Hipster Fail

[digitaldiscipline]

miamadness15 shared an excellent "Up Yours" to Hipsterdom, and, frankly, I'd like to amplify it several orders of magnitude.

[why, yes, I still harbor resentments from this particular evening.]

also, gratuitous icon use.

Comments

[mitejen.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is an incredibly apt point about how they are the first 'cool' culture under the microscope of advertisers. I hadn't thought about it much more than advertisers research for specific viral marketing campaigns but it's so much bigger than that.

Great article!

[mykal.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't agree that they are the first youth market being marketed to. Not at all. Heck - the jazz kids were being targeted back in the day. And then came rock n roll. And we all know what happened there...

It's just the nature of hyper-advertising in this day and age that makes it so obvious. "Born under the microscope"? Not really... "Born FROM the microscope" more like. But as I said - not so much with the "first" thing.

I'm guessing the writer of the article is under 30 yrs old. And hasn't done their homework completely.

[mitejen.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't agree that they are the first youth market being marketed to.

I didn't mean they are the first subculture to be marketed to, I mean how because of many of these people's desire for their 15 minutes, their entire lives are explicitly available for examination through their social networking profiles and posts, without an advertiser ever having to leave their office. They blog, podcast, video and photograph their EVERY move--and because it's available for anyone to see, that's exactly what happens.

What I think the author is talking about is that
the nature of the internet makes 'knowing your audience' that much easier for advertisers, because they don't have to try and parse meaning from second-hand or third-hand sources, they can go right to the source without being known, ie 'There's an old guy in a suit who hangs out at my favorite underground coffee bar and asks us kids what we're up to these days.'

And that it's deliciously ironic because their counterculture is meaningless as a result.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

they're not being counter-anything, though (except taste; they're "ironically" (in quotes) unappealing as a way of being attractive to other people who also don't want to be called hipsters); they're embracing blue-collar couture, if there is such a bullshit construct, and wallowing in how self-aware and disaffected that makes them at the same time, not realizing that what it does is make them look like poorly-dressed, hypocritical, attention-whoring douchebags.

[naeelah.livejournal.com]

For real. For all the bullshit that goth subculture encapsulates and for all the wank I've seen when goth culture gets attacked, I don't think I've ever seen anything like the butthurt in the comments on that article. There's one comment just a few from the top where the guy goes on about how he lives sustainably and he reads philosophy and he's all enlightened and shit, AND he enjoys life more than any of the poor, miserable haters... It's like, how can you not see how much of a douche you are? Go shout at everyone about how much more enlightened you are. Because that's what truly enlightened people do. Engage in narcissistic moral dick waggling.

As a part of the same generation I have a ton in common with hipsters, but spot the differences...

I think the article is keen in most respects, but I think it's heavy handed and silly to say the well of western civilization has run dry. People having been whining to the same tune since time immemorial. (It's like people who say "There's no good music any more." All that means is either "Music is not identical to what it was in my youth so I hate it all," or "I have no idea what's going on the world.")

I would really like to know what these hipsters are like in an other 10-20 years. Manufactured sincerity seems to be a cornerstone of hipsterdom so I think Ad Busters is bang on in saying it's a dead end.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

As a pop-culture people watcher, the "hipster" thing (born out of nerd obssessed alt-rock, which made perfect sense considering the angst ridden drama of the post-grunge 90s) has run its natural evolutionary course. We've heard the phrase "children of nothing" too many times to believe this one.

I'm guessing the next "big thing" will be something entirely laced with organic overtones. Something anti-urban. Something reactionary to the liberal swing of the country. Something un-connected. Un-electronic. Un-YouTube.

I'm thinking the hip-hop urban cowboy will be making a resurgence.

[mitejen.livejournal.com]

That's been my thinking too.

I think the last four-five years, with all the hoopla over evolution, not getting your children vaccinated because it's a government conspiracy to give them autism, and things like that were illustrative of an anti-Information Age sentiment.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

"Hippies." Granola people.

"Greenies," seems as apt a term as any. that whole no label / home-spun motif, and there will of course be a dickish, greener-than-thou elitist snob sub-set which everyone will want to strangle with their own hair.

[naeelah.livejournal.com]

But those are the hipsters, just with a lot of neon and PBR. Maybe fashion-wise we'll see something more organic but that attitude is every hipsters I've met.

[onezumi.livejournal.com]

Oh god. :/ Hipsters. EW.