The new tech bubble is starting to piss people off, and a lot of hipsters work in tech.

SolRo, you know absolutely nothing about American culture. You've never actually experienced something like "night life" or any cultural phenomenon that takes place in the public sphere. I assume you are an adult, which is a tragedy. Don't you think it's sad that your experiences of your fellow Americans are filtered through selected news articles, video clips and forum posts?

Actually, if you are going to put your finger on the pulse of "hipsterdom," tech has completely subsumed "hipster" neighborhoods. They don't really exist anymore. The hipsters don't live there anymore. There is a segment of the creative class in advertising and tech that can be classed as hipster, I suppose, because the idea has become a commodity identifier like goth or anime or anything else. I experienced those hipster in digital advertising, who wore David Bowie t-shirts and had impeccably trimmed beards and ,000 skinny jeans from Italy, but I associate "hipsters" as people who bought used clothing, listened to vinyl, went to weird shows in Olympia, and watched Kenneth Anger films; the "hipsters" of your perception, which is a wealthy person with a beard or strange mustache and a plaid shirt and black framed glasses, is informed by standing on the sidewalk and resenting people who don't care about you or who give you judging looks.

Bring on the "you talk about hipsters because you're a hipster" line of comment, which I love. But I prefer to think of myself as a person that has experienced actual life off the internet and who has tastes acquired by socialization and joyous exploration, coupled with amazing sexual experiences and sweaty makeout sessions, a life lived, mistakes made, drugs, dancing, the insanity that filled the post-Alternative cultural void that extended between Cobain and Paris Hilton, regrets, a scene of our own making. Truly enviable really.

Now, as I approach an age of simplicity and contentment, I feel sorry for people who never tried to do anything at all. They went straight to having babies. They sat perched in their shelters, oblivious to the cultural shifting and changes around them on the streets and in the corners of industrial neighborhoods. That is really much more tragic than some twerp's obsession with artisanal pickles.

Sheeple breeders

also old hipsters like baleen are pissed about their "culture" being absorbed into yuppiedom.

also; "no true hipster"

everyone dies alone, and a Hipster.

A hipster is a white person, right Solro?

"Hipster" has meant "fake bohemian" since at least 1960.

I'm going to fall back on my stock paraphrase from an interview with Jerry Garcia, describing the hipsters that invaded the beat coffee shop scene in late 50s/early 60s SF:

Well off kids who wore berets and turtlenecks, and walked around with unread copies of Howl under their arms to impress girls.


Swap in different signifying trinkets and you've got more or less the same thing right up to today.

Hipsters are creative-culture early adopters.

But usually in the late part of the early adoption wave.

They're the class of people who discover things before they're popular and abandon them when they become popular but don't actually create anything original themselves.

While I generally applaud any invective directed towards SolRo, I'm not sure his comments warrant a defense of those labeled as hipsters, baleen.

Yes, complaining about hipsters is a bit tiresome at this point. Nevertheless, I have the experiences you claim SolRo doesn't have, and I can wholeheartedly say that the people *I* was around were ciphers. Sure, their drugs were nice and some of the girls were cute, and I appreciated the fact that they attracted cool performers and screened cool films sometimes, but I never felt like I met a real person. I only met a bunch of bourgeoisie high-school rejects who, instead of rebelliously developing a personality, were just co-opted into a commodified, ready-to-assemble Bohemian lifestyle. They didn't fill a void. They WERE the void.

But yeah, SolRo's a twat.

Hipsters can be any color or nationality, but much like baleen they all share the view that spending some money to experience lots of vapid things like getting high and going to concerts makes them better, more worldly people than those that did something useful or creative.

SolRo, I am pretty sure I could write the script to your life, and your comments here are essentially predictive text at this point, so please try to change that and do something random outdoors.

"Hipster" has meant "fake bohemian" since the 1960s," even before that OZ. It was a playful derogatory directed to the white people who were showing up at bebop clubs in New York as early as the 1920s. It became a self-referential joke. The fact that it was appropriated by some art student nerds in the 90s to make fun of people who show up to musical events is appropriate, the hipster joke was made up by hipsters to make fun of themselves as these outlandish tastes were being arrived at.

For an unintentionally hilarious essay about early hipsterdom, read Norman Mailer's "The White Negro," written in 1957 at a time that hipster culture was dwindling and making way for what would be another self-referential insult culture: Hippiedom.

wtf japan, the void you describe is present in all scenes. I am not trying to say these people were a "movement," but I do remember Olympia in the 90s as being a really weird and interesting place. The mockery of the hipsters came from the hipsters, it was all ridiculously stupid and insecure and neurotic, but I noticed no class supremacy. It felt a bit like Quadrophenia in that it was mostly a shallow pool but it was a pool made up by "high school outcasts" and nobody else. I just saw it as people trying to make their own scene. The cynicism and decadence of "hipsterdom" is a result of the overwhelming amount of media suddenly available for free, and the fact that on a shoestring budget you could (or used to) bedeck yourself in any range of fashions from any period of time.


I know two bartenders who would be considered essential trend setting hipsters; one works at one of the most popular and renowned "hipster bars" in Williamsburg and Jersey City, and another likewise in Portland. If SolRo met them, he'd probably explode. Both of them served years in Afghanistan and came from poor families. My girlfriend at 23 could have been described as a "hipster queen" on Capitol Hill, everybody knew her, but she spent her time volunteering at a halfway house for children with horrible physical issues and mental diseases, as did her "hipster" best friend.

Essentially I think the hatred of "hipsters" at this point is a gut instinct reaction to artists in general. It now seems to be disgust with any sort of outlier tastes. Hipsters are now perceived as appropriators after the fact. I just find that transformation in the common consciousness to be interesting. I can identify with that disgust because I've felt it with scenes that I don't participate in or understand, like people that just watch anime and go to conventions all the time, or the raver scene, or fratboys.

Hahaha. baleen, what's going on with you? You're not going to commit suicide, are you?

baleen it sounds like you've confused "young person" and "hipster" with your Bohemian "mistakes were made but good sex was had" rambling.

You don't have to dress like a hobo and listen to bad music to have a fun youth.

baleen this subject clearly bothers you.

So baleen, what's it like being over 30 and your list of accomplishments being

'I went to parties'

'I had sex'

'I took drugs'?

Because that's depressing to me.

Do you even have any skills or abilities other than being the coolest hipster you know? I hope you actually are as much a trustafarian as you sound, because your later life is going to suck without some big inheritance from mommy and daddy. And man do I feel bad for any kids you might have.

Oh god please more more more.
Pile it on.

By the time this is done, all of you will be sucking SolRo's taint.

I can feel it. I can FEEL it. The feelings.

Well I suppose I owe it to you:

Hooker: Who are you again? You have opinions about me.

Mothership: I actually think that lots of people have feelings/opinions about it which is why it's so funny/interesting. It continues.

SolRo: I am not a trustafarian. My dad worked for the government, then he became a writer. Both of my parents were artists.
Speaking of you, how did you spend your 20s?

bopeton: I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings.

School, flunking out of school, tried being self employed (for realz), met a lot of interesting people doing that, discovered a passion for car repair, finishing up my mostly free career change education next month, (met more interesting people doing that). Anxious about getting throwin into the deep end of luxury car mechanic work after getting factory training.

And I also drank alcohol and kissed girls, just like you! (I didn't go to any shitty indie concerts though)

Tiebreaker or perhaps just gas on the fire; As evidenced by this thread, and not just one piece of it, people hate hipsters because they are clearly full of shit.

Three stars for a middling Herzog impression.

I remember the G train for the entirety of the 5 years i lived there was being fixed. I think they are waiting to fully cleanse the area of black people and puerto ricans before they get it running properly.

The G train is a north/south line not in Manhattan. Every such subway line in the entire country is shit.

Nothing will ever be shittier than the Boston green line,

He did sound like Conan doing an Arnold impression a couple times

Ironically

Holy shit Union Square turned into a 2nd Williamsburg.

They really met in the middle, didn't they?