Hipsters are today’s college-somethings; they’re the dominant subculture (paradoxical?) because they promote equal amounts of armchair rebellion, intangible cultural involvement, irreverence, intellectual drool, and past-mining fashion. In other words, it’s easy and fun to be a hipster: slack off, suck up some semi-obscure culture, slap on some feisty vintage clothes, and flippantly judge everyone and everything else. Viola!
Hipsters: create nothing, criticize everything.
How’s a hipster made? Christian Lorentzen puts it beautifully, but I’ll put it in points:
- Fundamental disappointment with adulthood. Hipsters arrive at 22, despair, and try to get back on the train.
- Fundamental dissatisfaction with inactivity. Hipsters want to do something; furthermore, they want to spend their time doing something that “matters”—more importantly, something fun.
- Fundamental laziness. Hipsters aren’t energetic people, otherwise they’d probably be yuppies.
These ingredients (repulsion at adulthood + wanting to be a part of something + wanting to sleep ’til 2 PM) react to create the hipster. Disillusioned with adulthood, they shrink back into modified teenage years, entering a life of “perpetual luxuriant slumming.” Wanting to be a part of something, but being too lazy to really do anything, they join with fellow hipsters to latch onto the work of the truly creative with claws of cynicism.
That’s my beef with hipsters: they fancy themselves “creative” but they don’t actually make anything—no, that’d violate their decree to take it easy, because creation is a long, trying, un-fun process. Instead, they nervously shore up their image of good taste and cultural superiority by nonchalantly criticizing both the truly creative and each other. Hipsters are caught up in a game of declaring things “old news,” labeling things “overrated,” and drowning themselves in sarcasm and irony. They mistake irreverence for wit, pessimism for wisdom, and dissatisfaction for superiority. (See: Vice Magazine)
It’s not that I dislike the flotsam of hipster culture: the music, the movies, the art, the clothes. Those are all things I like and enjoy. No, it’s simply those who think they deserve respect for their disrespect; it’s those who think they can mean something while doing nothing.
*Note: Yes, broadly speaking, those musicians, moviemakers, artists, and designers are all part of hipsterdom—but here I’m addressing the watchers, not the players.
Pandering and Popularity
As the artists, musicians, directors, and the like get more popular they’re usually accused of “pandering” or “selling out” to, presumably, the “masses.” The implication is that the artist is somehow compromising his original intent for the sake of getting more fans, money, or whatever.
I think this accusation comes from a simmering blend of two things:
The first fear is perhaps founded, but it sure as hell can’t be helped. No one lives in a vacuum—artists are going to be influenced by their own popularity, other artists, and their own fans whether they want to or not. They’re not compromising their “vision” because their vision is changing along with them. At most, they’re compromising your vision.
The second is basically an unjustified variant of “their old stuff was better”-syndrome. People get uncomfortable when the things they like get too popular, because they perceive popularity as diminishing their uniqueness. Yet, it’s not the artist’s responsibility to stay unknown; it’s silly to hate an artist for being popular because, if they’re really that good, then it’s a good thing for more people to share in their talent.
Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins addresses pandering this way:
My point is that whether or not “pandering” is consciously occurring, it’s not something to complain about, simply because there’s no alternative. Protesting compromise or popularity is fruitless. The creator’s changed and what s/he makes is going to change with it.