
The scene in itself is self-destructive, as the rising rents (created by hordes of kids throwing around their parents money) effectively drive out the artists and musicians who created the cultural base in the neighborhood.
This is already happening! I live in NYC and often travel into Williamsburg to see shows, however I have yet to meet an artist or musician that performs in Williamsburg who also lives there. They even speak with resentment towards the hipsters who now inhabit the apartments they can no longer afford.
People don’t hate hipsters because of their tight jeans or ridiculous sunglasses, they are hated due to their arrogance which is rooted in emptiness. A culture of kids claiming to be a part of this amazingly artistic community, without contributing any positive cultural gain themselves.
Gerry Tuesday 14 July 2009
I just think that parsing out the original artists from the “mass of flocking kids” can be tricky. I know quite a few musicians and artists that still live in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Also, a lot of artists and musicians would not be able to do what they do without help from their parents. I still think this resentment towards hipsters is founded on some dubious assumptions about people and where they come from.
Katie Tuesday 14 July 2009
Maybe it’s just the way hipsters take on the trappings of poverty–being an “artist”, wearing second hand clothing, presenting a faux lack of concern for appearance (often while being overly concerned with appearance)–while in fact not being poor at all, frequently living off of their parents, and generally, acting as dependent children long past the age when it should be acceptable to anyone. It’s the fakeness of the hipster movement that is so annoying, even moreso to those who live/have lived in real poverty or to those who are legitimate artists. I’m willing to grant that it’s not everyone within the hipster movement that is to blame for this perception–but it doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of people who now claim to be hipsters are not artists or anything even closely resembling artists. They’re just people who desperately want to be cool, and I don’t know anyone who appreciates that in other human beings.
Gerry Tuesday 14 July 2009
Hipster is not a movement, and the term hipster itself is used even by hipsters as an epithet. The idea of a hipster is something that people who claim not to be hipsters have made up.
deev oh Tuesday 14 July 2009
es, there are other things to waste your time protesting against, but considering what a hipster IS now, there’s no reason to embrace and love them. Tyler nailed it: hipster now is what poser was 20 years ago.
Josh P Tuesday 14 July 2009
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality. (Cover story of Adbusters Issue #79.)
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
Gerry Tuesday 14 July 2009
I think you guys are still accepting a certain concrete definition of hipster that I’m uneasy with or don’t entirely grasp. This resentment still stems from a certain set of assumptions and stereotypes that are still just vast generalizations. Like I said, a lot of artists get help from their parents. Does this make what they do less valid? Does this make them posers? Some people dress in certain trendy ways, or dress intentionally weirdly, but perhaps aren’t artists. Are they hipsters? To read a website like Look At This Fucking Hipster (http://www.latfh.com/), the answer is yes. If so, then who are you? Are you absolutely sure someone who didn’t know you wouldn’t tag you a hipster? To me, hipster hate is just a lot of self-hatred and class guilt.
Peter Tuesday 14 July 2009
it’s not the artists that anyone has a problem with…it’s the snot nosed kids with mommy and daddy bankrolling them and them having absolutely no creative/artistic return to the community.
Ben Tuesday 14 July 2009
I don’t think it’s misguided or even bordering on irrational prejudice nor “dangerously close to slurs thrown at immigrants. It assumes that one culture is authentic and one is not, a line of thinking not too far off from far-right groups that believe in a “real America.” Hipsters, like gingers, don’t have souls.
The hipster was at first a Factory and Warholian image that has since become distorted because it caught on with so many people who changed it and morphed the “meaning” of dress and mannerism so they no longer applied to the “starving artist” category any longer. Now they’re a caricature of themselves. Gentrification isn’t a part of it, starving artists are always city bound because that’s where the start of success is, by and large.
The catch-phrase is “irony” (as in, look I’m drinking a PBR and have a Muppet tattooed to my chest, and a whispy girl mustache -isn’t it ironic) except that the irony has no effect any longer because of the mass-”appeal” of hipsterism.
And hipsters generally have bad taste in music, ill fitting clothing, bad teeth, bad taste in beer. And kick puppies. I’m going to put on my leg warmers.
Emit Tuesday 14 July 2009
Who really cares if people hate on the hipsters? Do hipsters really need validation from others? Or defending? I don’t doubt that they are more narcistic and image obsessed than the low rent residents who put the ghetto and grit into inner city living in the first place.
The irony is that whilst hipsters seek to define themsleves by being original and different, they are as homogeneous as any other group,
If you need to cloak yourself in tribal colours or wear second hand clothing and indifference then it’s simply testament to the fact that humans love to run with the herd (however boutique). Ultimately what counts is making a thoughtful contribution.
‘Everyone’s happy
They’re finally all the same
’cause everyone’s jumping
Everyone else’s train’
jmichael Tuesday 14 July 2009
This past Sunday’s New York Times ran just the sort of shallow “discovered neighborhood” that gives hipster invasions the bad name they frequently merit (http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/travel/12surfacing.html), The writer, Jamie Brisick, appears to have traveled down all of four, count ‘em, four blocks of one street on the absolute western edge of a community, and decided that this little spot, and only this little spot, is all that is worthy of attention in the community – at a good half-mile remove or more from the geographical and historical heart of the community.
Egregiously, the proprietor of a recently-opened coffee shop in this self-anointed hotspot is quoted as declaring “The landscape has changed significantly. Now, everything is centered on one street.”
Sez who?
And, yeah, kinda interesting that the five businesses spotlighted have practically no relation whatsoever to the Latino culture that has thrived here for decades….
ChrisAintNoHipster Wednesday 15 July 2009
First off, great read. It sparks a much talked about subject in areas of Chicago such as Wicker Park, Logan Square, and more recently Pilsen. I think you first would have to define what a hipster is (a term that can and does take on multiple meanings) and realize that it is the easiest way to categorize a group of people who may have differences but share a common interest whether it be art, music, clothing, or PBR.
This irrational hatred of hipsters is quite unjust. It is obvious that people who struggle to get by will live wherever the rent is the cheapest. This includes the artist community (or at least the ones who aren’t living off mommy and daddy). The fault does not lie with them as they’re only trying to make ends meet and still enjoy life. However, those who join in these communities without contributing to it, or even worse becoming a detriment are the ones who are at fault.
You cannot blame a group of people who start a thriving community for making something out of nothing, However the ones who join out of sheer enjoyment without the respect of the work that was put into making a community great (regardless of what “clique”) is truly at fault whether rich snobs who enjoy the fruits of their labor or kids who are just pretending to be down by wearing a certain uniform.
tsellen Friday 24 July 2009
People, I don’t know about other areas, but Williamsburg hasn’t been affordable for over 5 years!!! so for the hipsters here, they are either 5 to an apartment or getting help from mommy and daddy.
But relax Gerry. People hate everyone. They hate the stroller families, they hate the bridge and tunnelers, they hate the snobby, rich and often the uneducated poor. When I was growing up we hated the jocks. Today, I personally hate the spitters. Hipsters are an easy target. Just as you said Gerry, Slurs are based on stereotypes which are based on generalizations.
People hate hipsters for mainly two things: stupid fashion and incessant irony that refuses to take anything seriously and finds little to respect that is outside their milieu. Can we define hipster? Yes. They are a product of our consumer image driven culture that manifests as being utterly consumed with appearance and coolness, “a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society” as the Adbusters article put it. As everyone has pointed out, they get the rap that they don’t contribute much, behaving as barnacles of life. You don’t see hipsters working at the UN, or in relief organizations, or going to community meetings. (Gerry, yes some artists are hipsters, but most artists are not very good. Just cause you like to draw or play guitar doesn’t make you an artist. And if you’re making bad art are you really contributing?)
Are all fashion victims hipsters? no, but the label gets levied anyway. People hate the club kids, or bridge and tunnels kids, or goth kids for different reasons. Hipsters are hated because they deliberately dis-join from society through fashion, arrogance, parody and irony. Goths certainly aren’t ironic! And Gerry, if you wear “skinny jeans or big glasses” you ARE wearing the identifiable uniform that does INDEED “make one a hipster.” Fashion is a very deliberate means that ALL people use to identify with certain groups of people, to say “hey i believe in what you believe in and listen to similar music and might like to do things you do”. It is also used to express that you DON’T belong to other social groups.
My question is why do hipsters look so bored? Not all of them, but so many wear a dull, expressionless face. Life is NOT boring. Hipsters ostracize themselves by wearing ridiculous outfits that only make an iota of sense in the neighborhoods they live. And hipsters certainly don’t get out and see the world, because if they went to Africa in knee highs and a headband they’d realize that such a fashion statement of parody and irony is at the very least off-putting and at worst downright insulting. (props to Katie’s post.)
Being looked at is what hipster’s want. Whether because they wear something outrageous or do something outrageous. THIS is why people hate hipsters. No Gerry, it’s not an irrational prejudice. Privileged white people don’t get to suffer prejudice. Nor is this about authenticity. Hipsters are perfectly authentic.
I’ve lived in Williamsburg for 12 years. I’ve seen it change but not once would I claim to own this neighborhood! I share this neighborhood with Italian-Americans and Poles and Dominicans and Hasids. The Hipsters moved in with an attitude of entitlement, rather than respect or curiosity. Thats’ why they’re hated. Don’t get me wrong, i could levy a few attitude complaints against all the other groups too, cause let’s face it, New Yorkers can be mean and rude and self-centered. But really, the only people who don’t say good morning, are the hipsters. Hipsters seem to want to live only in the hipster community and ignore everyone else.
kyle Monday 18 October 2010
Its a fad. People in general are sheep, give it any name you want to Hipster, Poser, Wanna be. I think the reason people are upset is because they themselves are in denial. Really just let people be who they are, if you don’t like someone then leave it at that. Soon Williamsburg, Portland, Oakland etc….. will be old news these people who bought into a model of society will move to the next trendy thing. Hipsters are no different from ur 9-5er buy a house raise a family lease a toyota and retire. (SHEEP) Its the American dream you can be whatever you want. Right?