Profile for olie! - I want to have a serious blog discussion on hipster culture.

olie! aka olie! (or just sam) is a 25.96 year old boy, has been a member since August 12, 2005, has scored 4,933 submissions, giving an average score of 2.81, helping 326 designs get printed.

URL: http://www.samschuna.com

Aug 11 '10 by olie!
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I want to have a serious blog discussion on hipster culture.

Lately I have been really interested in just the entire idea of hipsters. What are they? How do you define one? Is hipster culture a bad or good thing? Do you consider yourself a hipster?

It's really hard for me personally to say how I would define a hipster since the whole idea of being hipster seems to be perpetually amorphous. Nevertheless, I think there are a few things that are indicative of hipster culture, such as fashion preferences, music taste, diet and, perhaps most importantly, attitude and perspective. I was reading a couple articles just now about the concepts of "hipster racism" and "hipster gentrification", which basically discuss the ideas of making ironic racist comments which are intended to be humorous due to the commentator's mockery of racism itself, and the idea of hipsters sprawling to more and more "non-hipster" cities and locales to accumulate more cultural experience and get away from other hipsters. There is also a comment under one of those articles someone made, I can't remember their username, but I think is very true: many hipsters do not admit to being hipster because, in essence, hipster culture itself is based on denial.

The articles are very interesting, albeit a bit long, but here they are:

Never Admit To Being A Hipster

Hipster Racism

Anyway, I'd probably label myself, most of my friends and most of the users I know and love here on Threadless as hipsters, but I'm curious to hear what you guys have to say about it.

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spacesick 2 on Aug 11 '10 at 9:46pm

I ain't no hippity hopster. I'm a red blooded american, god dammit.

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 9:47pm

get out of my blogs, spaceman!

spacesick 2 on Aug 11 '10 at 9:50pm

;~;

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 9:50pm

I don't necessarily think it's abad thing to be labeled as a hipster, I just think the weird superiority complex some people get about liking things that aren't widely accepted is annoying.

Steve The Great on Aug 11 '10 at 9:51pm

'_'

tracerbullet on Aug 11 '10 at 9:51pm

LATFH

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 9:52pm

AWWWWW SHI��!!!!!!!!!!

dangalang that is glorious

sweet n sour on Aug 11 '10 at 9:53pm

I'm a hipster, but only on Sundays

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 9:53pm

What Omair said.

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 9:56pm

I look at it as this weird thing that just spiraled into this huge caricature of itself. "Hipster"'s been seen as just embracing the obscure and dated and laughing at anything other than. It's like this high school attitude sans Hot Topic.

juliejeremiah on Aug 11 '10 at 9:57pm

Hipsters annoy me very much. But I also might be a hipster? I dunno. I doubt it. But maybe.

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 9:58pm

I bring it up partly also because whenever I hear other people use the term "hipster" it's almost always in a derogatory sense. And I find that funny because it's really such a vague and ambiguous term, it's hard to know what they are referencing in particular.

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 9:59pm

hahaha like every time I've ever gone on bacontaco while danmaltz is there, I'll be eating a poptart and he's like "that poptart is so hipster, hiptart"

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 9:59pm

julie that link doesn't work for me :^/

Chipmnk on Aug 11 '10 at 10:00pm

What Omair and Mike said.

Granted, "hipster" isn't an entirely new idea specific to just our youth culture. The beat generation had its own famous hipsters, and even before that, "hipster" was just used as a word to describe those hip cats in the Jazz Age.

sweet n sour on Aug 11 '10 at 10:01pm

I don't think we have hipsters in the UK

(I thought they were a type of trousers)

Steve The Great on Aug 11 '10 at 10:01pm

julie'slink

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 10:02pm

I'm a victorian

boysbeambitious on Aug 11 '10 at 10:03pm

I still don't know if there's a right definition for "hipster," if there is one. I've been labeled a hipster by quite a few people, but I don't know... lol

juliejeremiah on Aug 11 '10 at 10:03pm

thanks stebe

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 10:04pm

I usually use hipster in a derogatory sense. And the way I see it with that kind of implication is for the people who go out of their way to not follow anything stylistically. Like once a trend gets big enough for Urban Outfitters to start selling them, they move on to something else.

juliejeremiah on Aug 11 '10 at 10:04pm

Maybe hipsters don't annoy me so much as vacuous aimless youth annoy me.

spacesick 2 on Aug 11 '10 at 10:04pm

look at that fucking vacuous aimless youth

Bio-bot 9000 on Aug 11 '10 at 10:04pm

Stuff hipsters hate.

spacesick 2 on Aug 11 '10 at 10:07pm

lolzat @ Diminutive Names

my hipster friends are that way

Chipmnk on Aug 11 '10 at 10:07pm

It is what it is. It's just another way to group people together. Most of us around here are "hipsters", whether we realize it or not.

I personally don't have a problem with "hipsters" or being called it, but like Julie said, I am not a fan of most of today's youth, vapid and asinine in its own way.

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 10:09pm

And I've been called a hipster by a few people, and I deny it because I don't see myself as one. People who do label me that don't watch a lot of movies or listen to a lot of music, which is where I think fuels most of the assumptions. As far as musical knowledge goes, most of the bands I listen to are behind legit record companies. I just explore beyond the average person. And what I wear is just something I naturally gravitated towards. I think plaid shirts are the hippest clothes I own.

dlincoln83 on Aug 11 '10 at 10:11pm

"hipsters" make me yawn.

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 10:12pm

And what Julie said.
A lot of kids these days have this sense of superiority and entitlement that makes me wanna punch them in the face. But this goes for youth in general.

psherman42 on Aug 11 '10 at 10:12pm

I like hipster culture in the sense that it seems to lean towards supporting the arts, but I don't like (and this really goes for anybody, not just hipsters) when people have pretentious attitudes, which is generally one of the main aspects of 'hipster-ism' that I hear when people hate on them.

I don't find most of the male hipster fashion sense (specifically skinny jeans and v necks) very appealing, but hipster ladies can be pretty cute.

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 10:15pm

I like taking my pants off

Chipmnk on Aug 11 '10 at 10:15pm

And I think "hipster" can be a relative thing. I mean, to the average public, people like us can be seen as "hipsters", and then to us, Darwin Deez is a hipster. It just goes like that until everyone thinks Southern white plantation owners are hipsters.

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 10:16pm

you ever seen a hipster 3 year old? No, kids don't have these problems. they don't have labels, man. the kids never had war, man. Children, man.

Steve The Great on Aug 11 '10 at 10:17pm

at my school I'm positively square.

Steve The Great on Aug 11 '10 at 10:17pm

but that's only because I can't grow a decent mustache.

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:19pm

That is a really good article julie, it really does a good job at visually describing not just the fashion, but the attitude of that culture.

But it sparks another question in me: what's next? Is hipster culture really the epitome of counter culture? Is young american culture really so apathetic and unenthusiastic that it will never birth anything new, any new cultures or trends? Will hipsterism engulf America completely and die, or will it shrivel and continue to thrive as long as America exists?

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 10:21pm

hipster is like an ever evolving thing, I think.

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:22pm

I personally don't think the hipster stereotype is the final step of western civilization, there's gotta be some new kind of culture, but what do you think it will be like?

mike bautista on Aug 11 '10 at 10:22pm

I don't think it's hipster culture that's fucking everything up. It's pretentious kids who can't grow up.

iPear on Aug 11 '10 at 10:23pm

yuppies

Chipmnk on Aug 11 '10 at 10:24pm

Yeah, arrested development is a big part of hipster culture.

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:26pm

That's the thing though mike, I don't think it's just pretentious kids who can't grow up, I think it's most all of us. Modern American young adults today I think are stuck in a current generation that can't "grow up". What does "growing up" even mean, anyway? There are tons of people who have jobs, children, and bills to pay but I don't know that that's what makes a person "grown up."

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:27pm

I mean, even look at Threadless. A lot of us are in our mid 20s or 30s, but I've seen several blogs in the past about people still feeling like a kid, like they'll never actually be adults. When does that happen?

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:28pm

and I guess that goes for me too, I don't personally feel like a grown up either, I don't know when I'll grow up

Noh_Body on Aug 11 '10 at 10:29pm

Question is do you think hipster culture is a counter culture, if it is then there will be a culture that grows dissatisfied and becomes the new counter culture, which shall succeed the current

olie! on Aug 11 '10 at 10:36pm

That's already happening Noh_Body, you hear people being sick of hipsters everyday, but a lot of those people are hipsters themselves I think. So if hipsters just keep dispersing like that, what is left? How are new cultures born?

It's kind of like Alvin mentioned; hipsters have been around for some time. Jazz and Beatnicks had their own hipsters, but in those eras there were definable traits, such as CERTAIN types of music (bebop, improv jazz) or SPECIFIC types of dress (berets and sunglasses). In America today, I think it's almost impossible to define exactly what makes hipster culture what it is, which makes it somewhat hard to destroy or surpass.

Noh_Body on Aug 11 '10 at 10:43pm

Hipsters shall be replaced by hipsters, the new ones will be way more hip

mgill52 on Aug 11 '10 at 11:03pm

If someone calls me a hipster, I take it as a compliment.

PS, I have been growing my stache for like 2 months and it is just now barely visible.

Brb, gonna put on my cowboy boots, vintage ice cream shoppe sweater, seafoam hoodie, and glasses with plastic lenses. I do own all of these things btw.

Morkki on Aug 12 '10 at 4:09am

I guess I am a hipster. I cut my own stupid haircut, I ride a fixed gear bike, I have an art school education and I listen to bands that are probably hipster approved. But these are all just cliches that happen to apply to me and not things I do so that I could be a part of some scene. I like to consider myself a hipster because I like mixing subcultures and not acting my age. Also the word "hipster" annoys people who take their hipsterism too seriously and that's a good thing.

Hipsters aren't a very stable subculture because you can't build one on irony alone.

Morkki on Aug 12 '10 at 4:11am

And I also have a "Where the Wild Things Are" shirt from Urban Outfitters and that kind of seals the deal.

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