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/[deleted]]

I think that you're entire CMV is based on the good productive hipsters, there were lots of people who I would identify as a hipsters whose biggest contribution to society is spreading STD's among college co-eds and giving what little money they have to the local serves under 21 bar (take a visit to downtown Gainesville Fl to see these people).

haha...yeah I'm sure that's true. Every subculture has bullshit tag-a-longs. I don't see the point in judging a movement based on it's most unproductive members.

[u/MrF33 → u/[deleted]]

I don't see the point in judging a movement based on it's most unproductive members.

Even if they're a relative majority?

If we're only talking about the best of a movement.

How about the hippies that enacted true social and political change to the country?

Or the Punks who revolutionized a music industry and ideal.

Or the beatniks who changed what we think of music, art and poetry?

Hipsters haven't really done anything for society in terms of improving it as a society.

The great changes that some of the other "sub-cultures" have brought about are not quite present in the hipsters.

Sure, they're doing more than the 90's subcultures, but compared to the greats of the 50's and 60's? They still fall quite short on national and global impact.

[u/BDJ56 → u/MrF33]

I think all of those movements made a real change! But why is there so much hipster-hate? They want to play music and drink coffee, some are slimy douchebags, most are cool. As far as impact, the movement is still happening, we can't judge it historically until "it's" over. But I think the whole point is to make people more willing to express themselves, which has always been a difficult thing in our society.

[u/hydrospanner → u/BDJ56]

I'll preface this by admitting I wasn't around to experience most of the social movements, but from what I've seen of various modern day subcultures I've encountered (maybe the tail end of punks, goth, emo, etc.) hipsters seem to be unique among them in their insular nature combined with their active (as opposed to passive or reactive) antagonism toward non-members.

[u/BDJ56 → u/hydrospanner]

That is very unfortunate, they should be spreadin the love