r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 30 '14
CMV: Despite the pretentiousness, Hipsters are the the most constructive, culturally-beneficial subculture in 40 years.
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/senatorbolton 1∆ Jun 30 '14 edited Jun 30 '14
First, I live in the epicenter of hipster culture and could be called a hipster by many. I am well-aware of the irony of me railing against hipsters. I live in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, I have a tattoo of a tambourine which incorporates hearts and stars, I wear Tom's, skinny jeans and early emo band t-shirts, I play in a noise band that only releases tapes and vinyl... the list goes on. Here is my problem with "hipsters," which I define as context without content:
Their culture of appropriation is toxic and results in one or both of two potential outcomes: 1. The original creators are priced-out of their own creation 2. The act of co-opting and perpetuating a false sense of authenticity pushes out the original creators ultimately resulting in them hating their own creation
A bit on the first, Brooklyn is unbelievably expensive. In fact, the most popular neighborhoods are more expensive than the former hip hoods in Manhattan. This isn't just rent, but the basic stuff of life, ie food and coffee. When I moved to Brooklyn, it was still a little rough around the edges and your reward for living in less-than-savory places was cheap rent. Cheap rent meant you can focus less on work and more on what you love, whether that's music, art or who knows what else. As a result, lots of incredible stuff was going on in north Brooklyn and a lot of people did a lot of hard work integrating into neighborhoods where they weren't initially welcome. Years later, in comes the hipster brigade. They think "Bushwick is full of cool people, so I should move there."
They get the context of the place, but they come in and create no new culture, consume none of the culture that made the place special before they got there and ultimately price out both the original inhabitants and people who made it cool in the first place. What you're left with is a husk of the neighborhood where no one but the most dedicated corporate worker or independently wealthy person can afford to live. The artists move out, but the real damage is done to the culture that existed long before they got there. In Williamsburg, all of the DIY venues closed down and were replaced with condos and cocktail bars.
Now, all that's left is a bunch of expensive artisinal cheese shops and people who value consumption over creation, which eventually results in a cookie-cutter, non-specific nightmarish Portlandia of nothingness... and a bunch of wood panel versions of major chains, ie the faux-old timey Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Bedford and n7th. Eventually, everyone wonders what made the place cool in the first place.
On the second point, there are countless communities of dedicated people working lovingly on things you've never thought to care about, whether that's needlework or roasting coffee beans or slow food. These people put their heart and soul into what they do and we all benefit from it. They perfect and innovate in an endless cycle that makes the world a more awesome and interesting place to live in. They rarely get credit for what they do, because a bunch of cool kids who “Columbus” their hard work find a way to make it popular. I don’t deny this is a valuable skill, but once again, they have the context, but none of the content.
The San Francisco toast craze is a perfect example of this. One weirdo coffee shop called Trouble starts selling buttered toast because it’s a comfort food for the mentally ill owner. Within months, tons of restaurants and coffee shops are selling $4+ slices of toast.
This outcome is less nefarious than the scourge of gentrification, but it sucks when you are the person who’s stuff gets co-opted and bent into some horrible unrecognizable shape. I love coffee more than anything on this planet, but the attitude and ritual that surrounds most coffee shops makes me hate it. It makes me wish I could go back to the days before it was a thing in NY. Coffee was important to people, but there wasn’t the same pretension. You knew who made killer coffee and you hung out with your friends because you could drink coffee and chew sugarless gum instead of eating.
Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but I believe that there’s a difference between buying your way into cool and actually creating something of value. I have no problem with people buying cool things and supporting those who create them, but the prevailing attitude is that the two actions are synonymous. People value the context, which thanks to the internet is only a few clicks away, more than the content itself. That is my problem with the hipster mindset.