It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment, but at some time early on in my freshman year, my fellow floor residents decided to collectively brand me as a hipster. Perhaps it was my refusal to wear North Face or my relatively obscure taste in music, but there was apparently something distinctive about me that caused the damning term to creep into the common room vernacular whenever I showed up to discreetly microwave Leo’s cookies. Soon enough, I felt like I was going around with a scarlet “H” pinned to my flannel shirt.
Unusual at it may sound, this was my first encounter with hipster shaming, or frequent use of the label at all. I’d come from a high school environment in which uniformity (well, there were also uniforms) was the norm and the “alternative” scene was so small it hardly merited notice, much less concentrated scorn. If the term ever entered conversation at all, it was a fleeting whisper in comparison with the intense debate that the “H” word seems to produce on the Hilltop. I apparently hadn’t realized that I was attending the 10th most hipster college in the nation, even if the title was bestowed because of our “ironic” preppiness.
As a result, this sudden association produced something of an identity crisis in me—I questioned whether I truly fit the stereotype and, if so, whether I was merely conforming to a doctrine of non-conformity. Turning the lens on myself, I saw that my love of vintage t-shirts, my tendency to read The New Yorker in indie coffee shops, and my ukulele ownership may very well be red flags for the hipster inquisition. Nevertheless, I still didn’t really know what exactly I was guilty of.
At its heart, it seems that “hipster” is a derogatory charge because of said defendant’s blindly insistant deviation from the mainstream; anything popular or “cool” is frowned upon, while anything old or obscure is placed on a pedestal hand-carved in Portland. Admission to liking anything that several million people are also fond of is a major faux pas, a situation which has birthed a lot of closeted Katy Perry fans. Taste is a fundamental part of identity, used as a marker to measure oneself in comparison to others. Moreover, anything done or worn “ironically” is immediately granted protection—lack of sincerity eliminates the hipster as a target of derision for that button from the NRA.
This is the essential definition of a hipster, yet it’s also a label with which no one consciously identifies. Therein lies the paradox, which is also what makes the rise of the hipster such a bizarre sociological phenomenon. Calling someone a hipster, oddly enough, is often an indicator that one also fits the qualifications. It can betray insecurity about having truly good taste, since the label denotes vacuity and superficiality—rather than genuinely liking something for itself, the hipster supposedly champions everything for its mere status as a cultural outlier.
That’s the reason labeling someone a hipster is such a slap in the face; it’s the same as calling someone an elitist, or a snob. Hipsters reject cultural populism, considering themselves superior by being part of a perennially unreachable elite. That’s why they’re genuinely maddening—no one wants to feel like their shameless love of Ke$ha or their failure to read Foucault makes them a cultural lemming.
At the same time, hipster shaming isn’t helping matters. Victimizing a Bon Iver fan who happens to own a few secondhand shirts by labeling him a cultural elitist just isn’t fair, because that’s simply making a whole bundle of negative associations based on superficial facts. Moreover, calling someone else snobby doesn’t make you any more tolerant. Calling someone hip doesn’t make you any more mainstream.
In an ideal world, hipsters would be eliminated from both our collective lexicon and as a social aspiration. People would stop constantly doing things ironically, choosing to be sincere and forthright in how they present themselves. People would stop making judgments about what others like, whether that’s something as universally beloved as vanilla ice cream or something as bizarre as basil lemon gelato—everything under the cultural sun would be equal.
Until that day, I’m happy to endure eye rolls as I let my freak flag fly. I don’t consider my taste to be better than anyone else’s, and I certainly don’t eliminate anything popular from that category. How you decide to label me is your business. In my defense, however, I still have that new Taylor Swift album on repeat.
I really, really like this article. Thank you. This was the 2nd thing that came up from a Google search for \When did hipster become an epithet?\… I’m a forty-something and reside in a fly-over state. I spent my first 25 years in sunny So-Cal. I have young adult offspring. I’ve seen various forms of culture/counter-culture get embraced/maligned but this one puzzles the shit out of me. … The main problem I have with the term \hipster\ is how much traction maligning people for allegedly being one is getting. On one level, it is just the most vague form of prejudice I’ve ever encountered. It is just so totally random. … But there is also a class-consciousness/false-consciousness aspect to this, too. I’ve noticed that frequently the prefix \trust-fund\ is added as often as not. Case in point, Lewis Black on the Daily Show critiquing a fictional character on a fast food commercial for being not only clueless, but a \trust-fund-hipster\. I’m getting the feeling that perhaps being a hipster is bad because rich people wearing comfortable clothes and not working in the financial sector is somehow unacceptable. It reminds me of another epithet. One that begins with \N\ and with it the popular 20th century refrain that \(they) don’t know their place\. … Once again, I Loved The Article. ~DWD
Growing up when “Pot” was something you put a flower in and when someone was “hip” they were very much a part of the “in” crowd, I found this article very amusing and most enlightning! Carry on and fly that “freak flag” proudly! Carolyn