The Hypocrisy of the Hipster
It seems like everywhere you look, there's bound to be at least one hipster stumbling around. From the warm confines of the local Starbucks, to high school and college campuses, to the trendiest street corners of America’s trendiest cities, hipsters and hipster groups are growing evermore present in American society.
Hipster Basics: What Defines a Hipster?
Hipster Fashion
Hipsters are easily distinguished in a crowd of non hipsters. They have a love of plaid, enjoy ear piercings, and usually have silly haircuts. The jeans they wear range from looking so skinny they may as well be painted on, to so baggy they would likely provide adequate lift to sustain flight should the wearer fall from a high place. Basic accessories included a pack of Parliament Light cigarettes, a half full can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and often times beanie or fedora type hats. A fair comparison would be to the style of Macklemore in the “Thrift Shop” video. To put it bluntly, many hipster fashion items look they belong on a 98 year old grandfather or grandmother. Or they look like cheesy throwbacks to fashion in the 1970's or 1980's.
Hipster Culture
Dressing like a 90 year old and smoking terrible flavorless cigarettes while drinking awful beer are done for more than just appearances. They are an essential part of the hipster mindset. The culture surrounding hipster-ism is one of non conformity. Hipsters pride themselves on bucking mainstream ideals and fashion. They are hell bent on promoting individuality and irony. Most of the humor a hipster displays is in the name of irony. The act of a 20 year old male wearing the clothes of a 96 year old geriatric is considered to be ironic among the hipster community. For that reason, it is widely practiced. The mainstream opinion on smoking is that its terrible for you and you shouldn't do it; which is exactly why a hipster lights up those awful Parliaments. They want to stand out as individuals, and attempt to do so in the most conspicuous way possible. They’ll be the first ones to tell you they liked something before it was cool, or how modern music is too commercialized and instead of listening to Eminem you should listen to “insert unknown indie rapper’s name here”. This hatred for all things mainstream is not only the cornerstone for the hipster movement, its also the cornerstone for its hypocrisy.
The Hatred of Success
As stated before hipsters hate anything remotely popular or mainstream. This hatred also applies, arguably even more so, to things they previously enjoyed but eventually caught on in mainstream society. Lets take a look at the beer example again. Pabst Blue Ribbon is beer. Keystone Light is beer as well. Both are gross and watered down, both are also the same price. The differences between them are as follows: Keystone Light is owned by Coors Brewing Co, a multinational corporation, and PBR is not. On this basis alone, a hipster will choose the PBR over the Keystone. Why? Because its less mainstream. They might even try to support their decision by applying some irony laden explanation to it, but in the end its about what’s mainstream vs what isn't. This concept isn’t limited to the corporate world, the field of music suffers from the same mindset. Take for example the band “Vampire Weekend”. They were the favorite band of a hipster friend I had in high school. This friend, who shall remain nameless but be referred to as “Bob”, always used to talk about how great “Vampire Weekend” were. He even used to wear the bands T shirt to school every day underneath his oversized gray cardigan. One day, Bob stopped wearing the shirt. I asked him why and he responded with “They sold out. They’re new album is way too mainstream and influenced by the record label”. Basically he was saying that the band had become too popular. Now the mainstream crowd was listening so he, as a hipster, had to stick to his hatred of success and all that is mainstream by jumping ship and finding a new band. Which he was able to do in about two days time. Despite a widespread hatred of success, sometimes successful enterprises do manage to infiltrate the hipsterverse.
Starbucks and Apple?
Hipsters usually hate all things mainstream. For some reason, Apple and Starbucks seem to escape this hatred. Both are multinational corporations that make billions of dollars in profits annually. Apple has been in the news for exploiting its workforce while Starbucks has been scrutinized in the past for denying Ethiopia around $88 million per year in profits linked to it’s “Ethiopia Blend” coffee. These factors should make the support of these institutions sacrilegious to an institution founded on individuality and despising the greed of corporate America. Yet most of us have probably seen a Facebook post or tweet that says something like “Hate the fact that so many people in this mall are wearing Nike and supporting corporate greed — Sent from my iPad” with the location listed as “Starbucks”.
This is down to nothing more than outright hypocrisy. Apple products are “cooler” in the eyes of a hipster than a standard PC. A young college student carries a MacBook while a 50 year old accountant carts around a PC. The same mindset is applied to Starbucks. In a market like the ones for coffee and computers, there is no real “indie” competition. Both of those fields require a lot of pedigree and capital to break into, which greatly limits the ability for “indie” and hipster friendly start-ups to infiltrate. Hipsters as a result of this resort to any of the following choices: Carry around a typewriter and don’t drink coffee, or bite the bullet and get the trendy stuff so at least you don’t look old. That sounds like selling out, like you’re bowing to “the man” and buying into corporate greed. You aren’t being ironic about it, you’re not an individual anymore. This isn’t true though, because the horrible sad truth is, you never were in the first place.
Just as Mainstream as Everyone Else
A man by the name of James Paul Gee described in his article titled “Literacy Discourse and Linguistics” what he would call a “Discourse”. A Discourse is “ a sort of identity kit, which comes complete with the appropriate costume and instructions on how to act, talk and often write… to take on a role that others will recognize” (Gee 2). The basis of being a hipster is to shun the idea of a Discourse and to be an individual. However, by adopting these conventions and grouping themselves together, they have become what they despise. You can’t be an individual and be a hipster. If you don’t like other things hipsters like you’re a poser. If you do buy in and go about being a hipster then you’re also a poser. You’re a fake individual, what Gee would call a “pretender”. Instead of buying into what mainstream society buys into, you’re buying into what a different sub section of society buys into. By that logic, wouldn’t it be more individual, and ironic, to like and support mainstream culture despite identifying as a hipster? Would that make you more of an individual than someone following the individual hipster herd? This is the fatal flaw of the hipster mindset. The only way for being a hipster to work is if nobody buys into it. Once viewpoints become popularized and adopted by more than one person, they are no longer individual. To make things worse for hipsters, the whole hipster concept is now becoming “cool”. In other words, to become a hipster is becoming mainstream. This is a paradox, as two completely different contradicting points are now becoming one. To be a hipster is to shun the mainstream. This would mean that hipsters, if they still wanted to be hipsters, would have to shun the idea of being a hipster… See the problem here? The whole thing is a mess. The bottom line however becomes evidently clear. To be a hipster is to be hypocrite. You are the same thing you despise, except you look more ridiculous and are twice as annoying. Nobody likes a contrarian, so go put on some normal clothes, get a real haircut, smoke some good cigarettes, get some good beer and just enjoy what life has to offer without hating everything as soon as other people start to like it.
