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

[tonyb]

Are you suggesting there's very little new under the sun, Flicka?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing about the Bright Young Things, though, is that they grew up pretty quick once the Depression came along, Mencken quit editing The Smart Set, and Richard Whitney went to prison.

The irony I loathe is has nothing to do with income or social class, even though a good part of it today is a product of pretentious middle-class white people with too much time on their hands. It's the inability to take *anything* at face value, and the need to take every aspect of culture, hold it up in the air, and put quotation marks around it. When nothing deserves to be taken seriously, when nothing can be accepted or appreciated for what it actually is without having to be wrapped into some wink-wink meta framework, there isn't much point in going on as a civilization.

The Era had its ironic jokers, its Duchamps and its Dalis, but their irony had sincerity at its core. Their successors have irony, but they have nothing to actually be ironic about.

 

[Flicka]

The thing about the Bright Young Things, though, is that they grew up pretty quick once the Depression came along, Mencken quit editing The Smart Set, and Richard Whitney went to prison.

I would say that it was more that irony didn't survive their generation than they as a generation surviving irony. I think Nancy Mitford and her attitude to her sisters' extremism is a brilliant example of an attitude that stayed with many of the Bright Young Things to the end, long after the 30s and WWII had made it obsolete. Brian Howard is another example.

 

[LizzieMaine]

American irony and European irony have always been very different things, though. On this side of the ocean, the Young Things were largely a generation play-acting at being disaffected -- sort of like kids who wanted all the romance of the Lost Generation without actually having to lose anything. Mencken himself recognized this essential hypocrisy about them, and hated them even more than he hated the Babbitts and the Rotarians they were supposedly rebelling against. Dorothy Parker was another who wrote some absolutely scathing things about the essential shallowness of that crowd.

The bright college kids of the mid-thirties were in many ways a throwback to sincerity -- you'd find far more of them interested in joining the Popular Front or the Abraham Lincoln Brigade than in standing around at cocktail parties striking bored poses.

 

[sheeplady]

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.

Self-deprecating humor and a sense of irony about oneself runs in some families here. I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or not, but some families do it and some don't. I was raised in a family with strong "gallows humor" and some people just don't get that because they weren't; I've even been told I have an excessive "morbid" sense of humor about myself by some people.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

The irony discussed in the NYT article is the kind that doesn't live earnestly, and doesn't strive for things that are meaningful to them because that would mean they care, and caring is passe to the Ironic Crowd.

 

[sheeplady]

The irony discussed in the NYT article is the kind that doesn't live earnestly, and doesn't strive for things that are meaningful to them because that would mean they care, and caring is passe to the Ironic Crowd.

Something like that makes me wonder if these individuals don't have some type of mental illness or if not that extreme, something going on that is not that normal psychologically. If you honestly don't care about people, places, or things other than yourself (and especially if you don't even care about yourself) that's not normal.

However, I'm likely to think that this is all just an act and these people care very much about what others think, hence the heavy emphasis on NOT caring to look cool.

 

[nice hat dude!]

If you're 30 something living in Mom&Dads basement not having to work for your existence because Mom&Dad
allow it cause they feel guilty about not having enough time to spend with little Johnny or Sally cause they both have to work nowadays to make ends meet it's very easy to not give a crap or to not be responsible when things are going to be given to you anyway.Perfect example would be my oldest grandson if he breaks his new X-box doesn't matter to him cause Mom's going out and by him a new one anyway and he's 21 doesn't work and doesn't attend school either.Kids are driving around in $70,000.00 pick up trucks and I know I sure as hell can't afford one,maybe I should try to guilt my Mommy into letting me move home so I could!!!Maybe if the parents started being parents instead of letting their children be the bosses we wouldn't have this problem,but we have all got this overprotective ideology going on that we loose sight of the effect it has on our children.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Something like that makes me wonder if these individuals don't have some type of mental illness or if not that extreme, something going on that is not that normal psychologically. If you honestly don't care about people, places, or things other than yourself (and especially if you don't even care about yourself) that's not normal.

However, I'm likely to think that this is all just an act and these people care very much about what others think, hence the heavy emphasis on NOT caring to look cool.

Right. But that means their "interests" aren't genuine, their motives not earnest, because they are not living from within, but rather according to outside dictates.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the Cult of Cool -- which is a dominant part of modern culture -- is a very destructive thing so far as personal identity is concerned. If you feel obligated to display certain attitudes, to dress a certain way, and to listen to a certain type of music because it's "cool" in the eyes of a certain elite group among your peers, you aren't forming or cultivating your own tastes at all. You're simply learning to be a good, mindless consumer. And if you're turning away from the things you do enjoy for fear of being marked as "not cool" or "too mainstream" or whataver, you're learning the same thing.

The biggest lie attached to the Cult of Cool is that falling under its influence makes you more of an individual. Hipsters seem to think that by appropriating stereotypically "uncool" imagery -- largely that of the white working class -- they're repudiating cool and expressing individuality, but they're doing no such thing. They're still slaves to the concept of "cool" by allowing their identities and tastes to be defined entirely by their peer group.

You expect this sort of behavior among adolescents -- but if you're in your twenties or thirties or forties and still trying desperately to show the world how "cool" you are, can you truly be considered an adult?

 

[nice hat dude!]

Individuality ..now that's an interesting word,back when the skinhead look was in I was in Vancouver B.C. walking around came upon a group of young guys I'd say in their late teens early twenties all dressed in their leathers and Doc Marten's with swastika tattoos so I asked one of them what it was all about and he said that they were promoting their individuality I had to inform the poor lad that the word individual meant singular alone one of a kind and there are 15 of you all dressed alike,doesn't sound to individual to me,I would propose the same thing goes no matter what the dress if you start to dress like everybody else to fit in you're really not trying to be an individual your just trying to fit in because of the fear of repercussions for being different.Every body is so caught up on other peoples opinion that they loose there own individuality.I'd say most folks really need to work on their insecurities and their self confidence levels so they can become their own person.Just a thought!!

 

[kiwilrdg]

with swastika tattoos so I asked one of them what it was all about and he said that they were promoting their individuality

The scarey part is that they would think of a swastika as a symbol that would promote individuality.

 

[jamespowers]

You expect this sort of behavior among adolescents -- but if you're in your twenties or thirties or forties and still trying desperately to show the world how "cool" you are, can you truly be considered an adult?

That is an easy one. NO.

 

[kiwilrdg]

You expect this sort of behavior among adolescents -- but if you're in your twenties or thirties or forties and still trying desperately to show the world how "cool" you are, can you truly be considered an adult?

We are in an a time that someone is not expected to have their own home when they are in their twenties and thirties. When I was in my twenties and thirties I was too busy supporting my family to be cool. The world needs to have more role-models that carry their own weight so it will be cool to be a real adult.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or even better, just abolish the concept of "cool" altogether.

 

[jamespowers]

Or even better, just abolish the concept of "cool" altogether.

And replace that with Responsible.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

And replace that with Responsible.

It used to be cool to be responsible. It used to be hip to be square. No irony in my statement!

 

[sheeplady]

We are in an a time that someone is not expected to have their own home when they are in their twenties and thirties. When I was in my twenties and thirties I was too busy supporting my family to be cool. The world needs to have more role-models that carry their own weight so it will be cool to be a real adult.

I don't think it's just a matter of role models, but circumstance that make people responsible. People who lose their safety net (or never had one) tend to be pretty responsible people because they have to be, particularly if they have obligations to meet. Or perhaps it is obligations that cause responsibility- I've known a number of trust fund babies who were very responsible and careful with their money because they had a sense of obligations. Feeling or being in debt to someone is a pretty good motivator (both in the financial and social sense).

 

[jamespowers]

It used to be cool to be responsible. It used to be hip to be square. No irony in my statement!

Hmmm....
[video=youtube_share;LB5YkmjalDg]http://youtu.be/LB5YkmjalDg[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

It used to be cool to be responsible. It used to be hip to be square. No irony in my statement!

Exactly. I grew up with no concept of "cool" or any aspiration to be "cool." I was taught that I should work hard, be responsible, and live up to my obligations, and that all of these things would be expected of me as an adult, so I'd better start learning them as a kid, and that's all there was to it. The idea of "cool" never entered into any of it.