Why!!!! Hipsters!!! Why!!!!!

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I lasted about 25 seconds. No hipster blood in my veins.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Melody and harmony are so mainstream.

 

[jamespowers]

Melody and harmony are so mainstream.

Yeah it is obvious there. :rofl:

 

[jamespowers]

I lasted about 25 seconds. No hipster blood in my veins.

Well, I tried to give them the benefit of doubt but now I am sorry I did.:eusa_doh:

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

:doh:

Parenthetical Girls -- Evelyn McHale

[video=youtube;_k8NR-JMajQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k8NR-JMajQ[/video]

 

[jamespowers]

:doh:

Parenthetical Girls -- Evelyn McHale

[video=youtube;_k8NR-JMajQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k8NR-JMajQ[/video]

The donkey could sing better than this dope! Holy Crimony! I am tired of whiny singing groups like this. I thought that stuff went out with The Cure.:eusa_doh:

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

[L]ike I said the music itself wasn't bad as long as they didn't sing...

Seconded.

I'm pretty sure hipster music consists of bands producing terrible music yet people buy their records/cassettes/cds/digital downloads anyways. Isn't that ironic?

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Where can we find other examples of nonironic living? What does it look like? Nonironic models include very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind. My friend Robert Pogue Harrison put it this way in a recent conversation: “Wherever the real imposes itself, it tends to dissipate the fogs of irony.”

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

What a POS article. Some good points, but then she goes off the elitist deep end.

 

[LizzieMaine]

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.

I think this is an excellent point -- the hipster is merely the ultimate end product of the postwar consumer culture, the creation of a society that can only survive by eating its own dung. But I think it's impossible for her to truly grasp the pre-irony world because she was never a part of it. You have to have lived at least part of your life in a time and place before everything was "camp" and "kitsch" and "irony" to really be able to live that way now.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I think this is an excellent point -- the hipster is merely the ultimate end product of the postwar consumer culture, the creation of a society that can only survive by eating its own dung. But I think it's impossible for her to truly grasp the pre-irony world because she was never a part of it.

But I think she also is unable to grasp the working-class reality of most of America, which I don't lump into "economically challenged" although who isn't these days...

Irony is a defense and toy that not everyone grasps when feeling insecure.

 

[LizzieMaine]

But I think she also is unable to grasp the working-class reality of most of America, which I don't lump into "economically challenged" although who isn't these days...

Irony is a defense and toy that not everyone grasps when feeling insecure.

100 percent agreed. There's a reason they call it "the ivory tower," after all.

I'd like to have her come around my town for an afternoon. I could show her entire neighborhoods of ordinary people who have never eaten ironic food, listened to ironic music, worn ironic hairstyles, worked at ironic jobs or hobbies, or posted ironic videos on You Tube of themselves doing stupid things ironically. But they're a class of people that, from her writing, I have to assume she'll never encounter on her own.

I also take issue with her argument that the '90s were relatively free of irony. Maybe it's because I was in my thirties then and not my teens, but I found the irony of that era as insufferable as that of this era. An age that gave us "Seinfeld" and "Beavis and Butt-Head" can hardly be said to be irony-free, even in relative terms.

 

[CharleneC]

Where can we find other examples of nonironic living? What does it look like? Nonironic models include very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind. My friend Robert Pogue Harrison put it this way in a recent conversation: “Wherever the real imposes itself, it tends to dissipate the fogs of irony.”

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

What a POS article. Some good points, but then she goes off the elitist deep end.

I thought the article was good. I don't see where she is being elitist.

 

[sheeplady]

Where can we find other examples of nonironic living? What does it look like? Nonironic models include very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind. My friend Robert Pogue Harrison put it this way in a recent conversation: “Wherever the real imposes itself, it tends to dissipate the fogs of irony.”

s
For some strange reason, this paragraph disturbs the crud out of me. Maybe it's because I fail to know that many people who aren't serious about bills, shelter, life in general, etc. Sure, I've known a few really rich people (who didn't need to care about money, ever) but even they weren't that flippant about life.

I, for one, can't believe that there is a whole group of people who aren't serious about that type of thing. You would have to be independently wealthy or darned good at living by your wits to survive if you fail to care about how you will pay for shelter and food. Even most of the upper middle class people I know are worried about money- sometimes more than the working poor I know- because they are spread so thin due to debt and financial demands they have put on themselves. They are actually living closer to the bone because of their obligations.

 

[ButteMT61]

Do you have any idea how many wealthy people there are? And they have kids. These kids are what I see as hipsters. And/or lifetime students. Both happily wasting their parents moola.
We went to a play last night at UCLA. Drove through Beverly Hills to see my Dad's old place. Miles and miles of rich families. Same here in Pasadena, Alta Dena, Toluca Lake, San Marino. It goes on forever, and there's offspring galore. That's why I take road trips and stop to eat at truck stops. None of that there. And no, I'm not against the 1% - I want the good life too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Do you have any idea how many wealthy people there are? And they have kids. These kids are what I see as hipsters. And/or lifetime students. Both happily wasting their parents moola.

Hipster Irony is what fills the vacuum at the heart of a consumption-driven society.

 

[tonyb]

I figure that no one has any control over his or her origins. And I suspect that most resentment of people richer than oneself is simply jealousy.

To call the circumstances of my own background "modest" would be granting it more dignity than would be fitting. But I got nothing against the relatively well to do, unless they fail to recognize the advantages they have enjoyed. (You know, the guy born on third base who thought he hit a triple.) I've had my advantages as well, some of which I've put to good use, others of which I've completely squandered.

"Snark" is a term that, in my experience, has only recently gained currency, but there's nothing new about smart-ass youngsters who come across as if they think they're smarter and generally better than others. (You know, every generation seems to go through a phase when they think they invented sex.) But I suspect it's all bluff and cover. People who gotta feel superior are compensating for their own sense of inferiority. Most people grow out of it. Some don't. Too bad for them.

 

[Dan Allen]

Just watching the F1 race in Austin---wish I had bought some stetson stock a couple of week ago!

 

[sheeplady]

Do you have any idea how many wealthy people there are? And they have kids. These kids are what I see as hipsters. And/or lifetime students. Both happily wasting their parents moola.
We went to a play last night at UCLA. Drove through Beverly Hills to see my Dad's old place. Miles and miles of rich families. Same here in Pasadena, Alta Dena, Toluca Lake, San Marino. It goes on forever, and there's offspring galore. That's why I take road trips and stop to eat at truck stops. None of that there. And no, I'm not against the 1% - I want the good life too.

Most of the pretentious snobby kids I have met are from families who are NOT in the 1%. I do know a few adults who have never had to worry about money. But I kind of look at it as their business- if they stay out of my business I'll stay out of theirs. I'm not going to judge how they spend their money on their kids anymore than I would want them to do the same with me. If their parents are supporting them, paying for their schooling, etc. that is their business. I don't want these people to come and look at my finances and judge me for it and I'm not going to go and look at theirs.

If you raise your kids to think they are better than anyone who falls outside of their class just by virtue of their birth- be it higher or lower than the station they were born into- you raised a snob. There is nothing righteous in raising someone who categorically judges other's based upon their socioeconomic class anymore than someone who categorically judges other's based upon race.

 

[ThemThereEyes]

Most of the pretentious snobby kids I have met are from families who are NOT in the 1%. I do know a few adults who have never had to worry about money. But I kind of look at it as their business- if they stay out of my business I'll stay out of theirs. I'm not going to judge how they spend their money on their kids anymore than I would want them to do the same with me. If their parents are supporting them, paying for their schooling, etc. that is their business. I don't want these people to come and look at my finances and judge me for it and I'm not going to go and look at theirs.

If you raise your kids to think they are better than anyone who falls outside of their class just by virtue of their birth- be it higher or lower than the station they were born into- you raised a snob. There is nothing righteous in raising someone who categorically judges other's based upon their socioeconomic class anymore than someone who categorically judges other's based upon race.

Well said, Sheep Lady. Live and let live!

 

[Flicka]

To be fair, I know a good deal of people who are ironic all the time and it has nothing to do with income in my experience. Irony in the self-deprecating sense (what we in Swedish call "self-irony") in the face of hardship is actually a tradition here, going back to the Viking era sagas. You must pretend to be stoic and ironic even in the shadow of the gallows or you lose face completely. Also, if you don't make fun and light of your own troubles, you obviously think you're special and that's a cardinal sin in Swedish.

However, to use irony against someone else, to make fun of someone else, or as a code used to exclude people who are not "in", that's just passive-aggressive and clique-ish. But it's also not something new. If you look at the cool clique in the 20s, the Bright Young Things, they took it to the extreme. Hipsters have nothing on them.