"Unhappy Hipsters" Blog

[Touchofevil]

Normally that would be my approach too. However, this thread has developed a sort of horrific fascination for me as it seems to have become a microcosm of all the negatives about this place. You expect any subculture to have a certain sense of 'We're Doing It Right', but the sort of thread that proclaims "we're so much better than the normals", or these with the Hipster (whatever that is...) cast as the new FL Hate Figure... These things seem to be much more common than they used to be round here, and I suppose some of us just don't like that, and feel the need to challenge it. I live very close to Shoredtich - London's Hipster Central - and I really don't get the attraction. So much of the London version does seem to rely on doing everything ironically', that they appear to never wear / eat / listen to / do anything they actually like for itself. But they're not doing me any harm, I suppose, and the more subculture groups there are, the better - makes it easier for me to do my own thing too. If anything, I've found I've learned a lot about myself from observing other subculture groups and how they operate, how I react to them as an outsider to their norms, and so on. I don't want to get involved in this ongoing dispute here as it seems after altogether too many pages to have descended into something really rather more mean-spirited than is dignified, but sometimes some of us do feel the need to question these things. I ignore a lot on here that belies the more negative side, but the whole hipster thing is becoming tedious.



Sadly, the true irony of this is that the place that has so often so smugly celebrated itself as the most civilised place on the web seems to so readily descend into the sort of passive aggression, defining itself by what it is against rather than what it is for, that we see everywhere else. I'm certainly not immune ot it myself (can never resist kicking off about that damn over-grown sports day farce currently going on in London... ), but it does seem recently to have become endemic.

Hear, hear!

 

[Undertow]

*edit
Forget anything you might have seen. I've deleted it. This argument was over threads ago.

I'd like to add to what Lizzie said about working class language. Yes.

My mom used to say, "If you don't stop that g***amned crying, I'll tear your tongue out of your skull," or there was my grandfather, "If you kids don't stop runnin' around this room, I'm going to knock your g***amned teeth out and throw 'em away!"

It was just real enough that you believed it, and just gruesome enough that it sent fear down your spine.

Middle class folk look at us like rubes, or foul mouthed idiots. [huh] We're just trying to paint a picture, you might say.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandmother, as nice a little small-town grape-juice Methodist lady as you'd ever meet:

IF YOU DON'T SETTLE DOWN IN THAT BACK SEAT I'M GONNA HAVE YOUR FRIGGIN' HEAD FOR A HOOD ORNAMENT!

Or my all-time favorite, courtesy of my dear old Ma --

SHUT THE HELL UP OR I'M SENDIN' YOU TO THE BABY OIL FACTORY!

 

[Flicka]

My mother - who is, like I've said, anything but working class - used to say to my sister and me: "If you two aren't quiet I'm going to grab one of you and bash the other with!" Then again, she's Swedish and has no idea what is expected of the American middle class...

 

[Amy Jeanne]

My family *is* working class (dad worked as a mold maker, mom was a waitress, I worked in a factory for 7 years, most of my relatives live in trailer parks, etc...) and they've never said anything like that to us kids. They rarely said any vulgar language around us. That was something I developed on my own in adulthood...lol

To this day, I still feel uncomfortable using curse words in front of my mom. And also proves everyone's working class experience is different.

 

[Touchofevil]

Too many generalizations and too much misdirected anger in this thread has made it difficult to be a part of the discussion.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another thing my grandmother used to say was "if you keep scratchin' those damn blackfly bites you'll catch an infection." So as far as I'm concerned with this thread, the blackflies can keep biting all they want, but I'm done scratchin'.

 

[dhermann1]

Wow. What happened to my nice little thread? I thought people might want to commenton THE PHOTOGRAPHS.

 

[jlee562]

So jlee562, it sounds like you're describing youths who have genuine interests who are simply living their lives. It just so happens that they are "hipsters" by the loose definition. On the other hand, Lizzie is describing obnoxious kids who emulate the "hipster" subculture. Unfortunately, both are hipsters.

Same thing happened with the "grunge scene", much to the chagrin and protest of actual grunge acolytes in the Pacific Northwest. Same thing happened with the "hippies" of the late 60's - there were those who actually lived on communes and became self-sufficient, then there was the group who had unprotected, random sex and did drugs. Both are hippies.

(again, snipped for brevity, no offense intended)

Excellent points to which I would agree to both. And funnily enough, I was going to make an analogy to the grunge scene as well as it shared some of the same aesthetics. I also attempted to illustrate this with my example of punk rock starting in London and then moving across the pond. Hipsterism, if you will, started as an urban movement. When asked if I thought San Francisco hipsters were more "authentic" I said yes. I believe this is the case, but I also believe this is objectively true.

If I can draw another analogy: Chinese food. 95% of what is consumed in the US as "Chinese Food" is really nothing of the sort. It's an adaptation using Chinese techniques, Chinese flavors, and some Chinese ingredients, but a dish like sweet and sour pork, with the nuclear orange colored sauce, would be unrecognizable to someone living in mainland China. There is a pork dish with sweet and sour flavor profiles which comes from Harbin, but it looks nothing like its American cousin.

Being that hipsterism started as an urban movement, when you see it pop up in places that aren't urbanized, in as much as you could say that there is "authentic" hipsterism, it's in urban spaces, not in small towns. My only point as it relates to authenticity/in-authenticity, is that the arguments made against "hipsters" described by Lizzy, do not accurately reflect what hipsters actually are or stand for.

Whenever you assume that one experience is "normal" you assume that other experiences are "abnormal." That's the bias and othering. Having your entire life (including the way you look at the world, the way you grew up, the values you hold) considered "abnormal" or in the very least "less valid" than another group is a huge bias against a group of people.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about class, race, religion, etc.; society has decided what the "normal" experience is and anyone who falls outside that experience becomes abnormal. By one group having privilege; just by the fact that privilege exists means that some other group lacks that privilege by definition. That's bias- giving one group privilege over another.

I find nothing disagreeable here, and it echoes things I've said in this thread. I would point out that I'm not the one trying to judge the validity of anyone's existence however. As social creatures, humans innately understand the dichotomy between self and other and we all do that. Neither working class folk, or hipsters are immune from it.

 

[jlee562]

My family *is* working class (dad worked as a mold maker, mom was a waitress, I worked in a factory for 7 years, most of my relatives live in trailer parks, etc...) and they've never said anything like that to us kids. They rarely said any vulgar language around us. That was something I developed on my own in adulthood...lol

To this day, I still feel uncomfortable using curse words in front of my mom. And also proves everyone's working class experience is different.

Exactly! It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to generalize what it means to be "working class." What it means to be working class in America in 2012 is not the same thing that it meant to be working class in 1960, 1940, or heck, even 1990! And that experience varies regionally, it varies with ethnicity, it varies with religion, etc, etc, etc.

That's what makes it such a tenuous proposition when one holds someone else's experience to be inauthentic because it didn't conform with their own.

 

[ButteMT61]

And yet I still don't know what colors hipster babies wear... lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hipster babies? With those tight pants? It'll never happen.

(OK, now I'm really done.)

 

[Undertow]

Hipster babies? With those tight pants? It'll never happen.

(OK, now I'm really done.)

:drum:

lol

 

[jlee562]

Food for thought:
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/07/culture-war-no-more/

Culture war suggests a battle to the death. But the metaphor is wrong and therefore fosters poor thinking. A culture is not something with which to do battle, either as an offensive weapon or an object of attack. A culture is a living thing, an inheritance, passed on from generation to generation. It is preserved by loving care not militant brow-beating. It cannot survive as a merely negative opposition to something perceived as its opposite. It is a creative, developing expression of a people’s view of the world that reaches ultimately to the highest things: to the good, the true, and the beautiful. To weaponize culture is, therefore, to destroy the very thing for which the battle is ostensibly waged.

The task before those who would preserve culture is one of creation. It is to build, to steward, and to show by example the possibilities for living well. Of course, as with the poor, the enemies of culture will always be with us. However, they cannot be defeated by tactics of their own choosing. The tactics of culture are persuasive, they are rooted in practices born of love, commitment, and hard work. There is much to be done.

 

[Edward]

punk rock starting in London and then moving across the pond.

Mostly on the same page, but.... punk rock as it became known really started in the US, in the New York scene that sprung up around CBGBs in the early 70s. The Ramones and the New York Dolls (proto-punks, the latter) were definitely significant influences on the London scene - it's often noted that when the Ramones played the Roundhouse in Camden Town on 4th July 1976, almost everyone who became anyone in the London scene was there. Further afield, the scenes in Manchester, as well as in Ireland, were at least as influenced by the US material as the London scene. What the Londoners brought to it was a certain "Year Zero" mentality. Whereas the Ramones were about stripping away the prog nonsense and taking rock and roll back to it's fun essentials, a band like the Pistols proclaimed the past dead and 'everything starts here' (of course they too were inevitably influenced by the past, but it made a great story / battle-cry). That's overly simplistic, of course - Joe Strummer for one was an old rockabilly who never lost that side. Still, it was there. So in reality it was more a case of the London scene giving back to the US something that had started over there - much like Jagger and Richards took the blues to america by drawing US attention to the likes of Muddy Waters, languishing all but forgotten. Crude analogy, but a similar situation. Of course, whereas punk at least troubled the UK mainstream in 1977, it never made an impact nationally in the US back then.... really, it was the success of the grunge movement in 1991 in the US that to some extent finally broke punk across the USA. At least insofar as one can ever simplify these things into movements....

You're bang on about Chinese food, BTW. What is also fascinating is to see the same process in reverse when you go into a Western restaurant in Beijing...

 

[jlee562]

Mostly on the same page, but.... punk rock as it became known really started in the US, in the New York scene that sprung up around CBGBs in the early 70s. The Ramones and the New York Dolls (proto-punks, the latter) were definitely significant influences on the London scene - it's often noted that when the Ramones played the Roundhouse in Camden Town on 4th July 1976, almost everyone who became anyone in the London scene was there. Further afield, the scenes in Manchester, as well as in Ireland, were at least as influenced by the US material as the London scene. What the Londoners brought to it was a certain "Year Zero" mentality. Whereas the Ramones were about stripping away the prog nonsense and taking rock and roll back to it's fun essentials, a band like the Pistols proclaimed the past dead and 'everything starts here' (of course they too were inevitably influenced by the past, but it made a great story / battle-cry). That's overly simplistic, of course - Joe Strummer for one was an old rockabilly who never lost that side. Still, it was there. So in reality it was more a case of the London scene giving back to the US something that had started over there - much like Jagger and Richards took the blues to america by drawing US attention to the likes of Muddy Waters, languishing all but forgotten. Crude analogy, but a similar situation. Of course, whereas punk at least troubled the UK mainstream in 1977, it never made an impact nationally in the US back then.... really, it was the success of the grunge movement in 1991 in the US that to some extent finally broke punk across the USA. At least insofar as one can ever simplify these things into movements....

You're bang on about Chinese food, BTW. What is also fascinating is to see the same process in reverse when you go into a Western restaurant in Beijing...

Ahh, of course you are correct. Shame on me for forgetting the Ramones (and the MC5 and New York Dolls). So ok, maybe I didn't employ a good punk rock analogy, but I'm sticking with the Chinese food one

Point being there may be Chinese food in the US and in China, and they're related, they're similar, they share the same roots. But they're not the same. To Undertow's earlier point that "On the other hand, Lizzie is describing obnoxious kids who emulate the "hipster" subculture. Unfortunately, both are hipsters." One may call them hipsters, they might even think themselves hipsters, but they're not really hipsters.

 

[sheeplady]

I find nothing disagreeable here, and it echoes things I've said in this thread. I would point out that I'm not the one trying to judge the validity of anyone's existence however. As social creatures, humans innately understand the dichotomy between self and other and we all do that. Neither working class folk, or hipsters are immune from it.

You may agree with it now, but a few pages ago you were questioning if there was inherent bias against the working class:

It also doesn't mean that there is an inherent bias against the working class.

It has to be one or the other. Do you think that othering leads to bias or not?

 

[sheeplady]

Wow. What happened to my nice little thread? I thought people might want to commenton THE PHOTOGRAPHS.

The photographs are totally hilarious. I can't believe anybody lives in the those places though. They must be the people who go paperless. And bookless. And stuffless.

 

[David Conwill]

The photographs are totally hilarious. I can't believe anybody lives in the those places though. They must be the people who go paperless. And bookless. And stuffless.

A lot of then remind me unsettlingly of the FLLW "Usonian Automatic" in which I had the misfortune to attempt living back in 2005. Apparently people do it, but I don't know how.

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

I had no idea that upper and middle class people were social pariahs. I always suspected but this thread confirms it. Thanks

Ahh, of course you are correct. Shame on me for forgetting the Ramones (and the MC5 and New York Dolls). So ok, maybe I didn't employ a good punk rock analogy, but I'm sticking with the Chinese food one

Point being there may be Chinese food in the US and in China, and they're related, they're similar, they share the same roots. But they're not the same. To Undertow's earlier point that "On the other hand, Lizzie is describing obnoxious kids who emulate the "hipster" subculture. Unfortunately, both are hipsters." One may call them hipsters, they might even think themselves hipsters, but they're not really hipsters.

Well the true hipsters have to start policing the wannabe hipsters. Those wannabes are ruining it for all the true hipsters. The true hipsters have must have higher standards before they just let anyone in.

As someone mentioned earlier, its always the ones late to the game that ruin it. When your mom and dad start dressing like a any popular trend then its time to move on.