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Im rewriting this one sometimes in the future . . .
I would like to talk about what a "hipster" is or what is "hipster". Everyone disavows any knowledge or ownership of the term. "The hipster" or "hipster" is always "the other" or something far removed from the self. We run into some of the same problems when trying to define any aspect of culture. You might say "oh we can define X as "hipster"" like say for instance you drink pabst blue ribbon beer, then you are a fucking hipster. But then lets be honest we all saw "Gran Torino" and in it Clint Eastwoods character drinks pabst blue ribbon and obviously Clint Eastwood is not a "hipster". And anyway if we look at any culture we find it impossible to point to any one, or any collection of specific behaviors or items that emerge solely from that culture. So say for instance you take the british. What is most british? Tea, tweed, the queen and so on. But tea is from china. Tweed is scotish. The genealogy of the queen proves most conclusively that she is not british. So if we seek to understand "hipster" it is impossible to pay attention strictly to the "empirical data". We cannot quantify "hipster" as a series of behaviors or objects consumed. We cannot reduce it to any one or any collection of signifiers. I should say also, though I will not write at length about it (because well, its boring), that the entomology of the term hipster has a lineage that had or has, I believe, almost nothing to do with the contemporary term.
The fact that empirical measurement has met its limitation in defining the hipster is a jumping off point. It lets you know that we have left the realm of science and “the real” .We are starting to reach the upper atmosphere of reason. We are swiftly making our way through this atmosphere and heading towards metaphysics and ideology. Lets see how high we can get, shall we?
The definition of "hipster" as an aesthetic or culture or even verb or adjective is of the immaterial. What then is definitive of the ideology or metaphysics of "hipster"? I would posit that it is this: Irony and the postmodern symbol reversal. Lets take an example, though do not get confused thinking the example is a concrete depiction:
Take your generic "wolf shit". A wolf shirt is just a bad tacky item low class people wear, mostly people who live in the mountains and so on. Ok so then this person who has this hipster ideology or sense of irony comes along and thinks "oh that shirt is so hilariously bad its good and now I want one". So then he gets his own wolf shirt and wears it and it is ironic. He has took the old symbol value, a genuine admiration for wolves as depicted on a screen printed t shirt and he has worn it knowingly. Like, with a wink and a nudge, he is poking fun at americana and wolves and in a broader sense even he is poking fun at screen printed t shirts. Even poking fun at the idea that you should have anything at all printed on a shirt. Its like he is saying "its absurd to have anything on this shirt and im afraid of making any statement in seriousness so I will make this absurd statement of negation instead". In doing so he is defining his ideology by its negative, specifically because defining by the positive ("I really like wolves" or whatever) would open him up to the same kind of snide criticism he has for the other people who, without irony, wear wolf shirts. Understand as well that this criticism began with criticism of himself first, not the other. The cynicism is seen first in the self critical evaluation of his own narrative and then reflected onto society as a whole. So this narrative of incredulity and insincerity is not a criticism of society so much as a criticism of his own sincerity (or lack thereof). So that in this postmodern milieu of relativity and reversal it is impossible or at least very dangerous to make any objective, sincere statement of ideology or narrative lest it be undermined or reversed.
It does not however stop there. Things get far more confusing. "Hipster" intertwines with otherwise non "hipster" ideologies, the sorts of ideologies even non "hipsters" profess or unknowingly follow. There is with "hipsters" an element of fashion or appropriation of "cool". This drive to take up the latest fashions is not dependent on the "hipster" or modernity. Somehow or other, I suppose sociologists will explain this one day, or perhaps neuroscience, somehow it has always been an aspect of human culture to appropriate exotic things as "fashionable" and not too long after to throw them out. This pattern of behavior however is subjected to some changes by the "hipster". No longer is it enough to adopt the latest things, this would be "trendy" behavior. "hipsters" either insist that they in fact have been appropriating these things all along "Oh yeah I used to ride my bike all the time as a kid." Insisting that they had a sincere interest in this "thing" before it became fashionable or cool. An attempt to get out in front of fashion. Undermining it by preemption. Or they move in the other direction. Consume the object, modify its symbolic value and in doing so take part in the value while simultaneously rejecting it.. As in the wolf shirt example. To take a line from zizek completely out of context, “the first is caught up in it, the second undermines it by way of interpretive analysis”. It might appear that “hipster” ideology is more destructive than constructive but this is not necessarily the case. There is after all nothing “lost” in the symbolic revision of value but the intangible symbolic value. This is not a market value and as such is not recognized as value by the “hipster”.
So the narrative of the hipster then is: "This is the symbol or the meaning, I have reversed the meaning through a subversive reuse (warhols brillo pad boxes etc.) of this object." And this would be like a classic sort of postmodern narrative. A pop art mentality you might say. But this dialectic on americana (or whatever they are reusing, whatever is "retro") this dialectic hits a logical dead end. This paradigm shift was I think best described by john waters. He told this story on NPR a few years back, I will try to paraphrase it here:
So at some point in the 1950s or 1960s they were making these horror movies. Very low budget so they had to use lots of miniatures and bad special effects and the costumes where made out of stuff you buy at the hardware store and so on. So they where making these horror movies, doing a very bad job. Now, these movies where genuinely meant to be horrifying and scary to people but because of lack of budget or talent etc., they failed miserably to achieve this goal. Then a little later there where these fans of cinema, like john waters, who where watching these films and far from being horrified or frightened while viewing them they found them hilarious. The production was so bad. The acting so bad. The dialog so bad. The entire thing was like watching someone slip and slide and fall down a bowling alley lane. It was like a prank or a gag. So these films then gained notoriety after this. Now keep in mind the transition. Horror films with the explicit cause to horrify. These horror films fail at the cause. The failure is then appreciated itself because it is such a spectacular failure. John waters described this as the transition between "good" (actual good horror film) "bad" (bad horror films inspired by good films but failing) and "bad good" (those "bad" films failing to be "good" and succeeding in being "bad good")
This is a profound series of transitions, do not take it lightly.
So then there was this "underground" or "cult" following of "bad good" films and a genuine and sincere appreciation for the failure of a genuine and sincere attempt to make good films. At some point however, in the 80s and 90s, this whole paradigm flips again. "Bad good" becomes recognized as an aesthetic or ideology in its own right. People start making horror films with the intention of making them "bad good". They produced them badly and did not take them seriously and any errors or problems in production was just "oh that looks so cheesy, but we are making one of those "so bad its good" movies so its ok." These films however where horrible and genuinely "bad". Everyone, as john waters says, was "in on the joke". You cant try to make a "bad good" film ironically because the "bad good" films genuinely had the intent of being good. You have changed the meaning of the thing itself by reproduction and imitation of it. You have reversed the symbol and in doing so completely destroyed the value of the symbol itself. Even the idea of the film no longer had any meaningful context. After this point, john waters contends, after "bad good", an aesthetic and ideological line had been transgressed. "Bad good" no longer could happen without a knowing irony or sarcasm which destroyed the entire notion of "bad good" itself. It became just "bad" again. After this point, someplace in the late 90s, it became imperative that horror movies actually horrify and shock you. The intentions of the horror film was reconsidered. Horror became about shock, jump cuts, actual horror, instilling actual fear in the audience and being "good" at it.
Now, in reading this, dont judge too harshly. This is not anthropological research into the history of horror cinema. It should also be said that this is not an aesthetic swinging pendulum or anything like that. This is a series of aesthetic and ideological progression in a linear sense. Surely you can find films that contradict these trends but dont get lost in the analogy is my point.
So, then, I would say, this series of symbolic or aesthetic transgressions is where we can find our ideology of "hipster". Laden in this example is the a priori element of the "hipster". It was at that crucial moment in which "bad good" is recognized that we have some idea of the beginning of our current notion of "hipster". It is this specific aesthetic shift, this shift in the simulacra that is the essence of "hipster". At the point that the symbol (the film) reflects a profound reality (horror) we are at the first level of simulacra. Then the inaccurate symbol is created (the bad film) this denatures and devalues a profound reality (horror). As the bad film ineffectively communicates horror. Then the next symbol transition, the "bad good" film. The "bad good" film has no reference to anything of the real. It is an imitation of a symbolic form that had already lost its connection to reality. If the symbol (the trucker hat, as example) is not worn by truckers it losses all symbolic value and in doing so losses its legitimacy. It is then just a hat or mere aesthetic. Thus the search for the new aesthetic, the next "thing". But once the next "thing" is found its consumption denatures its reality and eliminates its legitimacy. Thus this ideology begins the cycle again. This also address the concern of a priori knowledge. If you have "grasped" (shall we say) the symbolic value (a musician for instance) before it is consumed and denatured you can (or attempt) to stave off or even eliminate its loss of legitimacy. Or putting it another way "Oh yeah thats cool, I was into that last year." "Yeah but did you read the book? The book is so much better."
Nowhere in here you will notice is an actual sincere appreciation shown. A sincere appreciation would violate the ideology of the hipster and by definition would undermine the status of "cool" (or whatever). Even the preemptive appropriation of their own childhoods is in a way ironic. Never are these appropriations of ideology or culture. “Hipsters” largely regurgitate symbols and appropriate fashions independent of context and culture. The keffiyeh scarf (for fun just google the term "hipster scarf"), native-american headband and feather wearing, horribly offensive to some but appropriated independent of context and cultural meaning nonetheless. I am struck by the way a cellphone call comes into, and out of, contextually obscure space. The "hipster" ideology reflects the structure of their own reality of course. Rarely is any attention paid to context, the physical surface of the object itself carries the vast majority of its value. It is this sort of "market value” that leads quite naturally to the "hipsters" endless consumption of material goods. And largely, when we imagine the "hipster" we imagine material goods. The gravity of the consumption is in fact so incredible it almost (completely for some) erodes any notion that "hipster" could be anything at all. "Hipster" they argue, is just another term for the latest varieties of conspicuous consumption. This culture of consumption of course is part of the larger culture of consumption going on in all first world nations in the 21st century. We should not however, as I said earlier, be confused by this seeming similarity, this endless consumption of context-less objects, as it is more a symptom of our current nationwide ideology than any ideology of the "hipster".
I believe this disregard for meaningful context and emphasis on the "surface" of objects and behaviors is where some of the use of the term "hipster" as an epithet begins. The transgression of the "hipster" assimilates both object and symbol into mere aesthetic. This kind of depersonalized empiricism is quite rational and yet leads to a wholly anti-social set of attitudes. The emphasis on surface and aesthetic disregards the "depth" of context, denatures the symbolic value, and realigns the symbol with a culture more transitory and inane than anyone would concisely want to be a part of. A vaguely nuanced nouvea rich attitude. "I think skinny pants and vans look cool but if I wear them people will call me a hipster." etc. etc. The appropriation itself is insincere and devalues the objects and behaviors. It is the this very insincerity, this emphasis on empirical meaning and no meaning beyond that (contextual or otherwise) that opens up the hipster to the accusation of inauthenticity. It is an intractable flaw in the ideology of the "hipster". If everything is open to ridicule and derisive ironic humor or parody, than no sincere statement can be made without being attacked, and so it follows no sincere statement is made. An end-run attempt to make the "hipster" intellectually unassailable. But this same ideology of symbol transgression and irony obviously opens the "hipster" up to the accusation of insincerity and inauthenticity. This ideology is amorphous and fleeting, like asymmetric warfare. The instability of the "hipster" hides behind this ideology. Nothing is certain, everything is amorphous, nobody cares, there is no meaning or context, only surface and mutability. This very ideology violates the "hipsters" own sense of self worth. This is of course why the term "hipster" is used so commonly as an epithet by other "hipsters". They are hyper aware of the intractable structural flaws within their own ideology (even if only subconsciously) and use the term with a pathological disdain born only of the most intimate familiarity. "I know what you are but what am I?" they say to themselves.
another element in this "hipster" ideology which I cannot quite frankly understand is this way in which they are completely seduced by their own childhoods. I dont know if this is just surface ornament to the "hipster" or something pathological, much deeper and more profound. Many of the things "hipsters" appropriate seem to emerge from a sort of hallucinatory, dream like childhood. Video games, pizza parties, kick ball games, bicycles and so on. Every day is halloween. All of these journeys are second childhoods, no responsibilities. As if adult life was just a reliving of childhood experiences. Or, put another way, as if childhood was just a reliving of adult experiences (???). I dare not tread too heavily on this subject. I dont have any particularly faith in pop psychology and surely you can hazard your own guesses about whatever repressions or libidinal conflicts or whatever this may really represent. I will say however I believe this is something larger than our ideology of the "hipster" and that it in fact pervades all elements of our american culture. Disney cartoons are made to appeal to adults, college kids watch sponge bob, etc. etc.
So the ideology of "hipster" then is not just an independent manifestation. It coalesces at its edges with a larger "american" ideology. This realization might help to explain the difficulty of defining it. You might as effectively define it by its "negative" or "affirmative", as surely if we wait long enough it will come to embody its negative ("X is cool again" etc. etc.). This line of thought however, would lead us to a place I am substantially opposed to. The sort of thinking that says "oh, hipster is something that cannot be defined" (this whole notion is the sort of thing a hipster would say anyway). I reject this idea of "no narrative". This "end of culture" narrative. This is purely a mystification of the term "hipster" and is the worst kind of obscurantism. “No ideology” is in fact an ideology. Yet another example of ideology blinding its holder to its own subjective existence (what else is ideology good for if not that?). The fact that everyone has differing opinions as to the nature of “hipster” seems to as well undermine this notion. A whole myriad of narratives on an ideology suffused with the negation of narrative. We have such a variety of narratives specifically because, "everyone is in on the joke" and “hipsters” are the punch line. If everyone is in on the joke then this ideology must be ending or coming to a substantial shift.. So an example, fixed gear bikes used to be hipster, now they are just mainstream and 12 year olds ride them. The conclusion of that whole "fixed gear thing". Everyone is in on it now.
The "hipster" then might be called our canary in the coalmine. It is one of the most extreme aberrations of american culture and contemporary (left wing) american ideology. If the "hipster" is a fading phenomenon then we must assume they represent a greater and more substantive shift in the common american ideological milieu. What is "ending" this "hipster" ideology then? What circumvents this "hipster" ideology? This is obvious for me, technology .Technology is the solvent of culture. What technology you ask? Web 2.0 of course. Web 2.0 has caused such a profound shift in american culture it almost cannot be overestimated. All of the appropriation and symbol revision that defined the "hipster" ideology was undermined by the internet. Previously the obscure musical styling of yiddish folk singers was just that, obscure musical styling. The internet however explodes this xenophobic bohemian tradition. Now everyone is "in on it" and by extension, everyone is kind of a hipster. It follows then that if everyone is a "hipster" that "hipster" ideology itself has become denatured, fallen to its own reversal. Now, your mom wears a keffiyeh. She saw it on one of her friends blogs and thought it looked really "cool". Oprah hosts kimya dawson. "Indie" films open nation wide. Everyone knows about the next big thing. The counter-culture is countered. In the words of jay-z, "you cant bring the future back".
The fact that empirical measurement has met its limitation in defining the hipster is a jumping off point. It lets you know that we have left the realm of science and “the real” .We are starting to reach the upper atmosphere of reason. We are swiftly making our way through this atmosphere and heading towards metaphysics and ideology. Lets see how high we can get, shall we?
The definition of "hipster" as an aesthetic or culture or even verb or adjective is of the immaterial. What then is definitive of the ideology or metaphysics of "hipster"? I would posit that it is this: Irony and the postmodern symbol reversal. Lets take an example, though do not get confused thinking the example is a concrete depiction:
Take your generic "wolf shit". A wolf shirt is just a bad tacky item low class people wear, mostly people who live in the mountains and so on. Ok so then this person who has this hipster ideology or sense of irony comes along and thinks "oh that shirt is so hilariously bad its good and now I want one". So then he gets his own wolf shirt and wears it and it is ironic. He has took the old symbol value, a genuine admiration for wolves as depicted on a screen printed t shirt and he has worn it knowingly. Like, with a wink and a nudge, he is poking fun at americana and wolves and in a broader sense even he is poking fun at screen printed t shirts. Even poking fun at the idea that you should have anything at all printed on a shirt. Its like he is saying "its absurd to have anything on this shirt and im afraid of making any statement in seriousness so I will make this absurd statement of negation instead". In doing so he is defining his ideology by its negative, specifically because defining by the positive ("I really like wolves" or whatever) would open him up to the same kind of snide criticism he has for the other people who, without irony, wear wolf shirts. Understand as well that this criticism began with criticism of himself first, not the other. The cynicism is seen first in the self critical evaluation of his own narrative and then reflected onto society as a whole. So this narrative of incredulity and insincerity is not a criticism of society so much as a criticism of his own sincerity (or lack thereof). So that in this postmodern milieu of relativity and reversal it is impossible or at least very dangerous to make any objective, sincere statement of ideology or narrative lest it be undermined or reversed.
It does not however stop there. Things get far more confusing. "Hipster" intertwines with otherwise non "hipster" ideologies, the sorts of ideologies even non "hipsters" profess or unknowingly follow. There is with "hipsters" an element of fashion or appropriation of "cool". This drive to take up the latest fashions is not dependent on the "hipster" or modernity. Somehow or other, I suppose sociologists will explain this one day, or perhaps neuroscience, somehow it has always been an aspect of human culture to appropriate exotic things as "fashionable" and not too long after to throw them out. This pattern of behavior however is subjected to some changes by the "hipster". No longer is it enough to adopt the latest things, this would be "trendy" behavior. "hipsters" either insist that they in fact have been appropriating these things all along "Oh yeah I used to ride my bike all the time as a kid." Insisting that they had a sincere interest in this "thing" before it became fashionable or cool. An attempt to get out in front of fashion. Undermining it by preemption. Or they move in the other direction. Consume the object, modify its symbolic value and in doing so take part in the value while simultaneously rejecting it.. As in the wolf shirt example. To take a line from zizek completely out of context, “the first is caught up in it, the second undermines it by way of interpretive analysis”. It might appear that “hipster” ideology is more destructive than constructive but this is not necessarily the case. There is after all nothing “lost” in the symbolic revision of value but the intangible symbolic value. This is not a market value and as such is not recognized as value by the “hipster”.
So the narrative of the hipster then is: "This is the symbol or the meaning, I have reversed the meaning through a subversive reuse (warhols brillo pad boxes etc.) of this object." And this would be like a classic sort of postmodern narrative. A pop art mentality you might say. But this dialectic on americana (or whatever they are reusing, whatever is "retro") this dialectic hits a logical dead end. This paradigm shift was I think best described by john waters. He told this story on NPR a few years back, I will try to paraphrase it here:
So at some point in the 1950s or 1960s they were making these horror movies. Very low budget so they had to use lots of miniatures and bad special effects and the costumes where made out of stuff you buy at the hardware store and so on. So they where making these horror movies, doing a very bad job. Now, these movies where genuinely meant to be horrifying and scary to people but because of lack of budget or talent etc., they failed miserably to achieve this goal. Then a little later there where these fans of cinema, like john waters, who where watching these films and far from being horrified or frightened while viewing them they found them hilarious. The production was so bad. The acting so bad. The dialog so bad. The entire thing was like watching someone slip and slide and fall down a bowling alley lane. It was like a prank or a gag. So these films then gained notoriety after this. Now keep in mind the transition. Horror films with the explicit cause to horrify. These horror films fail at the cause. The failure is then appreciated itself because it is such a spectacular failure. John waters described this as the transition between "good" (actual good horror film) "bad" (bad horror films inspired by good films but failing) and "bad good" (those "bad" films failing to be "good" and succeeding in being "bad good")
This is a profound series of transitions, do not take it lightly.
So then there was this "underground" or "cult" following of "bad good" films and a genuine and sincere appreciation for the failure of a genuine and sincere attempt to make good films. At some point however, in the 80s and 90s, this whole paradigm flips again. "Bad good" becomes recognized as an aesthetic or ideology in its own right. People start making horror films with the intention of making them "bad good". They produced them badly and did not take them seriously and any errors or problems in production was just "oh that looks so cheesy, but we are making one of those "so bad its good" movies so its ok." These films however where horrible and genuinely "bad". Everyone, as john waters says, was "in on the joke". You cant try to make a "bad good" film ironically because the "bad good" films genuinely had the intent of being good. You have changed the meaning of the thing itself by reproduction and imitation of it. You have reversed the symbol and in doing so completely destroyed the value of the symbol itself. Even the idea of the film no longer had any meaningful context. After this point, john waters contends, after "bad good", an aesthetic and ideological line had been transgressed. "Bad good" no longer could happen without a knowing irony or sarcasm which destroyed the entire notion of "bad good" itself. It became just "bad" again. After this point, someplace in the late 90s, it became imperative that horror movies actually horrify and shock you. The intentions of the horror film was reconsidered. Horror became about shock, jump cuts, actual horror, instilling actual fear in the audience and being "good" at it.
Now, in reading this, dont judge too harshly. This is not anthropological research into the history of horror cinema. It should also be said that this is not an aesthetic swinging pendulum or anything like that. This is a series of aesthetic and ideological progression in a linear sense. Surely you can find films that contradict these trends but dont get lost in the analogy is my point.
So, then, I would say, this series of symbolic or aesthetic transgressions is where we can find our ideology of "hipster". Laden in this example is the a priori element of the "hipster". It was at that crucial moment in which "bad good" is recognized that we have some idea of the beginning of our current notion of "hipster". It is this specific aesthetic shift, this shift in the simulacra that is the essence of "hipster". At the point that the symbol (the film) reflects a profound reality (horror) we are at the first level of simulacra. Then the inaccurate symbol is created (the bad film) this denatures and devalues a profound reality (horror). As the bad film ineffectively communicates horror. Then the next symbol transition, the "bad good" film. The "bad good" film has no reference to anything of the real. It is an imitation of a symbolic form that had already lost its connection to reality. If the symbol (the trucker hat, as example) is not worn by truckers it losses all symbolic value and in doing so losses its legitimacy. It is then just a hat or mere aesthetic. Thus the search for the new aesthetic, the next "thing". But once the next "thing" is found its consumption denatures its reality and eliminates its legitimacy. Thus this ideology begins the cycle again. This also address the concern of a priori knowledge. If you have "grasped" (shall we say) the symbolic value (a musician for instance) before it is consumed and denatured you can (or attempt) to stave off or even eliminate its loss of legitimacy. Or putting it another way "Oh yeah thats cool, I was into that last year." "Yeah but did you read the book? The book is so much better."
Nowhere in here you will notice is an actual sincere appreciation shown. A sincere appreciation would violate the ideology of the hipster and by definition would undermine the status of "cool" (or whatever). Even the preemptive appropriation of their own childhoods is in a way ironic. Never are these appropriations of ideology or culture. “Hipsters” largely regurgitate symbols and appropriate fashions independent of context and culture. The keffiyeh scarf (for fun just google the term "hipster scarf"), native-american headband and feather wearing, horribly offensive to some but appropriated independent of context and cultural meaning nonetheless. I am struck by the way a cellphone call comes into, and out of, contextually obscure space. The "hipster" ideology reflects the structure of their own reality of course. Rarely is any attention paid to context, the physical surface of the object itself carries the vast majority of its value. It is this sort of "market value” that leads quite naturally to the "hipsters" endless consumption of material goods. And largely, when we imagine the "hipster" we imagine material goods. The gravity of the consumption is in fact so incredible it almost (completely for some) erodes any notion that "hipster" could be anything at all. "Hipster" they argue, is just another term for the latest varieties of conspicuous consumption. This culture of consumption of course is part of the larger culture of consumption going on in all first world nations in the 21st century. We should not however, as I said earlier, be confused by this seeming similarity, this endless consumption of context-less objects, as it is more a symptom of our current nationwide ideology than any ideology of the "hipster".
I believe this disregard for meaningful context and emphasis on the "surface" of objects and behaviors is where some of the use of the term "hipster" as an epithet begins. The transgression of the "hipster" assimilates both object and symbol into mere aesthetic. This kind of depersonalized empiricism is quite rational and yet leads to a wholly anti-social set of attitudes. The emphasis on surface and aesthetic disregards the "depth" of context, denatures the symbolic value, and realigns the symbol with a culture more transitory and inane than anyone would concisely want to be a part of. A vaguely nuanced nouvea rich attitude. "I think skinny pants and vans look cool but if I wear them people will call me a hipster." etc. etc. The appropriation itself is insincere and devalues the objects and behaviors. It is the this very insincerity, this emphasis on empirical meaning and no meaning beyond that (contextual or otherwise) that opens up the hipster to the accusation of inauthenticity. It is an intractable flaw in the ideology of the "hipster". If everything is open to ridicule and derisive ironic humor or parody, than no sincere statement can be made without being attacked, and so it follows no sincere statement is made. An end-run attempt to make the "hipster" intellectually unassailable. But this same ideology of symbol transgression and irony obviously opens the "hipster" up to the accusation of insincerity and inauthenticity. This ideology is amorphous and fleeting, like asymmetric warfare. The instability of the "hipster" hides behind this ideology. Nothing is certain, everything is amorphous, nobody cares, there is no meaning or context, only surface and mutability. This very ideology violates the "hipsters" own sense of self worth. This is of course why the term "hipster" is used so commonly as an epithet by other "hipsters". They are hyper aware of the intractable structural flaws within their own ideology (even if only subconsciously) and use the term with a pathological disdain born only of the most intimate familiarity. "I know what you are but what am I?" they say to themselves.
another element in this "hipster" ideology which I cannot quite frankly understand is this way in which they are completely seduced by their own childhoods. I dont know if this is just surface ornament to the "hipster" or something pathological, much deeper and more profound. Many of the things "hipsters" appropriate seem to emerge from a sort of hallucinatory, dream like childhood. Video games, pizza parties, kick ball games, bicycles and so on. Every day is halloween. All of these journeys are second childhoods, no responsibilities. As if adult life was just a reliving of childhood experiences. Or, put another way, as if childhood was just a reliving of adult experiences (???). I dare not tread too heavily on this subject. I dont have any particularly faith in pop psychology and surely you can hazard your own guesses about whatever repressions or libidinal conflicts or whatever this may really represent. I will say however I believe this is something larger than our ideology of the "hipster" and that it in fact pervades all elements of our american culture. Disney cartoons are made to appeal to adults, college kids watch sponge bob, etc. etc.
So the ideology of "hipster" then is not just an independent manifestation. It coalesces at its edges with a larger "american" ideology. This realization might help to explain the difficulty of defining it. You might as effectively define it by its "negative" or "affirmative", as surely if we wait long enough it will come to embody its negative ("X is cool again" etc. etc.). This line of thought however, would lead us to a place I am substantially opposed to. The sort of thinking that says "oh, hipster is something that cannot be defined" (this whole notion is the sort of thing a hipster would say anyway). I reject this idea of "no narrative". This "end of culture" narrative. This is purely a mystification of the term "hipster" and is the worst kind of obscurantism. “No ideology” is in fact an ideology. Yet another example of ideology blinding its holder to its own subjective existence (what else is ideology good for if not that?). The fact that everyone has differing opinions as to the nature of “hipster” seems to as well undermine this notion. A whole myriad of narratives on an ideology suffused with the negation of narrative. We have such a variety of narratives specifically because, "everyone is in on the joke" and “hipsters” are the punch line. If everyone is in on the joke then this ideology must be ending or coming to a substantial shift.. So an example, fixed gear bikes used to be hipster, now they are just mainstream and 12 year olds ride them. The conclusion of that whole "fixed gear thing". Everyone is in on it now.
The "hipster" then might be called our canary in the coalmine. It is one of the most extreme aberrations of american culture and contemporary (left wing) american ideology. If the "hipster" is a fading phenomenon then we must assume they represent a greater and more substantive shift in the common american ideological milieu. What is "ending" this "hipster" ideology then? What circumvents this "hipster" ideology? This is obvious for me, technology .Technology is the solvent of culture. What technology you ask? Web 2.0 of course. Web 2.0 has caused such a profound shift in american culture it almost cannot be overestimated. All of the appropriation and symbol revision that defined the "hipster" ideology was undermined by the internet. Previously the obscure musical styling of yiddish folk singers was just that, obscure musical styling. The internet however explodes this xenophobic bohemian tradition. Now everyone is "in on it" and by extension, everyone is kind of a hipster. It follows then that if everyone is a "hipster" that "hipster" ideology itself has become denatured, fallen to its own reversal. Now, your mom wears a keffiyeh. She saw it on one of her friends blogs and thought it looked really "cool". Oprah hosts kimya dawson. "Indie" films open nation wide. Everyone knows about the next big thing. The counter-culture is countered. In the words of jay-z, "you cant bring the future back".
