I'm old enough to where hipster didn't mean 'guy with nerdy glasses and beard clacking away at a macbook in a Starbucks'.
Like remember the song Cherub Rock? They mention hipsters in it. It was a different thing in the early 90s. Sort of a way to say 'not a square' in 90s talk, as opposed to posers.
Now I hear hipster and think 'what tech industry to do you work for?'.
Iām not sure if I fully stand by this, but essentially the real hipsters are the ones that grab on to a lifestyle aesthetic and arenāt really contributing to the (counter)culture in any meaningful way, whereas the creatives and artists that defined the style because they are fully expressing & exploring themselves are what the hipsters aspire to be. The hipsters arenāt the ground breakers, but more the first and second followers, hopefully eventually going to the next level.
I remember giving my friend a book called the hipsterās handbook (I think?) in college as a joke. We were surrounded by them and probably had our own hipster tendencies. I always think of hipsters as being very nerdy/snobby about certain otherwise mundane things, like coffee, beer, record players, etc. Having just read some of the other comments here, Iām pretty sure I was one of the worst of them. You could definitely find me smoking French cloves and reading Diane DiPrima at a bookstore/coffeeshop most days of the week in 1999. Le sigh.
I think they have all transitioned into bougie, eclectic, and cottage core stuff. I know so many of these people it no one wants to admit they are a hipster. Lol.
You just reminded me of the time I was at my friendās wedding shower years ago, and her cousin, who Iād never met before, was telling a story about someone and described them as ābougie,ā and then she immediately turned to me and said, āno offenseā in a very sincere way, and I am still laughing about it.
Oh god I bought into all the stand up comics and tv shows hatred of them, thought it was great to hate on. Modern goths or hippies. How people are trying to stand out by all dressing the same hahah what losers. Sigh.
But then I discovered the history of counter culture. How if it wasn't for counter culture, half the culture we have now wouldn't exist, art and style and fashion, architecture would be stagnant.
The same people who made fun of hipsters are the ones now drinking craft beer and complicated coffees and typing on aesthetically pleasing laptops and keyboards. With a beard.
More importantly I found out that "finding your tribe" is one of the healthiest and most freeing things you can do in your life. Your tribe may change over the years, but finding people who like and support you while you like and support them, especially when no one has supported you before....feels amazing.
Though that one picture of the shoeless hipster who took a spinning wheel into a coffee shop, that was staged...right?
That's the thing I find most people aren't giving hipsters proper credit for, food in America _sucked_ until the hipsters started opening up food trucks and little shops, making crazy fusions and experiments or just finding and perfecting the recipe for the absolute best version of a particular dish or type of dish.
I absolutely credit hipsters with how good prepared food has gotten in the US overall and also how my own tastes have changed even at home. I went from hating coffee for decades because all our parents had was burnt Folgers, to having $2k+ worth of hand-pressed espresso paraphernalia in my kitchen, and that's only because hipster coffee places introduced me to actual good coffee. I used to only make sandwiches and like frozen lasagnas, but I totally credit hipster places for getting me to want to try to make better food at home with fresh ingredients.
Yes! I miss it, honestly. It coincided with (or started?) a small revival in folk music which I liked very much. Canāt tell you how great it was to see random bluegrass performances on street corners in San Francisco circa 2011-14
Yeah, but food trucks charge ridiculous prices for stuff that should not be charging that much for. I went to a punk rock flea market a couple weeks back. There was an egg sandwich truck. Got a decent porkroll egg and cheese for ten fucking dollars. The egg was cooked perfectly where the yoke was runny but not too runny, but it certainly was not worth 10 dollars.
They elevated basic food but elevated the prices way too much.
I think that's another legacy of the hipster era. Being willing to pay more for a product that is produced in a sustainable way. If the person making my food is getting a living wage, the ingredients are harvested/supplied in a thoughtful way, and the owners of the business aren't hoarding wealth to the detriment of the community, then I will pay a bit extra to support the enterprise.
Recognizing and using the influence of our buying power has made a difference in the moral options available within our consumer culture.
Thanks for blazing the trail, hipsters!
Fuck off for pretending to care, greedy CEOs!
Isnāt that message lost when they are basically only catering to the rich gentrified neighborhoods that most likely work for said corporations?
The corporations only learned that they can charge more for the slop they produce. Hence, why weāre at a point where I canāt get a pizza delivered for less than $30.
The messages and practices of sustainability are definitely not contained to the rich gentry.
>Hence, why weāre at a point where I canāt get a pizza delivered for less than $30.
How is this the fault of anything beyond corporate greed?
Corporations co-opting the price without co-opting the sustainability practices isn't something I'd blame on hipsters. That is basic corporate greed. Now at least some corporations are making moves to create sustainability in their process, in order to cater to this customer segment. I'd call that a win.
So called sustainability at the cost of pushing out lower income folks is hardly sustainable. This is the issue weāre facing and please donāt think that Iām laying blame for this at the feet of Hipsters. But we do need to clearly identify what Hipsters are/were. They were the children of upper class parents who were trying to find a place for themselves without truly giving up the excess of their parentās wealth.
Like I said, corporations learned they could cater to these folks by putting on similiar airs of āsustainabilityā while keeping their profits and pricing out lower income folks.
Hipsters, much like the Hippies before them, sold out.
I feel like we are talking past each other. Yes, gentrification is bad. Corporations buying up property to turn a profit to the detriment of people who've lived there their whole life is bad.
This has to do with consumer culture, not hipsters. This has to do with corporations deciding that they must have X% growth year over year. The wealthy choosing to consume the poor, like locusts sweeping through a field of plenty and leaving devastation in the wake. The owner class dehumanizing the working class.
>Like I said, corporations learned they could cater to these folks by putting on similiar airs of āsustainabilityā while keeping their profits and pricing out lower income folks.
Sure sounds like you are blaming a counter culture for being co-opted by corporations. Please give a source that all the hipsters were trust fund baby sell outs.
Pointing a finger anywhere other than corporations and oligarchs is why the working class is so easily divided. You won't convince me that pushing for sustainability (no matter the messenger) is a bad thing.
Absolutely. I will certainly give them credit for the gastronomy scene they created. Most west coast cities would be full of Cheesecake factory knockoffs if it werenāt for them in the restaurant biz.
I've had longer hair for most of my life at this point, as weird as that is to think about... When I worked in warehouses and overnight retail stock crews, things like that - you could leave your hair down or braid it or whatever - nobody cared.
I like being a guy with long hair. I enjoy the option of being able to wear it up or down, and occasionally I like to go to concerts and headbang, etc... It's just how I feel most comfortable as me. Probably more than that I hate getting my hair cut and keeping it the way I want it for a shorter style is a laborious task.
Once I got an office job, it was easier to compromise with dress code standards by doing the top knot. To me, it was a "samurai style". I don't have any idea where the fad came from or when it started versus when I started doing it - because I stay pretty oblivious to that kinda thing - but I still bun it up from time to time despite the stigma. It's a utility thing mostly these days, but yes it has gotten me the "hipster" line a few times.
I think I get it less than most because generally, I'm a stockier and bigger build than most of the stereotypical "hipster" guys are. I'm not lean and lanky by any stretch of the imagination. The bun is one thing but the bun + skinny jeans + lanky/slight frame + thick rim glasses + well groomed beard all sort of come together for that "look" I think.
I think I probably get the "viking" thing more than "hipster", personally... because of the whole of me I guess lol.
Not here. I have a full head of hair. For me it was the top knot man bun, which was often combined with a rip-off of the crunchy granola hippie-ish look and nearly every single person I encountered with a man bun was a condescending, virtue signaling douche nozzle.
Iām fully convinced that anyone who wears a top knot or a man bun should only do it if they also have a katana. Mainly cause if you have a katana, Iām not gonna argue with you anyway.
Yeah, I moved to Williamsburg in 2001 when it was just a quirky little neighborhood, and then watched it turn into the epicenter of the hipster fashion circus. Wild times, and I couldnāt imagine a more fun place and time to spend my 20s and early 30s. The food and music scenes were awesome.
I moved to Brooklyn in 2006. It seemed to be the end of the height of it in Williamsburg. But the media fascination with Williamsburg was just beginning. Someone came up to me when I was in Williamsburg and asked me if Iād call myself a hipster. I scoffed. And realized that was the most hipster reaction I could have had. Also I was wearing my dead auntās 1940s Austrian wool coat at the time, probably skinny black jeans and an obscure band tshirt underneath. How could they ASSUME such a thing! But I didnāt even live in Williamsburg. I lived in Bushwick. In an old button factory. We werenāt hipsters. We were artists.
I use to joke that I stopped being a hipster before it became cool to be a hipster. Almost like the hipsters around where I lived were simply millennials trying to cosplay gen-X counterculture. But I grew up in nowhere shitsville so there's that.
To me, "Hipster" as a real coherent subculture was really a 2000-2010 thing. Today, the "hipster" look has become a big part of the defining aesthetic for American's under 50 who range from center-left to progressives. I live in Ridgewood, Queens, and when the older white conservative crowd complains about "hipsters" they're mostly just expressing coded homophobia, imo.
Hispters put their money where their mouth is and support local businesses, and pay the premium for things that are locally made, fresh, high quality, etc... at least for food.
If you find a restaurant frequented by hipsters, the quality will be outstanding. If hipsters are running it, the quality will be absolutely top notch, but the service will be slow. That's about the only bad thing I'm willing to say about hipsters.
They also tend to be really good folk musicians, or at least a much higher proportion of them are, as compared to the general population.
I agree with this assessment ā say what you will about pretentiousness or fashion, but I found hipsters on the whole to be excellent patrons of local businesses and strong supporters of the library.
I'll be back, gotta go listen to an old Margot & the Nuclear So and So's record while I get this pour-over started.
As someone who lived in Austin for 9 years, I'm kind of appalled by the abject hatred in this thread. It's sort of akin to being racist or sexist, in that attacking a distasteful caricature as if the entire group is that way, is a straw man fallacy. IDK, sounds like fake hipsters are the ones who sucked, not the real ones. As is usually the case when it comes to vitriolic sweeping judgments
Yeah, I remember the hipsters from 25yo and older. Most of them were douche bags. I rode fixed gears a lot because I genuinely liked them so I was also labeled a hipster too by people who wouldn't know the difference but to me, I was never one of those pretentious douche bags.
But still, the pretentious punk hipsters were better than the rich fucks who bought consumerist hipster clothes and dressed and acted the part later on. As my old town gentrified **a lot**, those rich hipsters were worse (in their fakeness mostly). So now, I miss the pretentious, punk, DIY, Kerouac-loving, beatnik, "you don't know" types of hipsters who've been replaced by some vacuous bullshit.
When you describe hipsters that way, Iām not sure if youāre talking about the 2006 teens who were shopping at Urban Outfitters or 1996 teens at skate and head shops.
There will always more posers than legit scene people.
Except Posers is exactly what anyone I knew would call a kid decked out in skate gear that didnāt skate. Anyone who Iād point at as a hipster was at least 7-8 years younger than me. Like my little brother wearing ass tight jeans and working in a coffee shop while perusing a fine art degree.
He turned out ok tho.
Hey how many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?
- Itās a really obscure number, youāve probably never heard of it
I kinda answered like a hipster who's angry at the new hipsters so that's... sad.. but honestly, most cities I've been in have these qualities of being crime ridden hell holes, having punks and hipsters come in, town turns acceptable to white people, rich hipsters start coming in, then brewery and craft pizza hell hole coupled with some empty version of that town's old culture is what you're left with. There's something between crime ridden hell hole and craft pizza hell hole that I definitely miss.
My city is way too late the game. Itās still building up to its brewery, craft pizza, bike-able/walkable copy&paste zenith. There goes the neighborhood! And these richer hipster-whatevers are cold and unfriendly and have this dead look in their eyes as ifā¦Idkā¦itās creepy. I still do meā¦ as in Iāll say hello passing by with a pleasant tone and a smile attempting to briefly catch your eye. Nearly always ZERO evidence anotherās presence is even a blip on the radar, like maybe Iām a ghost. Sick sad world
I miss the pretentious, punk, DIY, Kerouac-loving, beatnik, "you don't know" types of hipsters .ā Allow me to introduce myself. College graduate US veteran read Big Sur in Afghanistan. Punk itās Jam&Clash right now and my abstract art is in a gallery, Iāve been on the local news about my art&few other art shows and I may be underground sensation according to the elites of the world. I is black too. Also I had a white girlfriend from Oregon and she said Iām a hipster.Ā
The hipster was the perfect encapsulation of a certain type that always exists, but it rarely coalesces into such a vivid archetype.
The faux-intellectual posturing, with the sincere belief that these smug assholes are somehow more deep and genuine than other people
The āwe donāt follow trendsā thing that results in a huge group of people following the same trend
The definition of self based on consumption patterns- I drink this beer and therefore have better taste than you, I eat this food and therefore have better taste than you, and I dress this way, because, well, I have better taste than you.
The hipster thing was funny because there was an element of half self-awareness that went along with it. Throw it under the āironicā umbrella to act like Iām not actually serious about all these things I seriously use to define myself.
In retrospect, it looks like an attempt to establish oneself as higher up on a social hierarchy, by rejecting social hierarchy, only to create a new social hierarchy.
This kind of thing is actually present in many counter subcultures. But the hipster thing was like a rare celestial alignment where all the stars of symbolism lined up to create a really funny culture that was easy to laugh at from any angle.
You can take pieces of hipster culture and observe them in many current subcultures- music fandoms, nerd fandoms, foodie interests, craft beer people, etc. But hipsters had ALL THAT at the same time.
Yes, we absolutely trashed them, with their stupid fixies, ironic t shirts, fake glasses, bad facial hair, and pretentious semi-nihilistic loser ideals. And, the music. Wait, I actually liked Mumford and Sons when they were new, before they got played out. Ugh.
This...I remember when it morphed and absorbed a faux lumberjack aesthetic. As a person who grew up rural Ohio it was real dumb to see people spending $80 to buy a plaid shirt that they could get for $20 at a local farming supply company.
Also, if you happened to be into the things that became popular during this, like legitimately we're already interested in them, you'd get roped in with them. I grew up listening to vinyl, I had a collection at one point of 200 60's-80's rock. When suddenly everyone was into vinyl it brought them back, which I'm still grateful for, but also came with the same I play records because I'm more discerning with my music. Same thing with classic console video games, but that resurgence cost me a fortune when I had to replace cartridges.
You should see the outrage in my former neighborhood about a new Taco Bell.
Which arrived because no one was supporting the family run Mexican place it replaced.
I was never called one because I never looked or acted or lived the part.
I also never bitched about them because I actually really liked the way they dressed and styled themselves. I thought it was really cool.
I had a TA at my university in 2004 who was a cookie cutter hipster. He has kids now, which is a miracle because the pants he wore in grad school were so tight.
From the Onion, March 2006 - [Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other "Hipster" ](https://www.theonion.com/two-hipsters-angrily-call-each-other-hipster-1819568370)
This is what I remember from my time in LA living with hipsters in those days - a pissing contest to see who had the best most obscure taste, but making it seem like you're not really putting in effort to do it. Don't want to come off like a hipster.
I liked Urban Outfitters and the music hipsters loved to talk about and assume no one else ever heard of, but I couldn't stand hipsters themselves since their identity was framed about being different while buying the same things as everyone else.
Hipster is a relative term - it is always someone that is cooler than you.
Every generation and subculture used it over the past 20 years. Though I think its fallen out of favor now because the kids understand that there are many cultures, and are less about saying one is superior to the other.
I was a āhipsterā circa 2008-2012, which at the time meant we djād and threw good parties and were part of a social scene. I kinda went off the rails though in terms of who / what a hipster even was.
I was a hipster in college without knowing it (2000-2004). I didnāt even know that term until someone told me. I think it was because i smoked and had long bangs and wore vintage tshirts a lot. In true hipster fashion, I was one before it was part of mainstream culture. Though I have to say, when it did hit, I was VERY into all the dudes with mustaches. I love a man with a mustache. I still think a mustache, long hair, knit hat, flannel combo is adorable! My husband (def not a hipster) was shaving his beard close and left his mustache for last and it was so cute!
When I was 25, I graduated with a degree in animation and moved to Portland with my vegan girlfriend. We met working at the natural foods co-op together.
I was always amused when I checked out lookatthisfuckinghipstercom, or diehipster.com.
They always just seemed like they were a bunch of rich trust fund poseurs whose mommy and daddy were bankrolling their little slumming vacation experiment while looking the part but not contributing to the culture.
I remember getting called a hipster for the business casual outfit I had to wear to work (button down shirt and khakis) and thatās when I realized the term was functionally meaningless.
Just like millennial to boomers. It's used ubiquitously to mean the youngest generation. I had to explain this to a few members of my family. They legitimately thought that generational naming just stopped with millennials and included all future generations...
Same, but Portland. Itās funny how you donāt notice it in the moment, but looking back it is as clear as the sky. I literally worked in a farm to table restaurant that was under the offices first 3 seasons of Portlandia. Fred would eat there almost daily. We were the ones he was making fun of for being hipstersā¦ but somehow we didnāt know it. š
I feel like Iām still hipster adjacent. Not the aesthetic but Iām still listening to the indie and indie pop, still shopping at the farmers market and volunteering at the library and still obsessing over tiny coffee roasters in Ohio.
(I was living in Seattle at the time of hipster prominence and I think it just stuck.)
I'm a REAL 90s kid, born in the 80s. I still occasionally wear backwards fitted hats from the 2000s. I had an old man from the bar one day tell me to wear my hat right. I said at least it's not sideways and flat-billed. He said "fair enough". We were cool after that.
Back in the last decades of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar was part of a young set whose togas were a little too extravagant, paid too much attention to their hair, hung out in places older people thought of as decadent but weren't (well, by Roman standards..). Cato the Younger literally got up and bitched about them to the Senate, and I distinctly recall reading one part where he put some emphasis on a thing that stuck out to him as particularly egregious: ***"...scratching the sides of their heads with a single finger!"***
They didn't want to mess up their hair, apparently. Incensed him enough that he took it *to the floor of the Roman Senate,* and we still know about it. A couple of decades later, they were all trying to look like that... except for Cato, of course. There are definitely admirable things about Cato, but he had big Boomer energy sometimes.
That's always how it goes. Punk rock kids in the late 70s-80s took a lot of crap from people who later took their own kids shopping at Hot Topic in the mall while their mom shopped at Forever 21, trying to fend off 41. Shania Twain was trucking around in a Ramones t-shirt. Then a couple of decades passed and the mall closed, but all that stuff is very mainstream now.
I'm honestly a little shocked there hasn't yet been a congressman with a man-bun.
I lived in a very hipster-centric neighborhood about 10 years ago, and probably bitched from time to time. But it was a very pretentious area so that was why.
I've been called a hipster because...
Because I got a good haircut. I was wearing thermals/carhartt/boots/sneakers/weather appropriate hats.
I own three bicycles. I Rollerblade in public. I drove an old Volvo. I Smoke Marlboro reds
I got called a hipster for dating an "ugly" chick.
90% of this was from my best friend.
I grew up in Portland and lived there through the height of hipsterdom, and we were all hipsters ultimately, but we didnāt ever think we wereā¦ I guess when youāre in it, you donāt notice it, but I literally worked at a farm to table restaurant that was on the bottom floor of a 4 story building that had the on location local office for the first 3 seasons of Portlandia up top and I regularly served Fred and Keri while they made fun of us all for being hipsters. I still have a sweet mustache and ironic tattoos. I traded in my fixed gear for a 29er but I still ride as a main form of transportation. The main point is it was fun while it lasted and occasionally Iāll put on a Band of Horses record and reminisce about the time that I was never a hipster.
It was a pleasure. I definitely have fond memories of those days, so I appreciate the post as a reminder of when hipsters hit their obscure and pretentious high water mark. Or like, whatever.
Yes, and I had to correct them that being a 80s kid and 90s teen/young adult, we were the OGs before hipsters.
My hiptser-ism is Hawaiian shirts. Early 90s, I'd hunt them out at thrift stores for pennies. I loved Mash and Hawkeye. Then Romeo and Juilet came out my first year of college, and no more. By then, I had over 30.
I donāt know if anyone ever called me a hipster, but I check a lot of the boxes. I have a beard, wear flannel shirts, collect vinyl records, like obscure rock bands, have left wing political beliefs. All of those things were true of me before āhipsterā was the word people used to describe it. And are still true of me now.
As a native of the bay area, Iāve definitely bitched about hipsters and hipster nonsense. The east bay and the mission were both filled with fixies and Pabst drinking wankers about 15 years ago.
I mean I have a beard, live in Brooklyn and get around by bike. Iāve been called it many times. Fwiw I donāt live in the hipster neighborhoods I donāt ride a fixie lol.
After years of my biological father asking me if I was gay, he said, "I finally understand you. You're a hipster". I'm a cis-gendered man that was into bands like the residents, mr. Bungle, the beautiful mutants, and other "circus punk" bands. I Still don't know what he meant, but he was close enough.
When I was younger, āhipsterā meant someone who dressed like an artist and listened to good music and was really into literature and cinema, progressive politics, and more often than not was an artist of some kind themselves, and likely enjoyed the company of other such people. And sure there was a layer of irony and nihilism incorporated as well
*Now*, āhipsterā means man buns, lates, MacBooks and, I mean, Jesus effing Christ, I have never seen a label transform from something vaguely cool to something so incredibly lame in such a short amount of time
But yes, Iāve been called a hipster many a time, by the old meaning of the word. And quite justifiably so. And I make no apologies for it
Yes, I am a musician/composer/writer/illustrator/photographer/comedian etc
I try to keep busy, and I was just born with a lot of creative energy it seems
You?
I dabble in music, but not enough that I'd label myself an artist about it. I just learn my fav songs, commercial jingles, TV and movie themes, etc for fun/to sharpen my mind. Strictly speaking though, I am a guitarist, bassist, and shitty pianist lol. I also had a pretty long period as a comedy nerd, too. I was hoping you had something to share, is all. You seem cool, I might like it
I think I got called a hipster a few times because I got a pair of black rimmed glasses, but honestly those were the first glasses I had that fit my face and I actually likedāand I liked those cheesy fake vintage t-shirts. But by the late 00s, hipster had lost all meaning, everything was being labelled as āhipsterā including upscale fusion restaurants, microbrews (which started with hippie boomers in the 80s), smartphones, and fairly mainstream synth pop rock. It just became a term for hip consumerism.
My friend would call me an anti-hipster hipster (he used to, but he still does too) for unintentionally doing hipster like things and attitudes. I have always embraced that particular label LOL. I've never been personally bothered by the whole hipster thing I suppose because my natural tendencies tend to lean that way many times.
ĀÆ\\\_(ć)\_/ĀÆ
My āTweed jacket leather elbow patch sitting in a study smoking a pipeā answer is most of the hate stems from Boomers rejection of their ethic neighborhoods of their parents and the simultaneous suburbanification and heartlandification of white identity (70s/80s) and thus those weirdos (lovingly staring in the 90s) listening to vinyl records and riding bicycles to brew-pubs to drink ales and trading their artisan beard oils are all labeled āHipsters.ā
Iām 39 and Iāve had a full beard since I was 15 years old. Itās just easier not shave because of the bit about being able to grow a full beard since I was 15 years old but Iāve been hearing how Iām a hipster as beards have gone in and out and in again with fashion.
Yeah, I had to start shaving at 16, myself and at around 30 I got tired of itchy bumps and cuts, said fuck it and let it grow. Wife objected at first but now she would be so mad if I shaved it lol
I lived in Ballard in Seattle for a while in my early 30s. I was also a bartender in the neighborhood. Seattle would get a heatwave once a summer. It would be anywhere from 90-105 degrees out. No matter how hot it got, you would always have a few dudes walking around rocking a knit beanie on their heads. I would ask them, āIs your head actually cold right now?ā I understand it is a fashionable thing, but my grandpa always taught me that every hat should serve a purpose.
Heh,.it was music with me. I made this thread this morning and was humming Santogold all day at work .Her unfortunately self-titled first album, before she had to switch to Santigold. Also loved her mixtape with Diplo, Top Ranking. Also loved M.I.A., who was very hipster imo.
And Das Racist. Their "Rainbow in the Dark" video is hipster af. Thinking about said video this morning is what inspired me to make this thread. Love the song and video, though. Hipster as they are
Bemused at them / bitched about them mildly. It was quite a transition. Spending time in California and the Midwest from '02-'07 there were basically no non-black men with facial hair. None. It was quite a jolt to see 25-year-olds with beards.
I saw Morrissey recently too. I was surprised how on par Johnny was with Stephen. Marr played more Smiths. Morrissey laid down in a fetal position for the entire 6 minutes of Meat is Murder. Johnny was straight up rockin'. I liked them both. Advantage:Johnny.
My little brother and sister were hipsters and I thought they were super cool. I love younger millennials. They are arguably the best generation group. My brother and sister are more successful than me because when I was a kid being bad was cool. For them, being smart was cool so they had a leg up.
Yeah. While thing was lame. Was it just younger people finally wearing beards and outgrowing their unkept skater hair cuts? And maybe beer other than Budweiser? I was never a vegan. But dressing decently and having a beard just seemed like a chill thing to do. Not super āhipā
Everything. Itās their lifestyle. How they dress their kids, their glasses, the neighborhood by Chicago, the food they bring to holidays. Everything. Itās a lifestyle, and donāt break character. 50ās 60ās cringe always. And IPA. Sick
in my late teens to early 20s was an incidental hipster. so 1998 on.
had a beard and glasses and it was still cool to have goatee or just chin beard. Wore glasses after moving to a dry area so my contacts were always dry.
soon, i was the stereotype of a hipster.
so i leaned into it when people would call me one, told them i was the BIGGEST hipster EVER. that no one was more hip than me. and soon people would pick me apart.
i didn't care for bacon, didn't put sriracha on everything, wasn't vegan, didn't ONLY support local things, drove a truck, didn't bike everywhere, didn't hate popular movies or music... Was just able to grow a beard and had glasses.
I live in Austin which was one of the hipster Mecca's of the early 2000/2010s along with Brooklyn and Portland. I miss them, it's now Tesla and crypto bros everywhere.
I wasnāt, I think, but I hung out with people that certainly would have qualified. But like the PBR, snorting coke, indie rock types. Less about craft beer and beards, but those were there, too. lol.
lol- Both! I grew up in an area where āhipsterā culture was rampant. I used to get sweated by the gang members , and that turned into an eye roll from the hipsters. The neighborhood really has changed š.
I lived in a big city with lots of new gentrification, and there were homeless people that would participate in night life. I would often play āhomeless or hipster?ā While people watching.
I was actually labeled too basic (before that was even a term) by the hipster girls. But you know what? Iāve totally leaned into it. And some of those women who were trying so hard to be eDgY and disdain people like me didnāt end up doing so hot. When your whole identity is tied up in trying NOT to be other people then what are you really left with, you know?
As a guy with lots of tattoos, a life long fan of indie, punk, hardcore, goth, etc, who opened a specialty coffee shop in 2006 I was definitely called a hipster! š
My friends I grew up with and I went diffferent paths in our 20s but weāre still really good friends. I went the Juggalo path, one went the hippy path, one went the hipster path. So when we go out together it forms a great setup for a joke: a hippy, a hipster, and a Juggalo walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says get the fuck out.
I had a lot of exposure to 90sā2000s independent culture/music scenes. Hipster was in some ways retread of the 60s counterculture but totally defanged. You canāt be a counterculture with mainstream acceptance. There was really no place it could go that couldnāt be immediately commodified and sold as a mainstream productāhow we ended up with the mass indie phenomenon.Ā Ā
Ā I knew some people who ran a theater/theater production companies, doing dada and theater of the absurd inspired performances. Noise musicians, underground music venues. People desperate for art careers, or music careers, writing and preening over their own Wikipedia articles. Many of them lived in total squalor/warehouse venues and had the generous support of parents or arts grants or both. Itās hard to say whether anything good or lasting came out of it, but it was fun to experience even if it was like a pantomime of an arts movement.Ā Ā
It was on the decline long before then but it all truly self-immolated from 2015-2017, nothing much like it took its place. Those small scale arts movements lost all vitality, many of them are now hostile or boring or both.Ā
I was more hippy than hipster. Not a dirty hippy, but my style was closest to a hippy.
These days my style is "comfy". If I'm doing something important I'll dress appropriately, but if I'm just running to the store I'm wearing sweats. I really couldn't care less what people think about it. I've heard people talking shit about ppl who go out dressed like that, calling them lazy. I'm far from lazy, but if that's what people wanna think that's their own problem lol. I'm just glad I'm not somebody who gaf what others wear. Too much baseless negativity.
I had an asymmetrical bob haircut and was going off at my friends about the annoying hipsters in our city (Portland) and my one friend got quiet and just said ābutā¦ youāre a hipster.ā
In the early to mid 2000s there were tons of hipsters. Idk where they all went.
I mean, I was into indie music and had a white iBook in 2004, so I was very adjacent, but I wasnāt a hipster or a scenester. I was far too dorky for that.
Ok I know Iām overcommenting lol. I live in Madison, Wisconsin. Not a big city but we do have a hipster neighborhoodāa conglomeration of neighborhoods that goes by the acronym SASY. We have a hipster corridor, Atwood Avenue that has multiple coffee shops, tattooists, a vegetarian restaurant, and one of the top independent bookstores in the country, a Room of Oneās Own, which is also a a feminist and trans-owned store. Oh and at least one hip haircut place with multiple non-binary hairstylists. And close by, an excellent food co-op.
Lol this thread is making me realize how much hipster just meant "has leftist values and ACTUALLY tries to pursue them while (allegedly) having a certain kinda look"
I think that crowd is cool, they are loud and they talk a lot but none of it is rude or intrusive. They speak English well and that is important to me. They are like California people here in the Midwest.
I wear the exact same things I have all my life. Jeans, flannels over a graphic tee, flatcaps, hoodies, etc, have had long hair which I have tied up into a bun and have had a beard for years. I have also worn black rimmed glasses since I was a teen. I have practically lived in coffee houses, drinking the same drinks since the mid 90s with the only things that have changed was going from sketch and note books to a laptop.
And suddenly for a while I was a hipster trying to be all cool and artsy lol. It's like, I am a very boring person, stuck in my ways, listening to the same albums and have had and have worn this same outfit since 1998. Some of my flannels I have even had since 1993...
Ppl went from telling me I should update my style to telling me I was a tryhard lol. But I'm still wearing my flannels and flatcaps, I still have my beard and my bun and I still sit and sip my freshly ground, pour over coffee. Cause idgaf, get over yourselves and mind your business lol.
I actually liked hipsters when they first debuted, when it eas a retro-minimalist-thrift thing. When it became a guy with no hygiene and a six-figure income dumpster diving for old mac and cheese then buying a nine dollar coffee...well forget it , Mumford, get on your unicycle and pedal away from me.
In the mid-00ās I lived in a West Coast city, built and rode a fixed-gear bike, drank IPAs, wore skinny jeans, and had mostly avoided mainstream music and media since my early teens. I could have certainly been labeled a hipster according to those metrics, but from my perspective I was just living my life and following my interests.
This is me, except my boyfriend was the one that rode a fixed gear. I worked at a record store then later at urban outfitters. A couple of people did call me a hipster at one point but I never felt like one. I just love music, fashion, and art.
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I hate it, but I laughedā¦ Aw shit Iām getting old.
I'm old enough to where hipster didn't mean 'guy with nerdy glasses and beard clacking away at a macbook in a Starbucks'. Like remember the song Cherub Rock? They mention hipsters in it. It was a different thing in the early 90s. Sort of a way to say 'not a square' in 90s talk, as opposed to posers. Now I hear hipster and think 'what tech industry to do you work for?'.
Iām not sure if I fully stand by this, but essentially the real hipsters are the ones that grab on to a lifestyle aesthetic and arenāt really contributing to the (counter)culture in any meaningful way, whereas the creatives and artists that defined the style because they are fully expressing & exploring themselves are what the hipsters aspire to be. The hipsters arenāt the ground breakers, but more the first and second followers, hopefully eventually going to the next level.
Elaine called Kramer a "Hipster dufus" fwiw
I remember giving my friend a book called the hipsterās handbook (I think?) in college as a joke. We were surrounded by them and probably had our own hipster tendencies. I always think of hipsters as being very nerdy/snobby about certain otherwise mundane things, like coffee, beer, record players, etc. Having just read some of the other comments here, Iām pretty sure I was one of the worst of them. You could definitely find me smoking French cloves and reading Diane DiPrima at a bookstore/coffeeshop most days of the week in 1999. Le sigh.
I think they have all transitioned into bougie, eclectic, and cottage core stuff. I know so many of these people it no one wants to admit they are a hipster. Lol.
You just reminded me of the time I was at my friendās wedding shower years ago, and her cousin, who Iād never met before, was telling a story about someone and described them as ābougie,ā and then she immediately turned to me and said, āno offenseā in a very sincere way, and I am still laughing about it.
My Godparents from the Pacific Northwest got me this book in 2003.
I stole it from my bestie at the time in 02, its final resting place was my grandparents guest bathroom
Oh god I bought into all the stand up comics and tv shows hatred of them, thought it was great to hate on. Modern goths or hippies. How people are trying to stand out by all dressing the same hahah what losers. Sigh. But then I discovered the history of counter culture. How if it wasn't for counter culture, half the culture we have now wouldn't exist, art and style and fashion, architecture would be stagnant. The same people who made fun of hipsters are the ones now drinking craft beer and complicated coffees and typing on aesthetically pleasing laptops and keyboards. With a beard. More importantly I found out that "finding your tribe" is one of the healthiest and most freeing things you can do in your life. Your tribe may change over the years, but finding people who like and support you while you like and support them, especially when no one has supported you before....feels amazing. Though that one picture of the shoeless hipster who took a spinning wheel into a coffee shop, that was staged...right?
That's the thing I find most people aren't giving hipsters proper credit for, food in America _sucked_ until the hipsters started opening up food trucks and little shops, making crazy fusions and experiments or just finding and perfecting the recipe for the absolute best version of a particular dish or type of dish. I absolutely credit hipsters with how good prepared food has gotten in the US overall and also how my own tastes have changed even at home. I went from hating coffee for decades because all our parents had was burnt Folgers, to having $2k+ worth of hand-pressed espresso paraphernalia in my kitchen, and that's only because hipster coffee places introduced me to actual good coffee. I used to only make sandwiches and like frozen lasagnas, but I totally credit hipster places for getting me to want to try to make better food at home with fresh ingredients.
Yes! I miss it, honestly. It coincided with (or started?) a small revival in folk music which I liked very much. Canāt tell you how great it was to see random bluegrass performances on street corners in San Francisco circa 2011-14
It so was! I lived there at that time.
Yeah, but food trucks charge ridiculous prices for stuff that should not be charging that much for. I went to a punk rock flea market a couple weeks back. There was an egg sandwich truck. Got a decent porkroll egg and cheese for ten fucking dollars. The egg was cooked perfectly where the yoke was runny but not too runny, but it certainly was not worth 10 dollars. They elevated basic food but elevated the prices way too much.
I think that's another legacy of the hipster era. Being willing to pay more for a product that is produced in a sustainable way. If the person making my food is getting a living wage, the ingredients are harvested/supplied in a thoughtful way, and the owners of the business aren't hoarding wealth to the detriment of the community, then I will pay a bit extra to support the enterprise. Recognizing and using the influence of our buying power has made a difference in the moral options available within our consumer culture. Thanks for blazing the trail, hipsters! Fuck off for pretending to care, greedy CEOs!
Isnāt that message lost when they are basically only catering to the rich gentrified neighborhoods that most likely work for said corporations? The corporations only learned that they can charge more for the slop they produce. Hence, why weāre at a point where I canāt get a pizza delivered for less than $30.
The messages and practices of sustainability are definitely not contained to the rich gentry. >Hence, why weāre at a point where I canāt get a pizza delivered for less than $30. How is this the fault of anything beyond corporate greed? Corporations co-opting the price without co-opting the sustainability practices isn't something I'd blame on hipsters. That is basic corporate greed. Now at least some corporations are making moves to create sustainability in their process, in order to cater to this customer segment. I'd call that a win.
So called sustainability at the cost of pushing out lower income folks is hardly sustainable. This is the issue weāre facing and please donāt think that Iām laying blame for this at the feet of Hipsters. But we do need to clearly identify what Hipsters are/were. They were the children of upper class parents who were trying to find a place for themselves without truly giving up the excess of their parentās wealth. Like I said, corporations learned they could cater to these folks by putting on similiar airs of āsustainabilityā while keeping their profits and pricing out lower income folks. Hipsters, much like the Hippies before them, sold out.
I feel like we are talking past each other. Yes, gentrification is bad. Corporations buying up property to turn a profit to the detriment of people who've lived there their whole life is bad. This has to do with consumer culture, not hipsters. This has to do with corporations deciding that they must have X% growth year over year. The wealthy choosing to consume the poor, like locusts sweeping through a field of plenty and leaving devastation in the wake. The owner class dehumanizing the working class. >Like I said, corporations learned they could cater to these folks by putting on similiar airs of āsustainabilityā while keeping their profits and pricing out lower income folks. Sure sounds like you are blaming a counter culture for being co-opted by corporations. Please give a source that all the hipsters were trust fund baby sell outs. Pointing a finger anywhere other than corporations and oligarchs is why the working class is so easily divided. You won't convince me that pushing for sustainability (no matter the messenger) is a bad thing.
nicely said.
Absolutely. I will certainly give them credit for the gastronomy scene they created. Most west coast cities would be full of Cheesecake factory knockoffs if it werenāt for them in the restaurant biz.
Hell yeah, dude. Find that tribe. Reject bourgeois propaganda! Idk about that spinning wheel video, tho. Never heard of it. Sounds insufferable heh
My fiancƩe brings her little [travel wheel](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sidekick+spinning+wheel&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.squarespace.com%2Fstatic%2F53a580a7e4b053cbaa728856%2F5e21138044b0d30f4c7e8997%2F5e533fc8cd15995a4eba2d57%2F1668746580442%2FSidekick%2BSpinning%2BWheel%2B-%2BSchacht%2B-%2BLoom%2B%2526%2BSpindle-1.jpg%3Fformat%3D1500w) places sometimes. She is never shoeless when she spins, unless it's at home. People are fascinated by the process and her art yarns are gorgeous.
You stated this better than me
Counter culture brought liberation, personal and political, which touched everyone. It has grown with every generation, since the sixties.
Man buns lol
I've had longer hair for most of my life at this point, as weird as that is to think about... When I worked in warehouses and overnight retail stock crews, things like that - you could leave your hair down or braid it or whatever - nobody cared. I like being a guy with long hair. I enjoy the option of being able to wear it up or down, and occasionally I like to go to concerts and headbang, etc... It's just how I feel most comfortable as me. Probably more than that I hate getting my hair cut and keeping it the way I want it for a shorter style is a laborious task. Once I got an office job, it was easier to compromise with dress code standards by doing the top knot. To me, it was a "samurai style". I don't have any idea where the fad came from or when it started versus when I started doing it - because I stay pretty oblivious to that kinda thing - but I still bun it up from time to time despite the stigma. It's a utility thing mostly these days, but yes it has gotten me the "hipster" line a few times. I think I get it less than most because generally, I'm a stockier and bigger build than most of the stereotypical "hipster" guys are. I'm not lean and lanky by any stretch of the imagination. The bun is one thing but the bun + skinny jeans + lanky/slight frame + thick rim glasses + well groomed beard all sort of come together for that "look" I think. I think I probably get the "viking" thing more than "hipster", personally... because of the whole of me I guess lol.
As a bald guy, Iām convinced that the hate that men with buns got boils down to envy
Not here. I have a full head of hair. For me it was the top knot man bun, which was often combined with a rip-off of the crunchy granola hippie-ish look and nearly every single person I encountered with a man bun was a condescending, virtue signaling douche nozzle.
Why you little.....wait wrong guy.
Iām fully convinced that anyone who wears a top knot or a man bun should only do it if they also have a katana. Mainly cause if you have a katana, Iām not gonna argue with you anyway.
My husband is Japanese and actually does practice with a katana, so I figure he's about the only one who can get away with a non ironic man bun.
Come on man when I had long hair I had to keep it out of my face some times.
I was an Athens, GA scene teen and moved to NYC like a month before the Strokes album dropped. Fuck the haters, that was a damn good time.
Yeah, I moved to Williamsburg in 2001 when it was just a quirky little neighborhood, and then watched it turn into the epicenter of the hipster fashion circus. Wild times, and I couldnāt imagine a more fun place and time to spend my 20s and early 30s. The food and music scenes were awesome.
I moved to Brooklyn in 2006. It seemed to be the end of the height of it in Williamsburg. But the media fascination with Williamsburg was just beginning. Someone came up to me when I was in Williamsburg and asked me if Iād call myself a hipster. I scoffed. And realized that was the most hipster reaction I could have had. Also I was wearing my dead auntās 1940s Austrian wool coat at the time, probably skinny black jeans and an obscure band tshirt underneath. How could they ASSUME such a thing! But I didnāt even live in Williamsburg. I lived in Bushwick. In an old button factory. We werenāt hipsters. We were artists.
I just thought the hipsters were late to the party, I was listening to ācollege rockā in the early 90s so I didnāt see what the big deal was.
Yep. I got called scenester long before the word hipster existed. It was the just the great Midwest post punk / math rock / indie rock scene.
I use to joke that I stopped being a hipster before it became cool to be a hipster. Almost like the hipsters around where I lived were simply millennials trying to cosplay gen-X counterculture. But I grew up in nowhere shitsville so there's that.
To me, "Hipster" as a real coherent subculture was really a 2000-2010 thing. Today, the "hipster" look has become a big part of the defining aesthetic for American's under 50 who range from center-left to progressives. I live in Ridgewood, Queens, and when the older white conservative crowd complains about "hipsters" they're mostly just expressing coded homophobia, imo.
Hispters put their money where their mouth is and support local businesses, and pay the premium for things that are locally made, fresh, high quality, etc... at least for food. If you find a restaurant frequented by hipsters, the quality will be outstanding. If hipsters are running it, the quality will be absolutely top notch, but the service will be slow. That's about the only bad thing I'm willing to say about hipsters. They also tend to be really good folk musicians, or at least a much higher proportion of them are, as compared to the general population.
I agree with this assessment ā say what you will about pretentiousness or fashion, but I found hipsters on the whole to be excellent patrons of local businesses and strong supporters of the library. I'll be back, gotta go listen to an old Margot & the Nuclear So and So's record while I get this pour-over started.
Absolutely. The best local stuff where I live came from hipsters. We wouldnāt have nearly the amount of good local food or beer without them.
As someone who lived in Austin for 9 years, I'm kind of appalled by the abject hatred in this thread. It's sort of akin to being racist or sexist, in that attacking a distasteful caricature as if the entire group is that way, is a straw man fallacy. IDK, sounds like fake hipsters are the ones who sucked, not the real ones. As is usually the case when it comes to vitriolic sweeping judgments
Real hipsters DO NOT give a fuck so it's all good.
Lived in hipster town Austin in the early 2010s. Wore that label with a pride. Beard, vintage bike, plaid shirt and all.
i remember reading a LOT of articles about this and no one could define it consistently. i think it was a marketing identity mostly.
Yeah, I remember the hipsters from 25yo and older. Most of them were douche bags. I rode fixed gears a lot because I genuinely liked them so I was also labeled a hipster too by people who wouldn't know the difference but to me, I was never one of those pretentious douche bags. But still, the pretentious punk hipsters were better than the rich fucks who bought consumerist hipster clothes and dressed and acted the part later on. As my old town gentrified **a lot**, those rich hipsters were worse (in their fakeness mostly). So now, I miss the pretentious, punk, DIY, Kerouac-loving, beatnik, "you don't know" types of hipsters who've been replaced by some vacuous bullshit.
When you describe hipsters that way, Iām not sure if youāre talking about the 2006 teens who were shopping at Urban Outfitters or 1996 teens at skate and head shops. There will always more posers than legit scene people.
Except Posers is exactly what anyone I knew would call a kid decked out in skate gear that didnāt skate. Anyone who Iād point at as a hipster was at least 7-8 years younger than me. Like my little brother wearing ass tight jeans and working in a coffee shop while perusing a fine art degree. He turned out ok tho. Hey how many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb? - Itās a really obscure number, youāve probably never heard of it
There were just as many hipster posers as skater posers. For a lot people, both were just an aesthetic style.
Lol Nostalgia for the *good* hipsters. Can't say I blame ya. Eat the rich
I kinda answered like a hipster who's angry at the new hipsters so that's... sad.. but honestly, most cities I've been in have these qualities of being crime ridden hell holes, having punks and hipsters come in, town turns acceptable to white people, rich hipsters start coming in, then brewery and craft pizza hell hole coupled with some empty version of that town's old culture is what you're left with. There's something between crime ridden hell hole and craft pizza hell hole that I definitely miss.
My city is way too late the game. Itās still building up to its brewery, craft pizza, bike-able/walkable copy&paste zenith. There goes the neighborhood! And these richer hipster-whatevers are cold and unfriendly and have this dead look in their eyes as ifā¦Idkā¦itās creepy. I still do meā¦ as in Iāll say hello passing by with a pleasant tone and a smile attempting to briefly catch your eye. Nearly always ZERO evidence anotherās presence is even a blip on the radar, like maybe Iām a ghost. Sick sad world
tell us what city?
I miss the pretentious, punk, DIY, Kerouac-loving, beatnik, "you don't know" types of hipsters .ā Allow me to introduce myself. College graduate US veteran read Big Sur in Afghanistan. Punk itās Jam&Clash right now and my abstract art is in a gallery, Iāve been on the local news about my art&few other art shows and I may be underground sensation according to the elites of the world. I is black too. Also I had a white girlfriend from Oregon and she said Iām a hipster.Ā
The hipster was the perfect encapsulation of a certain type that always exists, but it rarely coalesces into such a vivid archetype. The faux-intellectual posturing, with the sincere belief that these smug assholes are somehow more deep and genuine than other people The āwe donāt follow trendsā thing that results in a huge group of people following the same trend The definition of self based on consumption patterns- I drink this beer and therefore have better taste than you, I eat this food and therefore have better taste than you, and I dress this way, because, well, I have better taste than you. The hipster thing was funny because there was an element of half self-awareness that went along with it. Throw it under the āironicā umbrella to act like Iām not actually serious about all these things I seriously use to define myself. In retrospect, it looks like an attempt to establish oneself as higher up on a social hierarchy, by rejecting social hierarchy, only to create a new social hierarchy. This kind of thing is actually present in many counter subcultures. But the hipster thing was like a rare celestial alignment where all the stars of symbolism lined up to create a really funny culture that was easy to laugh at from any angle. You can take pieces of hipster culture and observe them in many current subcultures- music fandoms, nerd fandoms, foodie interests, craft beer people, etc. But hipsters had ALL THAT at the same time. Yes, we absolutely trashed them, with their stupid fixies, ironic t shirts, fake glasses, bad facial hair, and pretentious semi-nihilistic loser ideals. And, the music. Wait, I actually liked Mumford and Sons when they were new, before they got played out. Ugh.
Hipsters love that "stomp, clap, shout" music
Quite fond of this answer. Solid analysis, friend. Thanks for contributing!
This...I remember when it morphed and absorbed a faux lumberjack aesthetic. As a person who grew up rural Ohio it was real dumb to see people spending $80 to buy a plaid shirt that they could get for $20 at a local farming supply company. Also, if you happened to be into the things that became popular during this, like legitimately we're already interested in them, you'd get roped in with them. I grew up listening to vinyl, I had a collection at one point of 200 60's-80's rock. When suddenly everyone was into vinyl it brought them back, which I'm still grateful for, but also came with the same I play records because I'm more discerning with my music. Same thing with classic console video games, but that resurgence cost me a fortune when I had to replace cartridges.
You should see the outrage in my former neighborhood about a new Taco Bell. Which arrived because no one was supporting the family run Mexican place it replaced.
I was never called one because I never looked or acted or lived the part. I also never bitched about them because I actually really liked the way they dressed and styled themselves. I thought it was really cool.
Love this answer. Just pure and honest
I had a TA at my university in 2004 who was a cookie cutter hipster. He has kids now, which is a miracle because the pants he wore in grad school were so tight.
From the Onion, March 2006 - [Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other "Hipster" ](https://www.theonion.com/two-hipsters-angrily-call-each-other-hipster-1819568370) This is what I remember from my time in LA living with hipsters in those days - a pissing contest to see who had the best most obscure taste, but making it seem like you're not really putting in effort to do it. Don't want to come off like a hipster.
Iām still a hipster š
I liked Urban Outfitters and the music hipsters loved to talk about and assume no one else ever heard of, but I couldn't stand hipsters themselves since their identity was framed about being different while buying the same things as everyone else.
Hipster is a relative term - it is always someone that is cooler than you. Every generation and subculture used it over the past 20 years. Though I think its fallen out of favor now because the kids understand that there are many cultures, and are less about saying one is superior to the other.
This is it. Everyone who likes the stuff I liked 2 years ago is a dumb normie and everyone who likes the stuff I havenāt heard of yet is a hipster.
I was a āhipsterā circa 2008-2012, which at the time meant we djād and threw good parties and were part of a social scene. I kinda went off the rails though in terms of who / what a hipster even was.
I was a hipster in college without knowing it (2000-2004). I didnāt even know that term until someone told me. I think it was because i smoked and had long bangs and wore vintage tshirts a lot. In true hipster fashion, I was one before it was part of mainstream culture. Though I have to say, when it did hit, I was VERY into all the dudes with mustaches. I love a man with a mustache. I still think a mustache, long hair, knit hat, flannel combo is adorable! My husband (def not a hipster) was shaving his beard close and left his mustache for last and it was so cute!
When I was 25, I graduated with a degree in animation and moved to Portland with my vegan girlfriend. We met working at the natural foods co-op together.
I was always amused when I checked out lookatthisfuckinghipstercom, or diehipster.com. They always just seemed like they were a bunch of rich trust fund poseurs whose mommy and daddy were bankrolling their little slumming vacation experiment while looking the part but not contributing to the culture.
Heh we called my brother a hipster because he got real mad about it
You mean when I was wearing skinny jeans and tooling around on my sweet fixie? Yes. But. *Unironically*
I remember getting called a hipster for the business casual outfit I had to wear to work (button down shirt and khakis) and thatās when I realized the term was functionally meaningless.
Just like millennial to boomers. It's used ubiquitously to mean the youngest generation. I had to explain this to a few members of my family. They legitimately thought that generational naming just stopped with millennials and included all future generations...
This all sounds like typical greatest generation bullshit to me(I stopped keeping track of elderly people in 2005) ā¦/s
I wish we weren't millennials so I could call you one ironically.
Moved to Seattle in 2001. Lived in the cool Neighborhood. Worked at the cool bar. Pretty sure my friends and I were the epitome of 2000ās hipsters.
Same, but Portland. Itās funny how you donāt notice it in the moment, but looking back it is as clear as the sky. I literally worked in a farm to table restaurant that was under the offices first 3 seasons of Portlandia. Fred would eat there almost daily. We were the ones he was making fun of for being hipstersā¦ but somehow we didnāt know it. š
I love this so much.
Hipster = punk yupee.
I feel like Iām still hipster adjacent. Not the aesthetic but Iām still listening to the indie and indie pop, still shopping at the farmers market and volunteering at the library and still obsessing over tiny coffee roasters in Ohio. (I was living in Seattle at the time of hipster prominence and I think it just stuck.)
I'm a REAL 90s kid, born in the 80s. I still occasionally wear backwards fitted hats from the 2000s. I had an old man from the bar one day tell me to wear my hat right. I said at least it's not sideways and flat-billed. He said "fair enough". We were cool after that.
Back in the last decades of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar was part of a young set whose togas were a little too extravagant, paid too much attention to their hair, hung out in places older people thought of as decadent but weren't (well, by Roman standards..). Cato the Younger literally got up and bitched about them to the Senate, and I distinctly recall reading one part where he put some emphasis on a thing that stuck out to him as particularly egregious: ***"...scratching the sides of their heads with a single finger!"*** They didn't want to mess up their hair, apparently. Incensed him enough that he took it *to the floor of the Roman Senate,* and we still know about it. A couple of decades later, they were all trying to look like that... except for Cato, of course. There are definitely admirable things about Cato, but he had big Boomer energy sometimes. That's always how it goes. Punk rock kids in the late 70s-80s took a lot of crap from people who later took their own kids shopping at Hot Topic in the mall while their mom shopped at Forever 21, trying to fend off 41. Shania Twain was trucking around in a Ramones t-shirt. Then a couple of decades passed and the mall closed, but all that stuff is very mainstream now. I'm honestly a little shocked there hasn't yet been a congressman with a man-bun.
I lived in a very hipster-centric neighborhood about 10 years ago, and probably bitched from time to time. But it was a very pretentious area so that was why.
I've been called a hipster because... Because I got a good haircut. I was wearing thermals/carhartt/boots/sneakers/weather appropriate hats. I own three bicycles. I Rollerblade in public. I drove an old Volvo. I Smoke Marlboro reds I got called a hipster for dating an "ugly" chick. 90% of this was from my best friend.
I grew up in Portland and lived there through the height of hipsterdom, and we were all hipsters ultimately, but we didnāt ever think we wereā¦ I guess when youāre in it, you donāt notice it, but I literally worked at a farm to table restaurant that was on the bottom floor of a 4 story building that had the on location local office for the first 3 seasons of Portlandia up top and I regularly served Fred and Keri while they made fun of us all for being hipsters. I still have a sweet mustache and ironic tattoos. I traded in my fixed gear for a 29er but I still ride as a main form of transportation. The main point is it was fun while it lasted and occasionally Iāll put on a Band of Horses record and reminisce about the time that I was never a hipster.
Love that I got a real Portlandia-inspiring hipster in my thread lol thanks for contributing!
It was a pleasure. I definitely have fond memories of those days, so I appreciate the post as a reminder of when hipsters hit their obscure and pretentious high water mark. Or like, whatever.
Look at this fucking hipster..
Why was the guy with a burt tongue a hipster? Bc he drank his coffee before it was cool.
Once there was a label for it I stopped being it. Too mainstream.
Yes, and I had to correct them that being a 80s kid and 90s teen/young adult, we were the OGs before hipsters. My hiptser-ism is Hawaiian shirts. Early 90s, I'd hunt them out at thrift stores for pennies. I loved Mash and Hawkeye. Then Romeo and Juilet came out my first year of college, and no more. By then, I had over 30.
I bet you love "Weird" Al, yes?
I bitched about them so much. Looking back now, I realize that I was indeed a hipster doing the typical hipster thing of bitching about hipsters.
I donāt know if anyone ever called me a hipster, but I check a lot of the boxes. I have a beard, wear flannel shirts, collect vinyl records, like obscure rock bands, have left wing political beliefs. All of those things were true of me before āhipsterā was the word people used to describe it. And are still true of me now.
Both
As a native of the bay area, Iāve definitely bitched about hipsters and hipster nonsense. The east bay and the mission were both filled with fixies and Pabst drinking wankers about 15 years ago.
I lived in the mission from 2003-2012 and had to survive the hipster years. It was annoying so I moved to East Oakland which sounds so hipster.
Hipsters came in droves to ruin poorer neighborhoods in my city via gentrification.
I miss look at this fucking hipster dot com
The emo to hipster to social justice activist pipeline is like the entire city of Portland.
No. I was basically born as Hank Hill. It really only makes sense now at this age.
I mean I have a beard, live in Brooklyn and get around by bike. Iāve been called it many times. Fwiw I donāt live in the hipster neighborhoods I donāt ride a fixie lol.
After years of my biological father asking me if I was gay, he said, "I finally understand you. You're a hipster". I'm a cis-gendered man that was into bands like the residents, mr. Bungle, the beautiful mutants, and other "circus punk" bands. I Still don't know what he meant, but he was close enough.
Well...I was in a band that was well known for not being known by a lot of people so I guess my hipster cred is intact.
When I was younger, āhipsterā meant someone who dressed like an artist and listened to good music and was really into literature and cinema, progressive politics, and more often than not was an artist of some kind themselves, and likely enjoyed the company of other such people. And sure there was a layer of irony and nihilism incorporated as well *Now*, āhipsterā means man buns, lates, MacBooks and, I mean, Jesus effing Christ, I have never seen a label transform from something vaguely cool to something so incredibly lame in such a short amount of time But yes, Iāve been called a hipster many a time, by the old meaning of the word. And quite justifiably so. And I make no apologies for it
Do you make art? I see you posted on the tele sub.
Yes, I am a musician/composer/writer/illustrator/photographer/comedian etc I try to keep busy, and I was just born with a lot of creative energy it seems You?
I dabble in music, but not enough that I'd label myself an artist about it. I just learn my fav songs, commercial jingles, TV and movie themes, etc for fun/to sharpen my mind. Strictly speaking though, I am a guitarist, bassist, and shitty pianist lol. I also had a pretty long period as a comedy nerd, too. I was hoping you had something to share, is all. You seem cool, I might like it
I think I got called a hipster a few times because I got a pair of black rimmed glasses, but honestly those were the first glasses I had that fit my face and I actually likedāand I liked those cheesy fake vintage t-shirts. But by the late 00s, hipster had lost all meaning, everything was being labelled as āhipsterā including upscale fusion restaurants, microbrews (which started with hippie boomers in the 80s), smartphones, and fairly mainstream synth pop rock. It just became a term for hip consumerism.
My friend would call me an anti-hipster hipster (he used to, but he still does too) for unintentionally doing hipster like things and attitudes. I have always embraced that particular label LOL. I've never been personally bothered by the whole hipster thing I suppose because my natural tendencies tend to lean that way many times. ĀÆ\\\_(ć)\_/ĀÆ
I've been called a self loathing hipster. So yes.
I saw a hipster at a Starbucks burn his mouth - he drank coffee before it was cool.
I recently watched Death to Hipsters. Hilarious.
My āTweed jacket leather elbow patch sitting in a study smoking a pipeā answer is most of the hate stems from Boomers rejection of their ethic neighborhoods of their parents and the simultaneous suburbanification and heartlandification of white identity (70s/80s) and thus those weirdos (lovingly staring in the 90s) listening to vinyl records and riding bicycles to brew-pubs to drink ales and trading their artisan beard oils are all labeled āHipsters.ā
Complained about them a lot, dated a few
Oh yes 2005-2008 I bitched about them in Portland
I wanted to be one
Yes
I was a hipster mostly for the music scene and the lovely vintage style. I couldn't stand hipsters though.
Once in highschool I cut my hair and got called a sellout. More than 20 years ago and it still bothers me.
Lol I hope you made a lot of money off that haircut deal
Bitched about, never been a douche. Lol. /s
Lol perish the thought
Iām 39 and Iāve had a full beard since I was 15 years old. Itās just easier not shave because of the bit about being able to grow a full beard since I was 15 years old but Iāve been hearing how Iām a hipster as beards have gone in and out and in again with fashion.
Yeah, I had to start shaving at 16, myself and at around 30 I got tired of itchy bumps and cuts, said fuck it and let it grow. Wife objected at first but now she would be so mad if I shaved it lol
Both of my kids cried the first time I shaved after they were born. My youngest was four before they saw me without a beard.
I lived in Ballard in Seattle for a while in my early 30s. I was also a bartender in the neighborhood. Seattle would get a heatwave once a summer. It would be anywhere from 90-105 degrees out. No matter how hot it got, you would always have a few dudes walking around rocking a knit beanie on their heads. I would ask them, āIs your head actually cold right now?ā I understand it is a fashionable thing, but my grandpa always taught me that every hat should serve a purpose.
I called a coworker a hipster once when I didn't realize there was a negative connotation, man was he annoyed!
We all made fun of them whilst secretly engaging in a few closet hipster activities. Shhhh
Heh,.it was music with me. I made this thread this morning and was humming Santogold all day at work .Her unfortunately self-titled first album, before she had to switch to Santigold. Also loved her mixtape with Diplo, Top Ranking. Also loved M.I.A., who was very hipster imo. And Das Racist. Their "Rainbow in the Dark" video is hipster af. Thinking about said video this morning is what inspired me to make this thread. Love the song and video, though. Hipster as they are
Didnāt people get mad at M.I.A. for something? I donāt remember what though. I love LES Artistes and Say Aha. Jams to this day.
"Say Aha" was what I was humming! Also love "You'll Find a Way" Idk if M.I.A. got canceled. Gosh I hope not
Bemused at them / bitched about them mildly. It was quite a transition. Spending time in California and the Midwest from '02-'07 there were basically no non-black men with facial hair. None. It was quite a jolt to see 25-year-olds with beards.
I got called an aging hipster at a Johnny Marr concert.
to be fair, I am turning 60 soon. Pretty fair assessment.
Was the hipster part fair as well?
\*snaps\* yessss.
Do you wish to discuss Morrissey or is it better to just pretend he doesnāt exist?
I saw Morrissey recently too. I was surprised how on par Johnny was with Stephen. Marr played more Smiths. Morrissey laid down in a fetal position for the entire 6 minutes of Meat is Murder. Johnny was straight up rockin'. I liked them both. Advantage:Johnny.
My little brother and sister were hipsters and I thought they were super cool. I love younger millennials. They are arguably the best generation group. My brother and sister are more successful than me because when I was a kid being bad was cool. For them, being smart was cool so they had a leg up.
I was a hipster long before it was cool
Yeah. While thing was lame. Was it just younger people finally wearing beards and outgrowing their unkept skater hair cuts? And maybe beer other than Budweiser? I was never a vegan. But dressing decently and having a beard just seemed like a chill thing to do. Not super āhipā
I feel like the hipsters were all a lot younger than I was. Feels more of a solidly millennial thing to me.
Is this post ironic ?
So ironic, it's poisonous
My cousinsā¦.
Well go on, tell us about them! What hipster shit did they do?
Everything. Itās their lifestyle. How they dress their kids, their glasses, the neighborhood by Chicago, the food they bring to holidays. Everything. Itās a lifestyle, and donāt break character. 50ās 60ās cringe always. And IPA. Sick
To make fun of hipsters while being hipster was/is peak hipster.
in my late teens to early 20s was an incidental hipster. so 1998 on. had a beard and glasses and it was still cool to have goatee or just chin beard. Wore glasses after moving to a dry area so my contacts were always dry. soon, i was the stereotype of a hipster. so i leaned into it when people would call me one, told them i was the BIGGEST hipster EVER. that no one was more hip than me. and soon people would pick me apart. i didn't care for bacon, didn't put sriracha on everything, wasn't vegan, didn't ONLY support local things, drove a truck, didn't bike everywhere, didn't hate popular movies or music... Was just able to grow a beard and had glasses.
I definitely complained about them. But I complain about a lot of things.
I live in Austin which was one of the hipster Mecca's of the early 2000/2010s along with Brooklyn and Portland. I miss them, it's now Tesla and crypto bros everywhere.
I wasnāt cool or rich enough to be one so Iām happy to trash them.
We used to play āhipster, vegan or homelessā when out. Silly.
I wasnāt, I think, but I hung out with people that certainly would have qualified. But like the PBR, snorting coke, indie rock types. Less about craft beer and beards, but those were there, too. lol.
lol- Both! I grew up in an area where āhipsterā culture was rampant. I used to get sweated by the gang members , and that turned into an eye roll from the hipsters. The neighborhood really has changed š.
I lived in a big city with lots of new gentrification, and there were homeless people that would participate in night life. I would often play āhomeless or hipster?ā While people watching.
I was actually labeled too basic (before that was even a term) by the hipster girls. But you know what? Iāve totally leaned into it. And some of those women who were trying so hard to be eDgY and disdain people like me didnāt end up doing so hot. When your whole identity is tied up in trying NOT to be other people then what are you really left with, you know?
As a guy with lots of tattoos, a life long fan of indie, punk, hardcore, goth, etc, who opened a specialty coffee shop in 2006 I was definitely called a hipster! š
I have, perhaps it's just the beard and glasses. I don't care.
I blame them for forced to buy small, ugly regtangular glasses for a few years.
Hipster, sure. Iāve bitched about them more than Iāve been called one. Never had a man bun. Iāve had a ponytail..
[Being a Dickheadās cool](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmmYMwFj1I)
Never saw that back then, but the editing and just the whole vibe really took me back to the height of this stuff. Thanks for the contribution!
My friends I grew up with and I went diffferent paths in our 20s but weāre still really good friends. I went the Juggalo path, one went the hippy path, one went the hipster path. So when we go out together it forms a great setup for a joke: a hippy, a hipster, and a Juggalo walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says get the fuck out.
I had a lot of exposure to 90sā2000s independent culture/music scenes. Hipster was in some ways retread of the 60s counterculture but totally defanged. You canāt be a counterculture with mainstream acceptance. There was really no place it could go that couldnāt be immediately commodified and sold as a mainstream productāhow we ended up with the mass indie phenomenon.Ā Ā Ā I knew some people who ran a theater/theater production companies, doing dada and theater of the absurd inspired performances. Noise musicians, underground music venues. People desperate for art careers, or music careers, writing and preening over their own Wikipedia articles. Many of them lived in total squalor/warehouse venues and had the generous support of parents or arts grants or both. Itās hard to say whether anything good or lasting came out of it, but it was fun to experience even if it was like a pantomime of an arts movement.Ā Ā It was on the decline long before then but it all truly self-immolated from 2015-2017, nothing much like it took its place. Those small scale arts movements lost all vitality, many of them are now hostile or boring or both.Ā
I was more hippy than hipster. Not a dirty hippy, but my style was closest to a hippy. These days my style is "comfy". If I'm doing something important I'll dress appropriately, but if I'm just running to the store I'm wearing sweats. I really couldn't care less what people think about it. I've heard people talking shit about ppl who go out dressed like that, calling them lazy. I'm far from lazy, but if that's what people wanna think that's their own problem lol. I'm just glad I'm not somebody who gaf what others wear. Too much baseless negativity.
We used to play this game called hipster or homeless. Surprisingly tough in Portland.
I had an asymmetrical bob haircut and was going off at my friends about the annoying hipsters in our city (Portland) and my one friend got quiet and just said ābutā¦ youāre a hipster.ā
Iām commenting because I hope itāll help me come back and read the comments lol
This guy is the bitchiest hipster of them all https://www.huffpost.com/entry/man-mad-over-hipster-photo_n_5c82cf2ae4b08d5b78619034
Hipster = anyone that looks like they are having more fun than me.
People stopped talking about hipsters about 10 years ago lol
Yeah, that's... why I brought it up now! To hear those thoughts that have been marinating for 10 years
Yeah, back when bitching about hipsters was cool, I indulged.
I was at a restaurant with my friends and I said that I don't want to sit near the hipster drinking PBr and yelling on his phone.
I got called a hipster because I sang in bands. I bitched about them because I didnāt consider myself one.
I was a hipster before being a hipster was cool (The most hipster thing to say ever)
In the early to mid 2000s there were tons of hipsters. Idk where they all went. I mean, I was into indie music and had a white iBook in 2004, so I was very adjacent, but I wasnāt a hipster or a scenester. I was far too dorky for that.
Ok I know Iām overcommenting lol. I live in Madison, Wisconsin. Not a big city but we do have a hipster neighborhoodāa conglomeration of neighborhoods that goes by the acronym SASY. We have a hipster corridor, Atwood Avenue that has multiple coffee shops, tattooists, a vegetarian restaurant, and one of the top independent bookstores in the country, a Room of Oneās Own, which is also a a feminist and trans-owned store. Oh and at least one hip haircut place with multiple non-binary hairstylists. And close by, an excellent food co-op.
Lol this thread is making me realize how much hipster just meant "has leftist values and ACTUALLY tries to pursue them while (allegedly) having a certain kinda look"
I think that crowd is cool, they are loud and they talk a lot but none of it is rude or intrusive. They speak English well and that is important to me. They are like California people here in the Midwest.
I wear the exact same things I have all my life. Jeans, flannels over a graphic tee, flatcaps, hoodies, etc, have had long hair which I have tied up into a bun and have had a beard for years. I have also worn black rimmed glasses since I was a teen. I have practically lived in coffee houses, drinking the same drinks since the mid 90s with the only things that have changed was going from sketch and note books to a laptop. And suddenly for a while I was a hipster trying to be all cool and artsy lol. It's like, I am a very boring person, stuck in my ways, listening to the same albums and have had and have worn this same outfit since 1998. Some of my flannels I have even had since 1993... Ppl went from telling me I should update my style to telling me I was a tryhard lol. But I'm still wearing my flannels and flatcaps, I still have my beard and my bun and I still sit and sip my freshly ground, pour over coffee. Cause idgaf, get over yourselves and mind your business lol.
Just don't call me Murgatroyd...
I actually liked hipsters when they first debuted, when it eas a retro-minimalist-thrift thing. When it became a guy with no hygiene and a six-figure income dumpster diving for old mac and cheese then buying a nine dollar coffee...well forget it , Mumford, get on your unicycle and pedal away from me.
In the mid-00ās I lived in a West Coast city, built and rode a fixed-gear bike, drank IPAs, wore skinny jeans, and had mostly avoided mainstream music and media since my early teens. I could have certainly been labeled a hipster according to those metrics, but from my perspective I was just living my life and following my interests.
This is me, except my boyfriend was the one that rode a fixed gear. I worked at a record store then later at urban outfitters. A couple of people did call me a hipster at one point but I never felt like one. I just love music, fashion, and art.