Adbusters has a controversial essay questioning whether or not today’s youth culture is inbreeding itself into oblivion. They use the dreaded word “hipster” which tends to make people argue about the definition and miss the point. The piece does raise an interesting question though -is the current cool/hipster/youth culture just an empty mash of previous cultures? Like westernization killing off indigenous traditions; is “hipster” culture an hyper-ironic recursive game that lays waste to creative thought? The article is written in typical heavy handed Adbusters style, but the ideas presented are worth thinking over.
From Adbusters:
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”
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. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
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I just saw a young man walk past me on Greene Street in SoHo, he was wearing a massive letter ‘T’ made out of Lego round his neck on a gold chain.
I don’t have a point here, just thought I’d throw it in the mix…
July 31st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
to above^. yeah, i mean i guess thats ghetto rapper meets 80s geek for the sake of “irony” whatever that now means…
this has got me thinking too- can any young person NOT be part of this cultural suicide hipster thing?? Before hipster was just the tight black pants people, now its everyone who appropriates a past style? Damn. Thats pretty much everyone.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I don’t see it that negative.
The time to talk in superlatives and to think in terms of bigger, faster or better is over. There’s a wave going through the next generation, a general idea.
It’s about getting off the train that has driven economies and societies for centuries. Hedonism and the hunt to reach any personal superlative are outdated. Instead of adopting, what counts is the ability to ignore common expectations and to start building an independent and highly individual style on your own. The lifestyle of the avant-garde is about contrasts, taking bricks and pieces from every century and fashion to create something truly new. It’s about ignoring trends, because you have to come up with new unique ideas on your own. What it takes to do this is creativity, humor and the will not to take yourself too serious.
So there’s the question:
Isn’t this a way to “challenge the dysfunction and decadence of the elders”?
August 1st, 2008 at 4:29 am
“An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras”
….built on the ads and virals that markerters have been shoving down our throats. Aren’t they the true enemy of culture?
Having said that the backlash to hipsters was Nathan Barley, which is epic cultural win, yeah?
August 1st, 2008 at 7:28 am
This article is what’s wrong with our culture, not hipsters. Blogs and the net are overrun with complaints about who and what we are.
It’s pathetic. Can’t you just embrace the ‘kids these days’ without trying to find something wrong?
Humans are flawed and interesting at the same time. Fashion changes. ACCEPT IT. Hipsters are just people who like fun fashion. What’s the big deal if it’s really quirky?
August 1st, 2008 at 10:07 am
I can’t take a magazine seriously that creates a brand of shoe and then claims it’s not a brand. Memo to Kalle Lasn – if you put a black dot on a shoe that’s still a brand. You don’t get a free ride from branding because you could, in a pinch, also eat the shoe.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:48 am
It amazes me that Adbusters is actually covering the exact same topic New York Magazine covered a month ago. I would love to get a look at the AdBusters staff up Vancouver and see just what their phychographic profile looks like. Something tells me its a lot of domestic beers on Fridays, Trucker hats, black horn rims and organic shoes.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
So-called hipsters have never been the creative forces in society — they merely ape what creative people do — and they have never been a generator of counter-culture but rather a conduit since they act as a popularizer of what creative people do. They are like a dual-phase material — the popularizer and the mainstream in one.
“The Society of the Spectacle”
August 1st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I guess AdBusters has been around long enough to have stories like this on file, where you can just swap keywords and suddenly have “new content.” Last year it was emo kids ruining rock, the year before it was Dirty South ruining hip hop, and the content never changes.
It’s cultural homeostasis — in order for the Global Brain to work, it needs huge amplifiers. Those amplifiers are these cookie-cutter subcultures, from Goth to Christians. It’s annoying at times, but it’s also really profitable if you just accept it and use it.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
That’s good.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
i think I can campare hipsters to hiler youth
blindly following trends mandated by the government
August 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am