Friday 22 February 2013

HIPSTERS — members of Generation Y, or Millennials


 I love people watching!
HIPSTERS: People who aspire to being something they are not. I heard young adults mocking them the other day. I didn't know what they were!

In the 40s is you were into jazz you were hip, or cool. In this era, if you are a hipster, you sneer at anything. Each generation had its colourful individuals. From mini skirts, when I was in high school, tie dye, to hairstyles; dreadlocks, afros, mohawks...or hair colours!
Yes, thongs!

Then there was Goth.

Now we have tattoos, piercings... Don't forget thongs!

Urban Dictionary: hipster

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and *Indie rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.

What I find even more hilarious, are 40-somethings acting as aspiring Hipsters. Wannabe Hipsters, too old to be the real McCoy! Journalists are the worst. They can be music snobs, or otherwise knocking the tastes of anyone who is different.

 I first came across the notion reading a Times article:

Quitting Facebook Is The New 'I Quit TV' (You Hipster, You)
Jesse one Hallowe'en!
 But "How to Live Without Irony" by Christy Wampole... "If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living," Wampole wrote: facial hair, fixed-gear bikes, and craft beer, ultimately arguing that the hipster, with all of his superficial signifiers, is "merely a symptom and the most extreme manifestation of ironic living."

Another sign of the Hipster: getting off Facebook. There were the hippies who eschewed television. Now they are off Facebook. I like it, to keep in touch with my middle-aged friends. Happy to hijack it in favour of our generation, the ones that learned to integrate technology into our jobs. New York University assistant professor Laura Portwood-Stacer, in a recent article published in the Journal of New Media and Society, said it is an elitist form of "conspicuous non-consumption."  
Punks!
I joined Facebook to keep track of my kids, to see great photos, visit far-off friends and enjoy their travel photos.
Based on interviews with 20 Facebook non-users and analysis of Facebook-quitter confessionals, Portwood-Stacer examined why people leave Facebook, how they communicate their rejection and how their abstention comes across. Hipsters!

Wampole writes:
Flower Power!
The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone).
For many Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s — members of Generation Y, or Millennials — particularly middle-class Caucasians, irony is the primary mode with which daily life is dealt. (How to Live Without Irony)
Dreadlocks and tatts, men skirts!

*Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated the UK and US. 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include indie popjangle popC86, and lo-fi, among others. Originally used to describe record labels 'independent', the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock

2 comments:

Red said...

What you describe is right out there for all to see. My question is why do people have to be something? Have to play act ? Why can't they just be themselves? Step out in to the market of life and see what price you can get!

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

Great post, I'm increasingly fascinated by hipsters. I've yet to meet a hipster who will admit to it.