In recent months, I've been forced to come to terms with the fact that somewhere along the line, I became a hipster. For most, ""hipster"" remains a dirty word, an insult implying shallow self-absorption and a snobbish enslavement to certain ephemeral trends. I prefer to be more optimistic.
Remember that Jack Kerouac and Cosmo Kramer were the proto-typical hipsters of their respective times and places (50s America and 90s television, respectively) and that the Smashing Pumpkins once celebrated the alternative nation with the slogan ""Hipsters Unite!""
Like many Pumpkins tracks, though, ""Cherub Rock"" was ambiguous. It was equally well-taken as a sincere rallying cry or a sarcastic anti-anthemic rant, Billy Corgan's brutal parody of Nirvana's already oblique generational angst. But then, that is really the problem with hipsters, isn't it? You can never be quite sure whether they are being ironic or earnest. Assuming, of course, that they know themselves.
So, I remain heavily vexed by the ""hipster problem."" I am sure that I have become one, and yet I cannot even clearly define ""hipster."" No one seems to have an exact definition, though most can offer a few key characteristics. Most popular amongst my highly scientific straw poll were tight pants, ironic facial hair, an irrational love of fixed gear bikes and especially ""trying too hard to be cool.""
I find this last description particularly apt as it illuminates the characteristic that so obliviously powers the hipster nation: insecurity. So many hipsters seemed to be fueled by one-ups-manship and the entangled desires to be simultaneously both more like and yet somehow ‘better' than their fellow hipsters.
Perhaps you too have come across the all too common phenomenon of the very hipster-looking fellow or lady who simply cannot shut up about their undying, vehement hatred for hipsters.
How and why does this happen? I suspect that the same hyper-awareness of the world around them and its supposed divisions into hierarchies of good to worse infect these individuals to their core. Their insecurity compels them to have an almost psychotic need for association with the best possible and most obscure music, clothes and film. It additionally compels them to disdain all that fails to live up to their ""refined"" standards.
Since hipsters have been labeled social pariahs in our youth society, hipsters themselves must seek above all else to deny the disease, even while exhibiting symptom after symptom.
In turn, my insecurity coupled with my awareness of their sad situation compels me to disdain their disdain. It only gets worse from there, as I—and any other particular hipster—struggle for an upper hand in the game of meta-contextualization of each another's lack of self-awareness.
And yet even as our insecurity and trivial obsessions alienate us from one another, being a hipster inevitably means having even less in common with any non-citizen of hipsterdom. These strange creatures (the common dude or dudette) often seem dull or uneducated, and in any case have no patience whatsoever for our pretentions and over-calculated interests.
Perhaps it may seem that I am being too hard on myself, that I am a guilt-ridden ‘self-hating hipster.' Allow me, then, to rescue a portion of the hipster community by dividing it into two categories.
Both categories derive their overly calculated interests largely from the ""official sources"" (largely critics, the gatekeepers, whom every hipster secretly aspires to be. After all, even more so than the hippest filmmaker, musician or fiction writer, the critic lives and dies by his taste and especially by his ability to contextualize).
Some hipsters, however, differentiate themselves by actually prioritizing the immense joy they find in the consumption of the ""official"" hip products over the need to use these products as totems against their self-doubt.
The insecurity and the need to be ""better,"" i.e. continually being more and more discriminating and stylish as well as educated in the obscure hidden gems of their fields of interest, will almost invariably persist. For the better category of hipster, though, the sheer beauty of the art being appreciated will be first and foremost in the mind of the subject.
Hipsterdom should and could be a community dedicated to the celebration of the beauty of humanity and its creations. Instead, it is too-often the realm of the celebration of the self over the other. Really, such a discerning, tasteful group could do much better.
If you are reading this, hipsters, I urge you to not fear your birthright. In the name of Steve Malkmus, Norman Mailer and the Fonz, let us take back the word with which we are scorned and let us be the best possible versions of ourselves by celebrating each other, rather simply tearing each other down. To borrow the words of a man whose early work still holds our favor, ""Hipsters Unite!""
Or, if you prefer to forget the self-indulgent epistemological babble I spew and instead pursue a less somber mission, may I recommend, ""Stay cool, and be somebody's fool this year""? Self-serious pretensions and the Pumpkins' post-reunion slop be damned; it's not bad advice.
E-mail questions and comments to seraphin@wisc.edu
