When your entire life is dedicated to being ironic and sarcastic, and you spend all of your time parodying other people through yourself, I just can’t see any way around it. Just because people are laughing at the hipster doesn’t mean that they aren’t laughing at the cohort that the hipster is parodying – in fact, they are simply making fun of people by proxy. This is their entire existence. Well, that, and trying to impress people by being the “first” person to set some trend or another, or listen to some band or another. What a pathetic, meaningless existence of nothing but making fun of others and meaningless one-upsmanship meant to show everyone how much better you than everyone else. For example:
The trucker hat thing was done as an ironic parody. Of who? Of truckers – that’s who.
Drinking crappy beer like Olympia or LaBatt blue? Another ironic, sarcastic parody of people who actually like these brands (stereotypically seen as poor, lower class people).
The recent trend has been to clothing associated with rednecks and white trash – not because they like the styles, but because they are making fun of them. Again, making fun of lower class people by imitating them.
See a trend here? Could it be that hipsters are just elitist pricks that think they are better than everyone else, and try to show that by picking on people that they see as being from a lower social class than them? Naww, couldn’t be.
You know, it occurs to me that if the targets of their irony and sarcasm weren’t mainly white people, that they would pretty much be a racist hate group for doing what they do. Imagine if they “parodied” the black or Hispanic communities. They would be the Ku Klux Goddamned Klan if that were the case, so for their sakes, it is a good thing that they’ve decided that the group that they are going to ridicule isn’t one of the “protected” groups in our society, or else we’d be protesting and hating them as opposed to just tolerating their elistist, “I’m better than you” bullshit.
To all the hipsters out there – try actually producing something useful for society rather than sarcasm and ugliness. I think you’ll find that the psychological and material satisfaction that you get from a good day’s work will by far outshine what meager, pitiful satisfaction you get from making fun of people and trying to constantly show everyone how much better you are than them.
Well put esteemed Author, well put, I agree.(I did see an article in a free magazine that Native American headgear etc was "trendy" amonst them at one point!).
ReplyDeleteI had the misfortune of having to do an assignment on hipsters. The sad thing is,the term originally, as used my Norman Mailer (in essay called "The White Negro" was used to refer to youths in the postwar era who identified with African American culture, which due to their marginality was analogous in opposition towards stifling postwar conformity, sharing a ‘powerful a disbelief in the socially monolithic ideas’.
It is sad that it turned from such historical roots of identification into current status of mocking :(
I think there's a tremendous point being overlooked much in credit to "the hipster". The thing is - they're not imitating white trash - they ARE white trash. If they were so very elite, they wouldn't live 5 to a one bedroom apartment. They wouldn't buy just one coffee and take up the cafe seating for an entire day, never buying another item, all because they feel entitled to the free wifi. My folks rent to them and got wise to their functions and began charging per extra person (for those who had decent credit - which most do not). As a native New Yorker and lifetime Brooklynite, I've never even heard of bedbugs before the hipster epidemic. Now, my folks have to have exterminators visit monthly. Hicksters, as I call them, are just hicks trying to make it in urban culture whilst diminishing all that is urban and turning it into a backwoods suburbia. A major topic that you left out was gentrification. Sadly, it happens, and though sometimes it's for the better (in the VERY dangerous neighborhoods that were long taken over by drugs), it really is a ruthless monster that turns entire working class families into homeless families within a 2 year period. These hicks just come into Hispanic neighborhoods and price out the Hispanics, having never acknowledged them in a brotherly way - and for that - they are indeed racist - perhaps not KKK (as you've mentioned) but definitely riddled with intolerance to other cultures - though ironically, once they've priced out the Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans, the Caribbean folks, these hicks will open up a Taco-carribean-fusion joint as if they've invented it! The hipster mind is tightly bracketed though they all claim some profound knowledge, they never leave the box ... or their stripes ... or their tasteless tatts. The one great thing about gentrification though, is that, the huckster prices themselves out! The yuppies then takeover and the working class families that were originally priced out, somehow obtain work back in their old neighborhoods, whether working for the yuppies or making that one popular taco joint - an authentic one that replaced that dingy hipster hole.
ReplyDeleteloved this, insightful and well written
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