Great piece on Hipsters from the NY Times

[dhermann1]

Haven't even finished this yet, but I thought it worth sharing right away. This lady has some good ideas here.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Less blog and more academic paper from this assistant professor. Good stuff.

I like this snippet. It must irk people of older generations when youth take their constant sniping about "the uselessness of this generation" and says: OK, you're right: whatever, since you think I'm crap I'll just do nothing useful.

It stems in part from the belief that this generation has little to offer in terms of culture, that everything has already been done, or that serious commitment to any belief will eventually be subsumed by an opposing belief, rendering the first laughable at best and contemptible at worst. This kind of defensive living works as a pre-emptive surrender and takes the form of reaction rather than action.

Life in the Internet age has undoubtedly helped a certain ironic sensibility to flourish. An ethos can be disseminated quickly and widely through this medium. Our incapacity to deal with the things at hand is evident in our use of, and increasing reliance on, digital technology. Prioritizing what is remote over what is immediate, the virtual over the actual, we are absorbed in the public and private sphere by the little devices that take us elsewhere.

Furthermore, the nostalgia cycles have become so short that we even try to inject the present moment with sentimentality, for example, by using certain digital filters to “pre-wash” photos with an aura of historicity. Nostalgia needs time. One cannot accelerate meaningful remembrance.

 

[herringbonekid]

i still think there might be less irony among UK 'hipsters' than US ones. i saw a young man the other day wearing the regulation UK hipster outfit: baseball cap, thick black rimmed glasses, beard, check shirt with t-shirt underneath, carrot-cut khakis and white plimsoles. i honestly don't think there was any irony in what he was wearing. it was just the current 'trendy' look and i'm sure he thought he looked great, not kitsch or ironic.


quote "Look at your clothes. What parts of your wardrobe could be described as costume-like, derivative or reminiscent of some specific style archetype (the secretary, the hobo, the flapper, yourself as a child)? In other words, do your clothes refer to something else or only to themselves?"


although i'm sincere about my love for vintage clothes, this could apply to me. however i think all clothes are basically 'costume' even modern ones. there is an added irony; practically all modern clothes refer to some form of earlier archetype / style / era. that's what we do now, steal from the past. which brings us to:


quote "It stems in part from the belief that this generation has little to offer in terms of culture, that everything has already been done..."


i firmly believe that Western culture is basically over, defunct, or at best stagnating. we now live in a cultural museum, free to pick and choose the best of what has been done already. we live in a collage of the past.

 

[sheeplady]

I thought this was relatively well written.

I often wonder about the youth of today. I am a Gen Xer, but close to a millenial. I sense a lot of hopelessness among the youth of today. Sure, my generation saw corruption and greed, but i think due to our birth years we still had strong connections to generations filled with hope and that hope was relatively fresh and strong. The millenials really got dealt a bad hand- two wars, a devestating attack on US soil, a crashing economy, political strife... and if they turn to their parents and the slightly older generation than them they have the disaffected boomers and the watergate gen xers. Neither group tends to have a lot of ideals of hope left. (So many boomers lost their desire or saw their desire to change things squashed, and the gen xers never made it that far in their rage against the system.) In other words, the youth of today don't have a lot of exposure to people who believe it can be different, while they carry a really heavy weight around their neck.

I don't blame a lot of young people for not being invested. Why be invested in a job that you know will disappear? Why be invested in a politician when they will turn out to be corrupt? It's so much easier to hide behind a veil of irony and carelessness than to be invested and have your hopes and feelings trashed.

And to be quite honest, all of these things that these young people are dealing with- war, terrorism, corruption, etc.- aren't of their own making. Not only did this generation get a raw deal from us older generations (who failed to not only change the system but contributed to its corruption) we couldn't even pass the wonderful gift of hope for change and betterment that we were exposed to in our youth.

 

[Edward]

quote "It stems in part from the belief that this generation has little to offer in terms of culture, that everything has already been done..."

And this appears to be the core belief of so many in these parts who so bitterly deride the hipster lifestyle.... talk about ironic!

 

[Metatron]

It's good to see in depth conversations like this about the semiotics of clothes. Of course irony isn't a brand new concept, there was dadaism just to name one movement in the early 20th century, they thought western civilisation was 'defunct' like you say HBK, thought it apparently didn't influence fashion much.

Just read the article. It is actually a neat summary of some thing I have been pondering about.
One phenomenon I have noticed is that there is no waning in the popularity of grotesquely exaggerated, non-ironic sentimentality on screen, as seen in the 'Twilight Saga' while at the same time sincere sentimentality is ridiculed in real life. I find this quite baffling. Almost like mainstream film is more escapist now than it ever was, in spite of all the irony and self awareness. (Or perhaps because of it?)