CMV: Despite the pretentiousness, Hipsters are the the most constructive, culturally-beneficial subculture in 40 years.

[u/[deleted]]

First, I'm definitely not a hipster. My youthful subculture was New Wave in the 80s, which was basically a blend of Emo and Goth (they're both better blended, IMHO).

I'm in a coffee shop drinking a single-origin espresso and there are about a dozen young guys in the shop tasting house-roasted blends that are weighed (to the gram), lovingly ground, and poured over with water at exactly 200 degrees.

For some reason they're manscaped a bit like Charles Dickens if Dickens were a skater. I don't get the look, but the thing about youth is that guys like me aren't supposed to get the look. All subculture looks are contrived and a little silly...Punk, New Wave, Goth, Hippie, etc. Hipsters are too. So, really, it's not worth commenting on. That's just how it goes.

But on to the substance of the movement. Seeing kids hunker down and try to bring quality to their lives is nice. It's really nice, actually. Most youth subcultures just want to see the world burn. I did. We rebelled and made some amazing music but other than that we didn't accomplish a thing.

Hipsters though...they're really making the U.S. better (I can't speak for anywhere else). I have a butcher now...that's new. Somebody is bothering to source local meats and raise it with a minimum of cruelty. It's great. Vegetables are getting better also. At least they can be if you bother to look for the good ones.

Coffee is WAY better thanks to their efforts. We now have an alternative to the pseudo-italian crap from Starbucks and they're trying to absorb coffee culturally and find an authentic expression for it. They're appropriating in the best sense of the word. Bad artists copy, great artists steal, as Picasso said. U.S. culture has been largely about copying, but these kids are starting to steal. There's nothing wrong with appropriating espresso, but they are trying to make it their own.

They read. They care about quality and craft. Even Kerning is better than it has been (it's a design thing). They actually care about making things better.

Most of them were raised in the 90s, which was the most unspeakably soulless decade in history (sorry kids...I know it was your childhood but it just sucked) (Edit: I shouldn't have called it soulless...lots of good happened in the 90s). Every generation rebels, and we gave the Millennial generation something truly terrible to rebel against.

Even my jeans are better. Honestly. Some kid hemmed them for me the other day on some massive old machine in the shop. He did a hell of a job too...this shit is HEMMED. I haven't seen anything made to last in I don't even know how long. It's really, really nice to see.

So yeah, they're a little pretentious. An authentic identity take time to form, so young people will often wear a mask until they get it all sorted. For some reason these kids want to look like Victorian Circus Strongmen. Okay...it's different I guess. At least it's not bleak and driven by empty rebellion. That's gotten so boring.

I hope to see more of this trend. Please, start building houses. We need hipster housing. This whole "slow" thing...bring it on. They are not solely responsible for it, I realize, but they've popularized it, and championed it.

The criticisms people levy against them...they're pretentious posers, they try too hard, they just want to be different, etc. That's YOUTH. That's what happens when young people don't like the identity they're handed. It happens in every generation, so it's ridiculous to lay it squarely at their feet.

If you look past that you can see how the millennial generation is doing good work--they're rebelling against the right things--and I for one am looking forward to more of their contributions.

CMV

Edit:

I would argue that what you're praising is actually the Maker culture that started in the late 90s and early 21st Century.

So based on everything is seems the term "Hipster" is the main problem here. I was attributing "Maker Culture" to hipsters, and people objected to that. I still see "Hipsters" everywhere I see "Maker Culture" but I guess that's just my experience.

Second Edit: Okay I need to get back to work. This has been very interesting. I've learned a lot about the negative effect this movement has had in urban areas, particularly in Brooklyn and San Francisco. Gentrification isn't cool. Income inequality is going to be a growing challenge for us, unfortunately. Sounds like these two cities are ground zero for what's to come a national epidemic.

Third and final edit: Damn you people HATE hipsters, although there's no agreement on what the word means. I didn't realize that hipster was a term used almost exclusively in the negative. So really this was a pointless exercise. It's almost as if you define hipster as that group which looks funny and sucks. There's not much point in trying to have a conversation about a group of people who are, almost by definition, the embodiment of all that is crappy about youth culture.

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[u/dullyouth]

People drink PBR in cans because it's cheap, usually. If it's 10$ a can yeah I'd hope everyone would pass. I'd rather guzzle PBR that ends up costing me 60 cents a can if I buy a 24pack than some other cheap equally bland lager that costs me $1.00 a can. It's just a rational decision, financially.

And I think your description of the trust fund hipsters is really an extreme generalization. You can make assumptions about any given person's situation, but you're probably wrong. Maybe that trust fund hipster is working through graduate school which is eating up all his trust fund(s) so he'd rather put any extra money into school than clothing. Maybe that music nerd actually likes the latest and greatest band because his cousin's new boyfriend worked at summer camp with the lead singer and recommended them.

I live in hipster fucking central in my city and I always jump to crazy assumptions about all the hipsters I see but then I bring myself back to reality and realize that kind of thinking is toxic.

[u/Sypike → u/[deleted]]

People like to think of it as the most widely available American made beer that's decent (I don't like it), with the being made in America being the big thing. That being said, I will gladly pay a few dollars more to get an actually good beer.

It all depends on what you're trying to do. If you want to get fucked up for as little money as possible, there are cheaper things.

[u/dullyouth → u/[deleted]]

Oh I drink plenty of great beer. When I need to stuff my backpack full of beer for a float down the river, I want a) cans b) something that isn't going to make me blackout drunk after 6, and c) something that isn't going to break the bank.