i read an article from 2008 today on adbusters that declares the “hipster” the end of western civilization.
“An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning.”
i have to admit, i like hipster culture. i think its fun. and for a while, you could have called it the counter-culture, but then it quickly became mainstream. and because it became mainstream so quickly, the idea behind it was completely lost. without a message or a meaning, its nothing more than a fashion trend. so in a way, i agree with the author, if your counter-culture is being sold to you at the mall, you’ve reached a new low point. with this, i can understand the author’s disgust with the hipster. but i don’t think we should all be hipster hating, because whether you participate or not, hipster culture is a mirror on society. yeah, they recycle everything from beatnik to hippie, european with a hint of eastern, 60s modern mixed with 20s hobo. and yet, they are easily identifiable.
when you take that tidbit and you mix it with the huge amount of articles you see on the internet now about boomerang kids and the quarterlife crisis, you end up with a sad representation of a directionless generation. my opinion, and it is solely mine and you can disagree, is that the self-esteem movement of the late 70′s and 80′s, which has continued in various forms since then, has done us no favors. hipsters are (or at least were originally) kids who grew up with money. maybe not rich kids, but certainly not poor. a lot of them went to private school, and attended college on their parents buck. from the time they were born well into adulthood they have been force-fed the message that they could be anything and do anything with their life – regardless of how unrealistic their dreams were. all they had to do was believe in themselves. i appreciate the idea that we shouldn’t make kids feel like they can’t achieve their dreams, but there comes a point where you’ve gone a little off track. ask yourself this, if a 12 year old paraplegic girl said she wanted to be a ballerina when she grew up, how would you respond to that? i’m quite certain my elementary school teachers would have told her that she just needed to believe in herself, try really hard, not give up, and not let anyone tell her she couldn’t do it. its a nice idea. but what happens when that kid grows up feeling misled, betrayed, and disappointed? an exaggeration, yes, but you get the point. what you’ve got is a lot of people who grew up with that message, but when they reached adulthood, they looked around and said “i thought it would be different than this. aren’t i supposed to be a CEO, taking weekend cruises on my yacht, trying to figure out which charities to donate my money to? why am i not happy?”. and from there begins the search, the reaching back into the past, trying to reconnect with something that feels real, something with purpose, and direction. this is what hipster was born of. trying to reconnect with a romanticized idea of a bygone blue-collar america.
but…that said…yes, hipster has now become a mash of trendy fads, nothing more. and it is already fading out. people love to hate hipsters. they see hipster as a billboard for trendy, consumer, internet age sheep. if thats true, if the hipster counter-culture is now fading pop culture, then where is the true counter culture? have we reached a point where counter-culture is pop culture? where does that leave us?
