<p>Help me out here. I keep hearing references to ‘hipster’. What does this mean? Are they just bohemian, self-absorbed white people who live in gentrified urban neighborhoods?</p>
<p>My first laugh of the day, in my realm, that would be a “yes.”</p>
<p>That description works for me. I also think there are many hipster “posers”.</p>
<h1>ICantRN</h1>
<p>That definition will handle quite fine for now. :D</p>
<p>It used to refer more specifically to people of roughly that demographic who *ironically<a href=“that’s%20important”>/i</a> celebrated middle-class values and kitsch, typically outdated, e.g. by wearing cat glasses, planting pink flamingos in the garden, listening to the Partridge Family, etc.</p>
<p><a href=“Hipster Holocaust - YouTube”>Hipster Holocaust - YouTube; explains it all. Done by my son and his friends with money raised from a Kicksarter campaign.</p>
<p>I always thought of “hipsters” as the current day hippies of the 60’s except their music preferences lean toward 'Indie". Definitely liberal or progressive in their political thought and anti-establishment in a mellow way. I like hipsters!</p>
<p>Hipsters are not hippies.
Hipsters are closer to yuppies except they are even more pretentious.
( not describing the Kerouac hipster, but the more prevalent type in my neighborhood)
There are still hippies though, but they left tie dye in the '60’s, thank the goddess.</p>
<p>Hipsters are passé by now, no? On the east coast, I think of them as a phenomenon of the growth of Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn (which is almost completely gentrified at this point). The stereotype wore flannel shirts, thick-framed glasses, porkpie or other retro hats, very skinny jeans, and rode fixie bikes. </p>
<p>Dont put the hate on flannel shirts missy.
Unfortunately, hipsters have taken over the local coffee shop. You cant order by size/type of drink anymore, but by where your coffee was grown and how it was harvested.
They dont offer cream and sugar because that " spoils" the taste.
You get the side eye if you want milk in it.
Its too bad, it used to be a neighborhood place where families stopped off for hot cocoa on their way home from school or where landscapers stopped for lunch.
Now they dont offer food or anything that isnt coffee because that would distract from the " experience".</p>
<p>I don’t consider hipster a derogatory term. I work with a young man who handles our social media (we are a large company) and I call him “the hipster”. He’s darling. Skinny leg pants, metro-bag…</p>
<p>No one will admit to being a hipster, exactly, but there are plenty of them around. They are not (not at all) hippies, nor are they what our parents’ generation thought of as hipsters (Kerouac hipsters). It’s sort of a loose affiliation of subcultures in major cities (mainly Brooklyn, but certainly also Portland OR) and college campuses. Some of the hallmarks are vintage clothing, indie rock, refined foodie tastes, all irony all the time, and contempt for the bourgeois masses. There’s sort of a metrosexual wing (everyone dresses like a gay man, whether or not they are either) and a steam punk wing (everyone dresses like a lumberjack or a Civil War re-enactor). There are also subsets devoted to veganism and to extremely unhealthy food (bacon and/or lard in everything). Pickling is big.</p>
<p>The TV series Portlandia and Girls both give pretty good, if very different, windows into hipster sensibilities. New Girl doesn’t really, but Zooey Deschanel’s persona is pretty much a hipster blanded out for mainstream audiences. Other hipster signifiers include 19th-Century facial hair (for men), beater bikes and glasses with heavy frames (as mentioned), microbrewery beer, pour-over coffee, vinyl records. If you own vinyl copies of anything by Neutral Milk Hotel, Pink Martini, or Joanna Newsome, you are probably a hipster.</p>
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<p>When I’ve seen the label commonly used, it seems one often adds has a huge trust fund from parents/inheritance. </p>
<p>This factor is often cited along with the ones above to rant about them, especially from working-class friends who felt the negative aspects of gentrification from feeling squeezed/forced out of neighborhoods they grew up in and whose families have spent a few generations living. And other than that, most of them could pass for being one by appearance, fashion choices, and avocations(indie musicians…albeit with day jobs). </p>
<p>No one I know, even friends who are part of the hipster scenes in Williamsburg and other neighborhoods wants that label unless they’re trying to be “ironic”. Some of them probably are, but it seems to be a “hot potato” label everyone is doing their utmost to avoid. </p>
<p>Incidentally, hipsters have been said to have completely taken over my undergrad college since I’ve graduated. Many alums from my era and before bemoan that fact and regard this as a sign the college has become too conformist and conventionally fashion conscious compared to when we attended where as one parent back them was quoted saying Obies “go out of their way to dress ugly”. </p>
<p>What that meant in practice was everyone dressed however they felt like and no one cared unless one was wearing formal corporate wear and wasn’t a conservatory student…and that dislike for corporate wear was on political grounds…not fashion concerns. </p>
<p>80s vintage quip:</p>
<p>Q: What is a yuppie?</p>
<p>A: Anyone who makes more money than you do.</p>
<p>Most hipsters deny being hipsters. That’s one of the telltale signs.</p>
<p>A yuppie wasnt about how much money you* made *, it was about how much money you * spent * & what you spent it on.
Same with hipsters.
I know hippies that have more money than the hipsters could dream of, but they don’t flaunt it.
Those are 501’s they are wearing, not raw Japanese denim.</p>
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<p>To be fair, that denial is much easier if one doesn’t fit the commonly bandied about hipster stereotyped appearance. </p>
<p>For males, the common hipster stereotype is to be exceedingly skinny and under 5’8". On that basis alone, I’m pretty safe as I’m not that skinny and am much taller than that. :)</p>
<p>Being exceedingly skinny and under 5’8" does not make you a hipster…</p>
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<p>I thought the beer of choice was Pabst Blue Ribbon, drunk ironically. ;)</p>
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<p>True, I’m just citing a common stereotyped appearance of male hipsters I keep hearing about in mass media and seeing in Williamsburg and other NYC neighborhoods with hipster scenes. </p>