I post occasionally about this hipster-bashing phenomenon because it fascinates me, and I’m trying to work out why in my head. Invariably, when I do, the comment thread takes two directions: 1) Semantics arguments which interest me not in the slightest and 2) Defenses of hipster-bashing that are a form of hipster-bashing. Thanks to this last one, I think I have a much better idea of why this fascinates me and why I think it’s relevant to politics, something I was stabbing at when I said hipster-bashing is something that has become a conservative trope. (And if you don’t believe me, I invite you to read my email or replies to me in comment threads/Twitter elsewhere.) By examining this question, I’m not trying to shame anyone or take away the pleasure they find in taking swipes at someone for wearing a vintage T-shirt with skinny jeans (at least, I’m not in this post). I’m just interested in how narratives build and expand on one another in our culture.
Let’s take the defense of hipster-bashing in two parts: 1) Hipsters are bad people and 2) I have a right because I’m more authentic than they are.
The reasons given for making hipsters an acceptable target were that hipsters are smug, superior, and you can tell they’re very wealthy and have trust funds because of their cheap beer, thrift store clothes and lack of other markers of mainstream middle class success, such as home ownership and expensive cars. (This argument never fails to amuse me. Are there some people with wealth who choose to live this way? Yes. Did this culture evolve because most people in it have money to burn? Is it true that high fashion steals ideas from street fashion and sells it back to the public at a premium? Yes. Is it true that the people who originate the fashions that are stolen are responsible for this? I’m skeptical.) The most important quality hipsters are claimed to have is inauthenticity. They are claimed to only pursue certain pleasures to prove something, and not because they actually derive pleasure from it, and to be overly concerned with opinions of others who are also inauthentic. The hipster love of irony is invoked as proof of this inauthenticity. If you say, as I repeatedly did, that in my experience, people I know (and myself) experience intrinsic pleasure from going to shows, wearing certain fashions, listening to certain music, or even vinyl-collecting, the No True Scotsman fallacy is invoked—-that said people cannot be hipsters. An entire subculture is defined by those few in it who do exhibit this negative quality of being a poseur.
On the second tip, the reasons given for hipster-bashing centered around claims to authenticity. The basher is more authentic because he/she is more in the mainstream of society (lives in the suburbs, doesn’t buy music anymore, thinks irony is mean-spirited, etc.). In this case, not experiencing certain pleasures is invoked as proof of authenticity—-the basher is superior to hipsters because he/she is raising a family, too busy at work to worry about that sort of stuff, or a grown-up who disdains that kind of obsessive pop culture collecting/creating. Or, conversely, they are more authentic because the tend to align with subcultures that are considered less cool and more geeky, which proves that they’re doing it for love and not popularity.