<p>I’m sorry for any confusion called by the slightly tongue in cheek tone of my first post. Of course not every boy who wears ‘an ironic t-shirt’ and likes to boast about how he knows all the ‘hottest unknown indie bands’ is going to be a person who my friend and I dislike. I was using these particular markers as cultural shorthand, much as I used a reference to the ability to recite pi to the gazillionth digit but no ability to have conversation as a reference to the kind of smart kid who’s very focused on things like math but doesn’t really know how to deal with social situations. It seems that most people are picking up on the latter “type” - the whiz kid who has a hard time talking to people - but not on the first “type.” This may be a generational thing, as the “hipster” type I refer to is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon, so parents and older alums may not recognize that particular cultural reference.</p>
<p>I am still reading through all your posts, so this is not a reply to everyone in the thread, but I did want to clarify really quickly the “type” I meant when I referenced the hipster. Hipster, here: pretentious, insufferable, cooler than thou. The kinds of hipsters I refer to (ie, the kinds my friend felt uncomfortable with… again, not all “hipsters” are bad people, just as not all “nerds” are socially incompetent homework machines) often like to try and use their obscure knowledge to show themselves to be “more hip” or more “culturally with-it” than you are. There is a specific kind of young person, generally between 18 and 25, who takes great pride in “knowing” the “underground music scene” - but only if the “underground music scene” is sufficiently underground that YOU, the person he is talking to, does not know about it yourself. This will allow the pretentious young person to believe that he is superior to you, at least in matters of musical taste, because you are not as informed as he is when it comes to what he considers current musical currents. </p>
<p>As you can see, this kind of person isn’t tied to APPEARANCE so much as ATTITUDE. In the first post, I referenced APPEARANCE because these kinds of hipsters often do signal certain of their interests and proclivities through their appearance, for example “ironically” wearing a child’s sweater with unicorns on it (male). This isn’t about sexuality or gender, isn’t even necessarily about fashion; in this case, the sweater is just there to signal “irony,” to signal that the wearer is so culturally superior that not only does he know that this unicorn sweater is the kind of thing you (as this kind of “hipster”) would turn your nose up at if you saw someone wearing it in earnest, but also he is cool enough - to return to outdated terms, “hip” enough - to wear it himself in a manner that, in his eyes, somehow transcends the inherent lack of cool of the sweater not through any virtue of styling or fashion but merely BECAUSE he is culturally superior and recognizes the sweater’s lameness. So as you see, in some cases, clothing becomes not a marker of APPEARANCE or even PERSONAL STYLE vis a vis texture/pattern/color/cut, but instead indicative of the hipster’s attitude towards what he thinks of as being uncool. I’m sure many of my peers have met people like this before, particularly those of us who live in upper- to middle-class urban areas. </p>
<p>The moniker “hipster” itself is a subtle reference as to the “type” I described above. The hipster thinks himself so culturally aware and so up-to-date with all the latest manifestations of coolness that he believes (“knows”) that the out-dated term “hip” is now uncool. However, he also thinks himself so enlightened that by dint of being able to recognize this distinction (unlike his middle-aged father, who is just lame), he is able to call himself a “hipster” with a suitable amount of irony. For some of us, it can be exhausting interacting with such people on a frequent basis. </p>
<p>Sorry for all the rampant quotation marks in this post, but I wanted to make a distinction between my terms and the terms placed into the mouths of my hypothetical hipsters (“underground music scene,” etc).</p>