What is a Hipster?
Am I one? John Guardiano says so. It’s a charge I can’t answer in a lengthy rebuttal, so I asked around.
Most people scoffed.
— “Your writing is far too earnest to be hipster. Sometimes to a fault. And I wouldn’t have bought those particular glasses.”
— “Maybe if you start letting Julian Sanchez dress you.”
— “Hipsters don’t like Jimmy Buffett.”
— “Are you kidding me?”
These were my friends, so I didn’t ask my enemies. I just weakly said, “Does having a crush on Natalie Portman help?” But then I didn’t know if I should’ve said Wynona Rider or something.
I’d put money on my not being a hipster, but I don’t mind if I am one. Some of my best friends are hipsters! But I am quite certain that Mr. Guardiano doesn’t know what a hipster is if Ross Douthat is among the trio to whom he applies the label, and Michael Brendan Dougherty is too. I half expected to see George Will on the list with us.
Perhaps Brooklyn resident Elizabeth Nolan Brown could define hipster for me. Or Beck could guest post here at The Scene. He’s a hipster, right?
I think he’s using ‘hipster’ as a euphemism for ‘spineless, whiny, poseurs’. I won’t comment really comment on the merits of the complaint. I think it’s unfair, but I’m a little tired of all the meta-debates and arm chair psychology about who’s positioning themselves where and as part of what long-term branding strategy. That kind of stuff is fascinating to people in journalism – because they want to have jobs – but boring to everyone else.
That said, I had to laugh at the description of Conor and Douthat as hipsters. Conor comes across as earnest to a (self-indulgent or calculating) fault. And Douthat, well, call him what you want, but his writing is a thousand miles from the self-conscious ironic detachment favored by hipsters.
— JH · Jan 26, 06:12 PM · #
having a crush on natalie portman and wynona rider (as i do) just means you have good taste in women. after reading that article im not even sure what a hipster is and it seems like Guardiano is the one with the petulant whine.
— dino · Jan 26, 06:15 PM · #
Add up the number of Chuck Taylors and white belts you own, and divide by the number of video game consoles you own. (If you know what kind of video card your PC has, you can count it as a console.) Multiply by 50. If you’d consider spending that amount on a stereo, you’re probably a hipster.
— Chet · Jan 26, 06:35 PM · #
You definitely, definitely, definitely aren’t. You’re a cloying, overearnest dork.
— paul h. · Jan 26, 06:35 PM · #
Most Narcissistic Thread Ever.
I’m sure I’m not the only one tired of seeing posts by Mr Friedersdorf about Mr Friedersdorf.
How about giving the meta-analysis a break for a while, and giving us a few substantive posts analyzing policy?
— Chris · Jan 26, 06:35 PM · #
Buffet doesn’t rule you out. If anything, by embracing a tired, overpriced franchise, you have possibly trumped— or out-hipstered— the average hipster. (One of the Onion AV Club’s writers pulled a similar stunt recently by declaring his love for the Eagles.)
So long as you own a copy of Kind of Blue, you are still perfectly hipster-eligible.
Also, attempting to critique your own hipster credentials shows a streak of geek vanity practically required of any hipster. That said, notice you wisely stop short of declaring yourself a hipster— the hipster never self-identifies.
Other than that, I think regular church attendance is the only thing that voids the hipster contract.
— turnbuckle · Jan 26, 06:41 PM · #
Canonical definitions were supplied by the Hipster Handbook, circa 2003. Everyone else is just extending use of the term beyond helpfulness.
— Cruyffian Coiffure · Jan 26, 06:47 PM · #
Since moving to Brooklyn, everyone calls everything I do “hipster,” which is funny, b/c it’s a lot of the same stuff I did in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, DC, or would have been doing if I could find enough people to do it with me. And anytime anything happens in North Brooklyn – a protest at a city council meeting over bike lanes, for instance – it gets titled/framed as a battle of hipsters vs. whoever, even if there is absolutely nothing to indicate the subjects in question have any “hipster” attributes except where they live … So, yeah, the term is pretty much meaningless. But Ross Douthat is way hipper than you, Conor. And please don’t let Julian start dressing you.
— Elizabeth · Jan 26, 07:01 PM · #
In this case hipster means: a younger person I don’t like. Its a generation gap thing, like gen x’er. Hipster is one of those stupid terms – a true hipster delights in being an anti-hipster. Hipsters, by the way, can like “uncool music” unironically – see Chuck Klosterman.
Besides the “Get off my lawn” and “go form your own on-line publication” junk, there is one element that rang true to me in the article. I’ve never been a fan of Karl Rove/Tom Delay, etc. aspects of movement conservativism. But I never felt like I had to be a part of that scene, and never whined about being outside of it. And there are many many good folks in movement conservative – write or do something to connect to them, instead of whining about the ones you don’t like. People will take the legit critiques of movement conversatives more seriously if done by someone who has connection with them already. Buckley could effectively isolate the Randians and Birchers because he established himself as a credible voice on other issues. Of course, he was a rare figure and hard to emmulate. To destroy the old vanguard of the movement, you must show everyone what you will replace it with. good luck.
— JC38 · Jan 26, 10:08 PM · #
Calling Ross Douthat a hipster is just daft.
I have a lot of sympathy for Liz and anyone else who just wants to do what they think is fun without being consigned to some lame catch-all term. My brother is another person who is sometimes called a hipster even though, in terms of how he thinks and acts, he’s very different from the stereotype.
That said, it isn’t for no reason that people have come up with the term “hipster,” or have come to use it to refer to people in certain environs or contexts. And sometimes, when I hear people complain about being called hipsters, what they are actually saying is “I want to take comfort and social solidarity in sharing certain cues, fashions and habits with other people, but then I am judged because of my group affiliation!” The only answer to that is, well, yeah. That’s life.
— Freddie · Jan 26, 10:24 PM · #
Conor’s got an interesting response over at FF and promises more follow ups. Hopefully, he’ll increase the quality of the writing over at FF.
— JC38 · Jan 26, 10:55 PM · #
Wait.
Jimmy Buffett?
— Matt Frost · Jan 27, 02:12 AM · #
I can’t believe it wasn’t until the 12th comment that somebody mentioned the Jimmy Buffett admission (which, as either ironic or earnest, could be construed as a hipster indicator).
— Matt Feeney · Jan 27, 03:56 AM · #
I’m with everyone else. You’re no hipster. Douthat is even less of one. Peter Suderman totally is, though, because he wrote these posts:
http://theamericanscene.com/2009/04/10/what-was-the-hipster
http://theamericanscene.com/2009/04/15/are-there-hipsters-in-dc
— JosephFM · Jan 27, 04:05 AM · #
I’ve been outed!
Also: JIMMY FUCKING BUFFETT?
— Peter Suderman · Jan 27, 04:29 AM · #
Soon I will write a post titled, “Yes, Jimmy Buffett.”
— Conor friedersdorf · Jan 27, 04:31 AM · #
Or instead of allowing you to write that post, we could raise a baby shark on nothing but shark meat, build a motorcycle that runs on shark liver oil, and feed you to another shark (also shark-fed), who would then climb on the motorcycle and jump over a tank containing the now-full grown baby shark. And something something Rush Limbaugh something.
— Matt Frost · Jan 27, 05:32 AM · #
Er..ah…sorry, turnbuckle. Missed your Buffett reference, and then just restated your point.
— Matt Feeney · Jan 27, 06:03 AM · #
True story: I was with my brothers and father, on a tiny (like a few acres) island off the coast of Belize, this little bare-bones flyfishing/diving outpost, cabins and a little cafeteria with a bar. We were sitting out on the deck late at night, drinking tropical concoctions from the bar. The warm wind was howling through the palm trees. The only thing that would have made it more Jimmy Buffettish would have been if “Margaritaville” started playing on the little portable stereo. Or if Jimmy Buffett flew his float plane in from Key West and landed along the beach and went up to the bar for a drink. Which happened.
— Matt Feeney · Jan 27, 06:19 AM · #
But why write “Yes, Jimmy Buffett” when you could write “The Conservative Case for Jimmy Buffett”? The clock is ticking on the Most Counterintuitive Articles of the Twenty-Teens, after all.
— Dara Lind · Jan 27, 11:22 AM · #
The terrifying revelation here is that Conor is not, as his right-wing antagonists claim, a closet liberal. It’s that he’s a closet boomer.
— Matt Frost · Jan 27, 12:19 PM · #
Even though I don’t cotton to his music, the Jimmy Buffet float plane experience fills me with envy.
He makes a nice cameo in the excellent Rancho Deluxe, by the way.
— turnbuckle · Jan 27, 04:11 PM · #
And here I thought he was a closet woman. Schoolmarm by day, flapper by night, vulnerable in between.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 28, 12:43 AM · #