The Future Is Getting Brighter Every Year

December 4, 2009 9:38 AM

The Evolution of the Hipster 2000-2009
posted by Mountain Goatse (272 comments total)

The evolution of the hipster 1810s, 1770s and 1950s.
posted by ardgedee at 9:42 AM on December 4, 2009 [30 favorites]

Eponysterical.
posted by Diablevert at 9:43 AM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

It starts at 2000? Is this like the human-race-is-10k-years-old...
posted by Pax at 9:44 AM on December 4, 2009

* throws fixie through this thread's window *

¡CHINGADA!
posted by everichon at 9:45 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

I see that Paste is still bland as hell.
Did you see what I did there?
Was this comment hipster-esque enough?
I just want a hug...
posted by sciurus at 9:45 AM on December 4, 2009

See that hipster? That's you that is.
posted by i_cola at 9:45 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

Hipsters are people who think they're cooler than hipsters.
posted by Benjy at 9:49 AM on December 4, 2009 [35 favorites]

The Evolution of the Obsession With the "Hipster" Label 2000-2009

2000-2004: Hipwhat?
2005: Heh
2006-2009: Ugh, this again?
posted by DU at 9:50 AM on December 4, 2009 [36 favorites]

That was no evolution, it was all design.

never ever thought I'd ever write that sentence.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 9:51 AM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

I'm going to post this on my wall ironically.
posted by brain_drain at 9:52 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Those people all look fun and interesting.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2009 [23 favorites]

What a weird feature. It just doesn't quiiite make fun of them all the way, but it's not just a taxonomy either. Also, these hipsters are much better dressed than the indigenous ones around here.

I might be hipster, though, because I like Twee's pants.
posted by cmoj at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2009

I looked into the evolution of hipsters before it was cool.
posted by m0nm0n at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend? Was anyone really wearing it in 2003?

Ch-ch-ch-chip 'n' Dale! Rescue Rangers!
posted by Metroid Baby at 9:54 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Alberta Canada is still drifting around the 2008-ish style "Williamsburg", but less one-speed bike and more fedora/doughboy caps. Also cigarettes.

None of those hipsters are smoking except the Twee?
posted by Khazk at 9:55 AM on December 4, 2009

I call bullshit. No hipster from as late as 2005 would get a Chinese or Japanese language tattoo.

In general, I think the content of the post is extremely lazy. I predict the comments will follow suit.
posted by hermitosis at 9:56 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

2009: The Meta-Nerd - What the what?
posted by Artw at 9:58 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I really don't see the evolution. Starting in 89 or so, I went to shows every damn weekend at our various DIY places in Indianapolis. In 97 I moved to Boston. In those 8 years, there were people, some of them me, dressed like every one of these models (excepting products not available, like ipods and starbucks).

Full-on chest tattoo? Yep, that straightedge girl from Louisville (Dayton?) who would be there anytime a hardcore band was playing.

Scarf, plastic glasses and argyle sweater? I think that was every member of Enkindle.

White belt? Even *I* owned one.

Trucker hats? Mine was from the "House of Screws".

Neckbeards? There were always one or two, then there were hundreds after Hot Water Music came through town.

The only big changes I notice are the colored plastic glasses (we only had white), $200 raw denim jeans (we wouldn't have been able to afford them)0, and an improvement in the baseline standard for colored tattoo work.

And even if the quality of this article is lacking, I rarely see people out dressed in a way that I find new or interesting. Am I right that there really isn't much change in 'hipster' the last 20 years, or are there details that I am simply missing? I freely admit that anything involve cut or texture is likely to go right over my head.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 10:00 AM on December 4, 2009 [19 favorites]

The final-phase "meta-nerd" doesn't seem that fleshed out. Can someone younger than me and more connected with scenesters explain this one?

I'd say the funny thing about this spread is that it tracks hipster evolution in the year for which those trends were mentioned in "articles about hipsters" rather than the actual point at which the trend began. The mustache-and-fixie-bicycle fixation predates 2008, but it wasn't until 2008 that people were saying "gee, what's with all these hipsters and their fixed-gear bicycles?"
posted by deanc at 10:02 AM on December 4, 2009

I think Wikipedia paints a more accurate picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_fashion
posted by rq at 10:03 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I suspect most posters here are younger than the first joke about someone having a chinese/japanese tattoo and not knowing what it means.
posted by Artw at 10:05 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

1970s hipsters.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:05 AM on December 4, 2009

Can we stop pretending the 80s were cool soon?
posted by Artw at 10:06 AM on December 4, 2009 [19 favorites]

I'm going out to a bar tonight and I haven't shaved in a few weeks, can someone tell me if neck beards are in this week?
posted by empath at 10:09 AM on December 4, 2009

My inability to grow anything but patchy, light facial hair prevented me from even considering growing a 90s-era goattee or an 00s-era mountainman neckbeard. And for that, I thank my parents for giving me such good genes that kept me out of trouble.
posted by deanc at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2009

So what happens if you're a hipster and you get a chinese/japanese tattoo on your forearm and then the next thing you know, everybody and their fucking grandma has one? Do you loose your ironypowers or do you claim extra-super-irony-powers because of the fact that everybody has one?
posted by Avenger at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Can we stop pretending the 80s were cool soon?
posted by Artw

Never gonna give (that) up.
posted by haveanicesummer at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2009 [14 favorites]

I suspect most posters here are younger than the first joke about someone having a chinese/japanese tattoo and not knowing what it means.

AND THEY WONT GET OFF MY LAWN!
posted by JimmyJames at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2009

In my day, hipsters wore onions on their belts.
posted by Ratio at 10:13 AM on December 4, 2009 [11 favorites]

This article fails to take into account a crucial element of Hipster Studies: geographical relativism. A timeline of overall hipsterdom only works for a single location, for as we all know, trends take time to disseminate from their point of origin (say from Williamsburg to Omaha). But we also must consider the size of the urban population of an area before any hipster classification can begin. When I lived in Toronto, I was not a hipster but a normal 20-something urban guy. But whoa, I go move to a very modest sized American city out west and I am apparently a big time hipster. It's all relative.

Furthermore, I would argue the sun has set on the True Hipster. There has been an all out assault on irony and the hipster scene for years now, with hipster icons like Klosterman now openly arguing for greater sincerity in hipster culture. So, I assume by now Hipsterdom is dead out east and I will witness its last agonizing groans here in the heartland.
posted by boubelium at 10:14 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Hipsterism is a religion to which you gotta be devout.
posted by haveanicesummer at 10:16 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

I just punched my computer screen ten times. Really hard.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 10:16 AM on December 4, 2009

I hope so Artw.
posted by Submiqent at 10:17 AM on December 4, 2009

YOUNG PEOPLE AM I RITE?
posted by The Whelk at 10:18 AM on December 4, 2009 [9 favorites]

Can we stop pretending the 80s were cool soon?

Who's pretending?
posted by scrowdid at 10:19 AM on December 4, 2009

Can we stop pretending the 80s were cool soon?

It's not pretend. They really were awesome. Sorry you missed it.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:19 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

Well, this was disappointing.
posted by Wolfdog at 10:20 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Who's pretending?
posted by scrowdid

Chrissie Hynde.
posted by haveanicesummer at 10:21 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

The 80's weren't cool. THEY WERE DAYGLO SPANDEX AWESOMENESS TO THE MAX.

I'll shiv anyone who says different.
posted by oddman at 10:23 AM on December 4, 2009

There has been an all out assault on irony and the hipster scene for years now, with hipster icons like Klosterman now openly arguing for greater sincerity in hipster culture.

At that point, it ceases to be "hipster culture." Seriously, a bunch of sincere, earnest people gathered together to earnestly raise awareness about a serious issue is, by definition, not a "hipster scene," even though such groups may themselves contain hipsters.

On the other hand, calling for people to stop taking hipster irony and detachment so seriously and mocking it by being more sincere and earnest is, itself, the sort of thing I would expect out of hipsters.
posted by deanc at 10:23 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

Evolution? NO! De-volution! D - E - V - O!

O-HI-oh!
posted by loquacious at 10:25 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

As a longtime hipster, let me point out that this doesn't map out the evolution of the word hipster, but the growing misapplication of the word to a trendy group of scenesters. I find no connection between today's hipsters and these guys.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:27 AM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

*gets louder*

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

*gets louder*

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGH

*stares blankly into the sky as his shout tears his vocal chords*

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
posted by codacorolla at 10:27 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'll shiv anyone who says different.
posted by oddman at 1:23 PM

The 80s were awful. I'll be waiting for you out back by the dumpster.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 10:28 AM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

Poorly conceived, researched and executed. This slideshow will someday serve as the cornerstone of intellectual thought in regards to the culture of the early 21st century. And VH1's successors will have years of argumentative material concerning truth, myth and legend surrounding the privileged youth of the day. Haight Ashbury today, Williamsburg tomorrow.

Fuck it, I think I should secure my retirement by starting a new anti-social trend, documenting it as too cool to acknowledge its own existence and twenty years later selling t-shirts to suburbanites/midwesterners from a former locale that I'll claim was the epicenter of the happening. Just like they do at Cheers The Bull & Finch.

In the historical context it makes me sick, but then again, I'm just waiting for the time when I can angrily walk around in my flannel shirts again, pissed off that I'm WMA.
posted by jsavimbi at 10:28 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

> It's not pretend. They really were awesome. Sorry you missed it.

I was there. The 80s were not awesome. VH1 has misled you.

(Okay, I'll concede this much: Being present to witness the personal computer progress from the domain of electronics hobbyists in the 70s to consumer commodity in the 90s was pretty awesome. The rest of it was not.)
posted by ardgedee at 10:30 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

A guy like this totally got my number a few years back. It's fun to be able to laugh about it now. Yep, that's basically who I am and what I look like. Except for the hair color.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 10:31 AM on December 4, 2009 [9 favorites]

There has been an all out assault on irony and the hipster scene for years now, with hipster icons like Klosterman now openly arguing for greater sincerity in hipster culture.

I think we've found our way out of the rabbit hole.

I cannot picture a hipster arguing that they were earnest back when it wasn't cool.

On preview: damnit, deanc, you beat me to it.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 10:32 AM on December 4, 2009

I've pretty much had enough of this. This and Sarah Palin posts.
posted by MarshallPoe at 10:36 AM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

This is a funny idea, but I was honestly hoping for more detail. Still, the transition from the Y2K look to the 2003 look to the 2006/2007 look to the 2008 look was fairly well-observed. It also makes me nostalgic. I was a freshman at NYU at that time, and that to me very much seems like the year just before the hipster became the art school equivalent of a frat boy / sorority sister type.

I was honestly surprised to see no references whatsoever to gentrification. Maybe it's my NYC bias, but I always associated hipsterdom with a young person living in a not-traditionally-white-and-middle-class neighborhood and spending a lot of his/her time and money on looking cool.

I'm less surprised by the lack of a Nathan Barley reference, but still.

At any rate, I think the invocation of Williamsburg should come earlier in the timeline and that the PBR reference comes too early. Neener neener. Also, I may be wrong, but I think really tight T-shirts on skinny guys were big around 2000-2003, but that's over now.

As for hipsters gaining sincerity: I don't know one way or another if that's a thing that's happening, but I wonder if that's just a product of "hipsters" growing up, especially in an economic downturn. In 2004, it's easy, when you're a young educated liberal, to feel like there's no point to doing much more than looking good, sneering, and digging for obscure cuts. In 2009, it's less cute, especially if you had already spent a lot of time sneering in 2004.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:37 AM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

Two hipsters angrily call each other "Hipsters".
posted by Taft at 10:37 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've pretty much had enough of this. This and Sarah Palin posts.


I had a dream about Sarah Palin last night. In my dream, she was well-known for building cross-party alliances and putting compassion before judgment when dealing with people in unfortunate situations.
posted by not that girl at 10:37 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

The yourscenesucks.com version is a billion times funnier.
posted by fire&wings at 10:39 AM on December 4, 2009

I'm less surprised by the lack of a Nathan Barley reference, but still.

More of a dot com boom thing, and therefore outside of the sphere of modern hipster-hate.
posted by Artw at 10:41 AM on December 4, 2009

I'll shiv anyone who says different.
posted by oddman at 1:23 PM

The 80s were awful. I'll be waiting for you out back by the dumpster.

When you guys get there, I'll tie your wrists together and then you can circle each other with an exquisite blend of rhythm and menace to an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo while your respective posses combine into a perfectly choreographed chorus line. Then I'll go submit myself to inexplicably elaborate facial surgery.

That's right, kids - everything you need to know about how hard the '80s sucked can be read in a time-lapse sequence of the King of Pop's face. Load the Replacements onto the escape craft and then nuke that decade from orbit. It's the only way to know for sure.
posted by gompa at 10:42 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

Oh for crying out loud, all you goddamn hipsters bitching about Paste Magazine pisses me off. Derivative and poorly written? WTF? Go back to carrying your unread Malcolm Lowry around and trying to look cool. Paste isn't for you, twenty something hipster, it's for me, fourty something dad trying to remain a tiny bit current. This is the height of fourty-one year old wit. It's awesome because it's true, truth hurts.

Now go get some gears on your bike.
posted by Keith Talent at 10:43 AM on December 4, 2009 [16 favorites]

[Nathan Barley is m]ore of a dot com boom thing, and therefore outside of the sphere of modern hipster-hate.

Wow. I had never really made that connection before, but you are totally correct.

I had a dream about Sarah Palin last night. In my dream, she was well-known for building cross-party alliances and putting compassion before judgment when dealing with people in unfortunate situations.

That's funny, because I had a dream she had a lotus chest tattoo under her plaid top and that she had a sick collection of Sun O))) 12"s that she likes to play as a soundtrack to her no-sub VHS bootleg of Hausu.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:47 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I totally know that girl. She went to my college.
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 10:49 AM on December 4, 2009

It's pretty terrible that I went through like 4 of these "hipster evolutions" as phases (Emo, Emo Redux, Scenester, Twee (kind of), Mountain Man (or at least tried to)). Oh high school.
posted by azarbayejani at 10:49 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend?

I was wearing a plaid shirt in 2005 and some guy walked by and said, "Ew! Flannel!"

Granted, I was walking in the Castro.
posted by bukharin at 10:50 AM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

These Premises Are Alarmed is right. These are simply re-mix permutations of what we did in the 1980's.

And the 1970's and 1980's were awesome. I was young. It was before AIDS so I got laid a lot. Weed was cheap. I could travel to Europe for a couple hundred bucks and stay there for months on less. Independent and alternative music was actually alternative and independent. When you weren't working nobody bugged becuase there were no cell phones or email. Many of my good friends were still alive. Did I mention we got laid a lot?

At least the 1980's and 1970's were somewhat original. It's why everybody keeps trying to steal them and repeat them. It's like once we hit 1994 somebody kept hitting the replay button over and over.

If you don't like it come up with something new and quit bitching.

Hipster hate really boils down to the idea that you can't abide that somebody somewhere is having more fun than you. They are. Get used to it.
posted by tkchrist at 10:51 AM on December 4, 2009 [11 favorites]

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend?

HAHA.
posted by tkchrist at 10:51 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

Fuck that guy on the bike. Right in the ear. With a stick.
posted by pmbuko at 10:52 AM on December 4, 2009

VOMIT ON MY BALLS
posted by Damn That Television at 10:53 AM on December 4, 2009

I really wish this had actually been a bit more fleshed out. Perhaps an actual "evolution" rather than 10 wildly different specimens.

First and foremost, flipping between men and women made it hard to compare. I guess it would have required 20 shots instead of ten, but they should have done each year for men and women.

Secondly, they shouldn't have gone for 10 different, vastly different archetypes. Of course the nerdy guy's gonna look different from the crunchy girl, who'll look different from the rocker girl, who looks different than the Starbucks barista with the mountain-man beard. It'd be much more interesting to see one (two) model(s) wearing the same basic outfit, and see how it changes.

For instance, you're always going to have a shirt, pants, belt, jacket, glasses, and hat. But which hat? Scalley cap? Trucker Hat? Glasses? Square nerd frames? White bug-eyed hangover shades? Kanye mini-blinds? Belt goes from pyramids to white leather to "classic black"?

Geez, it almost makes me want to put it all together. An actual historical illustration of how fashion trends changed over 10 years could be really cool.
posted by explosion at 10:53 AM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

At least the 1980's and 1970's were somewhat original.

heh.

It's why everybody keeps trying to steal them and repeat them.

snort. giggle.

It's like once we hit 1994 somebody kept hitting the replay button over and over.

BWA-HAHAHAHA!

Fashion is cyclical, and the 80s riffed plenty on the 60s. I'm pretty sure tie-dye was a huge thing when I was in elementary school (the 80s). We remember only the "uniquely 80s" parts of the 80s, but that's mostly because we're much better at remembering things that stick out than the banal.
posted by explosion at 10:58 AM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

Hip stirs, 2045.
posted by chavenet at 10:58 AM on December 4, 2009

Personally, I can't wait until anthropologists dig up a copy of the "REGARD THIS FOPPISH DANDY!" magazine.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:58 AM on December 4, 2009 [15 favorites]

I would like an article entitled On The Evolution Of Making Me Click Way Too Many Goddamn Times In An Attempt to Get More Ad Dollars Even Though I Have Adblock And Gave Up After Page Two, And Having The Print Button Fucking 404.
posted by aerotive at 11:03 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

The mere fact that MetaFilter hates hipsters in equal proportion to its love of fonts, Apple products, obscure music, David Foster Wallace, liberal politics, and overanalyzing everything from schizophrenic subtext in 80s comedies to interpersonal dynamics intrinsic to word choice in website GUIs leads to one overwhelmingly glaringly obvious conclusion re: the population of MetaFilter w/r/t hipsters.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:04 AM on December 4, 2009 [86 favorites]

The only thing I care less about than hipsters is people caring about hipsters. I say this because I am a hipster.
posted by Nomiconic at 11:05 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend?

Yeah, isn't it kind of a past-year-or-two grunge-revival thing?

Also, it seems potentially inaccurate to have the early-2000s wearing 'skinny jeans.' I thought that was a more recent trend (even for hipsters) too.
posted by sentient at 11:06 AM on December 4, 2009

Is Paste still doing that pay-what-thou-wilt thing?
posted by box at 11:07 AM on December 4, 2009

. We remember only the "uniquely 80s" parts of the 80s

Also known as "the bad parts."
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 11:09 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Meh. I liked their early stuff more.
posted by brundlefly at 11:09 AM on December 4, 2009

I suspect most posters here are younger than the first joke about someone having a chinese/japanese tattoo and not knowing what it means.

Seeing as how that one's been trotted out since before the age of the China Clippers, I'd say its a pretty safe assumption.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:11 AM on December 4, 2009

What was with all the 50s diner chic in the 80s?
posted by Artw at 11:11 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Out of fear of being called a hipster I will wear nothing but a plain white smock.
posted by starman at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

Fashion is cyclical, and the 80s riffed plenty on the 60s.

Sure. Look. I'm 47 years old. I rememebr the 1960's.

But I'm not speaking purely of fashion. But of youth culture in general, specifically alternative youth culture. When you see film footage from the alternative 1980's and footage of the counter culture 1960's , while there are similarities and cross pollination, they are clearly distinguishable eras in most a cases. The fashion. The music. The attitudes.

Minus the technology and the gimmicks the kids are bitching about... about themselves. What ever it is the culture in 2000's are pretty much all borrowed. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with borrowing here and there. I think the cycles of culture are natural and interesting.

My point is rather than bitch about it, whine about hipsters or the 1980's, do something you think is new. Or shut up with this tiresome self pitying "off my lawn" nonsense.
posted by tkchrist at 11:15 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

2006: The Mountain Man

otolith: proudly stuck in 2006 since 1997.
posted by otolith at 11:16 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Ehn. All this hoo-ha about hipster this and hipster that, it all boils down to being a critique of style in the end. And style is pretty much a ludicrous thing in any era or social milieu. But it's something that human beings tend to like to do. Of course, I also have leather elbow patches on my corduroy jacket right now, so what do I know?
posted by barrett caulk at 11:16 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Wonders what a 'China Clipper' is. Spends five minutes reading about Pan-Am.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2009

grunge-revival thing

Can we get to the mid-90s revival already? I miss wide-leg jeans.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

At least the 1980's and 1970's were somewhat original.

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend?

I spent the bulk of the '80s wearing jeans or cords and plaid shirts basically going on the John Fogerty dress code. And the '80s were awesome personally just because I was young and living in a college town but as a decade it sucked. (a lot)
posted by octothorpe at 11:17 AM on December 4, 2009

The early 80s were awesome: Talking Heads, The Pretenders, Brian Eno; black leggings and bright punk hair when I was thin enough and wrinkle-free enough to pull it off; Comme Les Garconnes and Bestsy Jonson for reasonable prices; lofts and artsy areas that you could actually afford to live in if you were an art student; open travel to europe, without having to prove that you had 10,000 before you were allowed to land...sex, pre-AIDS.

And I was in my early 20's, which I suspect was the *real* reason the early 80's were awesome.
posted by jrochest at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

And I should add, I didn't mean to say we were being original in Indiana in the 90s. Anything but.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 11:18 AM on December 4, 2009

Thanks for making me feel old Metafilter. I think I see every one of those looks walking down 16th between Mission and Valencia on any given evening, and while there's probably observable differences between then all - I CAN NO LONGER SEE THEM.

Get off my lawn.
posted by NoRelationToLea at 11:19 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

I was there. The 80s were not awesome. VH1 has misled you.

I did most of my life's allotment of psychedelics in the 1980s. As such, I view them now through accentuated glasses. Neither good nor bad; just a wild and oft-times astonishing adventure I more than just survived. I entered that decade still just a kid. I exited a fucking astronaut who'd seen all sides of the moon, traveled through hyperspace and come to understand that ANYTHING mainstream media got behind was not just wrong, it was Satanic.

But then I calmed down.

As for the HIP thing - a quick memory. It was 1985. I was meeting a certain dead cool Vancouver punk/pop STAR to discuss making a rock-vid for his band. The meeting was in an old, old (no longer there) building on the fifth or sixth floor (no elevator). I was probably mildly high on acid at the time. On the door to the guy's apartment was a slash of spray paint graffiti:

"GET HIP"

That was the first time in my adult life I'd seen the word hip associated with anything I'd call cool. And now it has come to this.
posted by philip-random at 11:20 AM on December 4, 2009

What was with all the 50s diner chic in the 80s?

It was a retro reactionary fashion trend away from the artiface and glitz of the 60's and 70's and towards the more conservative 50's, with a post-modernist bent. Rock was making a comeback from the disco era and stadium rock took over that niche, absorbing funk and disco's glitz and artiface to become hair metal.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh, the 80's! I was there! I kind of remember parts of it! It was nuts! There was lots of cocaine and LSD and Grateful Dead shows and the Ramones and the Clash and big big parts of NYC were no-go zones. And I had hair. It was the best of times. Full stop.

Hipsters? Shit, I got to Williamsburg in '88; the whole hipster thing is just a marketing event.. what's that Terry Valentine quote? (to paraphrase) Williamsburg was really just '99 and parts of '98...
posted by From Bklyn at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I dig these photos--cute that it's all the same dude and chick and it's just a smidge tough to tell, even if I think some of these "traits" are a bit off (definitely the kanji tattoo).

Also, I have a chestpiece, and I started it in 2004. So they totally got me there.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:22 AM on December 4, 2009

OMG guy, you don't just stick your 10" vinyl in a paper sleeve and mail it!
*head asplode*

And I never saw anyone smoke and pipe and wear skinny-pants.
posted by Theta States at 11:23 AM on December 4, 2009

Good things about the 80's

Michael Jordon
David Mamet hits his stride (in film)
Mario Brothers came out
New Order
Jamaican Bobsledding Team
Mel Brooks Movies
The Pixies
The Best Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies (Also the worst of each)
The Thing
The Ascension of Bill Murray
Duran Duran
The Ascension of Eddie Murphy
Guns N' Roses
The Blues Brothers
Blade Runner
The Rise of Hip-Hop
Men At Work
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I mean that's just what I remember off the cuff, and I wasn't even born until '86!
posted by cyphill at 11:24 AM on December 4, 2009

It seems just a mishmash of fashion elements forced into categories that aren't really distinguished from each other in the real world, or located in a particular point in time. The past decade, more than the prior ones I've lived through, is the one least characterized by a single trendy look that changes year to year. I don't know that there isn't any element in these pics that I don't see any day of the week (in SF, admittedly).

I've been a mountain man (with a gay-bear slant) since like 2002 (four years early posers!) but i didn't trucker hat until 2003 when i fell in love with Grandaddy, whose hats were trucker hats, though they were doing trucker hats way pre-Kutcher because they lived where dudes wore trucker hats without consulting Maxim or Honcho or Rim or whatever metrosexual thing was popular at the time.
posted by troybob at 11:24 AM on December 4, 2009

After viewing the whole series, I am waaaaay too fat to be a hipster. Yeegads, get these kids a sandwhich.
posted by Theta States at 11:25 AM on December 4, 2009

Wonders what a 'China Clipper' is. Spends five minutes reading about Pan-Am.

I was thinking these, but Pan Am will work too.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:26 AM on December 4, 2009

The evolution of the hipster 1810s, 1770s and 1950s.

Actually, since Goethe refers to Faust, the comic would have to take place at least after 1808, when the first part was published.
posted by kenko at 11:28 AM on December 4, 2009

The interesting thing about the article is that it is so poorly written. It comes off as the Reader's Digest Guide to Mocking Hipsters.

[Note to the youth of today and journalist-scenesters of a few days into next week: New quaint subculture requested. Low-to-no visual reference to/quotation of earlier species would be a plus. Thanks.]
posted by darth_tedious at 11:29 AM on December 4, 2009

Can we stop pretending the 80s were cool soon?

Yes. In approximately 2 years, we will have to start pretending the 90s were cool. We're already onto the ironic re-appropriation of day-glo and neon. That will easily transition into the reintroduction of spandex and hypercolor, and you're already at a Young MC/MC Hammer video circa '89/'90.

Signs of the coming apocalypse: Wiki says that Zubaz has come back from the dead. I am terrified to see the dawn of the ironic re-interpretation of the Buttafuoco Look, but am overwhelemed with the certain dread that it shall come.
posted by Diablevert at 11:31 AM on December 4, 2009

Yeegads, get these kids a sandwhich.

Why is it always a sandwich? Why not some nachos or turkey soup? It's always a sandwich.
posted by josher71 at 11:33 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

There are things one can do to counteract the troubling aspects of what's called "hipsterism", viz. concealed shallowness, elitist smugness, cynical ironism. I submit that derisive snark about "hipsters" (that never fails to demonstrate, ironically, inside-knowledge about all this hipster stuff) is, uh, bad. As in doesn't lead outwards, away from the black hole, but into it. Didn't Nietzsche write something cool about this? ("Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.")

Consider that many of the people one might be inclined to call "hipsters" based on their alignment to things currently fashionable could possibly have quite healthy attitudes toward the whole thing — the underlying problem connoted by the folk theory of "hipsterism" being quite universal. I know people completely unassociated with this decade's hip fashions who could use a bit more sincerity and openness to other groups, and less of anxious status seeking — and on the contrary, people who dress in stuff you'd call hipster clothes, listen to "hip bands", and ride fixies, who love what they're doing, spread joy, and are accepting to a fault of other people's idiosyncrasies.

So stop please. Me too. Sorry.
posted by mbrock at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

Living in a place that lags a few years behind in the fashion trend department, it's like I'm looking into THE FUTURE. Now I will be able to move amongst the local hipsters (lipsters?) when I must for the next little while without being fazed by the latest look. It's like a public service announcement for the middle-aged.
posted by rainbaby at 11:35 AM on December 4, 2009

Wait, wait. Hipster evolve? Evolve into what?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:36 AM on December 4, 2009

New Wave came into its own in the Eighties, and if you were a New Waver, as I was, it made the whole decade worthwhile.In a decade mostly defined by the fercious anti-intellectualism of the combined Reagan/Bush presidencies, by escalating cold war spending and a growing rift between rich and poor, by leftovers from the Seventies turning their counterculturalism into pure selfishness, by a punk rock scene that was increasingly the soundtrack to reactionary suburban kids, and by so goddamn much cocaine that you couldn't find a dollar bill that wasn't stained with the awful stuff, there was a musical genre that was witty, worldly, omnivorous, art school, and managed to be borth retro and futuristic simulatenously.

Also, hip hop in the Eighties really kicked ass. It's the only decade in my life were I felt music was an actual refuge, and not just entertainment.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:37 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Cool Papa Bell : Wait, wait. Hipster evolve? Evolve into what?

The middle class, usually.
posted by Theta States at 11:39 AM on December 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

Why is it always a sandwich? Why not some nachos or turkey soup?

Some of us don't live near a 7-11 or a nursing home.
posted by troybob at 11:40 AM on December 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

Where does the longsleeved-tee-under-shortsleeved-tee come into this?
posted by fleacircus at 11:42 AM on December 4, 2009

Re: sincerity as the way out of the rabbit hole.

"New Sincerity was used as a collective name for a loose group of alternative rock bands, centered in Austin, Texas in the years from about 1985 to 1990, who were perceived as reacting to the ironic outlook of then-prominent music movements like punk rock and New Wave."

Oh shit. It's turtles all the way down, sincerity reacting to irony reacting to sincerity reacting to
posted by naju at 11:44 AM on December 4, 2009

In approximately 2 years, we will have to start pretending the 90s were cool. We're already onto the ironic re-appropriation of day-glo and neon. That will easily transition into the reintroduction of spandex and hypercolor, and you're already at a Young MC/MC Hammer video circa '89/'90.

Oh, we're way past that point already. We're already deep into the "ironic" use of early home cgi technology (like what you'd get on a high end cam-corder in like 1989) in videos.
posted by Pollomacho at 11:45 AM on December 4, 2009

this post and thread makes me want to murder suicide all of you
posted by nathancaswell at 11:48 AM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Michael Jordon: HYPE
David Mamet hits his stride (in film): yeah
Mario Brothers came out: shrug
New Order: good singles
Jamaican Bobsledding Team: HYPE
Mel Brooks Movies: No
The Pixies: Yeah!!!
The Best Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies (Also the worst of each): Yeah
The Thing: Yeah
The Ascension of Bill Murray: Yeah
Duran Duran: What!?!
The Ascension of Eddie Murphy: shrug
Guns N' Roses: Yeah
The Blues Brothers: HYPE
Blade Runner: Yeah!!!
The Rise of Hip-Hop: Yeah!!!
Men At Work: What!?!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: HYPE

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.
posted by philip-random at 11:48 AM on December 4, 2009

Some of my best friends were proto-emo-hipsters, circa 1985. Not new wave. Most definitely emo. So the history goes back. The Smiths had to be selling records to somebody.

No. 8 in that line up is sexy as hell.

Oh, and I love teasing hipsters in ironic hipster-fashion, because it's like teasing Canadians (unless you are one of those people who actually has a beef with Canadians, to which I say: WTF?).

I lost a lot of weight recently, and I wasn't fat to begin with. I had on an old Gap sweater, some now-baggy Dickies, and some orange Converse sneakers on that my then-6-year-old daughter had picked out. My now 16 year old daughter derisively commented that I looked like a hipster. At 43, that's a compliment.

I am getting laid more now, and it's better than it used to be. Hipster sex is where it's at, folks.

No PBR for me, though. Carling Black Label is what REAL hipsters used to drink.
posted by Xoebe at 11:49 AM on December 4, 2009

Yikes! I know someone with the red Chuck Taylors like the prototype is wearing.
posted by Cranberry at 11:50 AM on December 4, 2009

Flying Lizards, Laurie Anderson, 4AD. 4AD! Y'all weren't paying attention, is all. I will now resume trying to make the cover of "Lonely Is An Eyesore" into some kind of desktop wallpaper.
posted by everichon at 11:51 AM on December 4, 2009

Men At Work: What!?!

Don't make me hurt you.

Also: Big Trouble in Little China.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:51 AM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

The Mario Bros. came out in the 80s? Are they still single? Woof!
posted by troybob at 11:53 AM on December 4, 2009

Yikes! I know someone with the red Chuck Taylors like the prototype is wearing.

Everyone I knew wore those.

Chuck Taylor's, Jack Purcells, and Converse All-Stars used to be less than $8-$12 bucks a pair. Every kid in the 60's wore them. Then they hung on with the punks in the 1970's. Then in eighties becuase they were still less than $20 bucks a pair and art school types took to painting or drawing on them. I suppose the second they outrageously breached the $50 a pair barrier they became mostly a wannabe affectation. Kinda sad.
posted by tkchrist at 12:01 PM on December 4, 2009

In approximately 2 years, we will have to start pretending the 90s were cool. We're already onto the ironic re-appropriation of day-glo and neon. That will easily transition into the reintroduction of spandex and hypercolor, and you're already at a Young MC /MC Hammer video circa '89/'90.

I spotted a hipster wearing a hypercolor shirt just the other day, so I'd say we're almost there.
posted by Big_B at 12:03 PM on December 4, 2009

Okay. Overly HDR'd photography and hipsters.

So this thread went pretty much like I expected.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:05 PM on December 4, 2009

I suppose the second they outrageously breached the $50 a pair barrier they became mostly a wannabe affectation.

I've been wearing the same pair of Chuck Taylors for 14 or 15 years (yeah, they're in pretty sad shape). I was going to buy a new pair maybe 5 years ago, but they were $40 or something. No way.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:06 PM on December 4, 2009

I notice that every single thing philip-random labeled with a "YEAH!!" is essentially an "officially cool" re-marketed internet meme product of the 2000's. Not that I too don't like all those things and think they are "YEAH!". But the items labeled "HYPE!" are just as equally valid and no more hyped than the others. Just at different points in time.
posted by tkchrist at 12:06 PM on December 4, 2009

My spouse gleefully came home with bags of flannel shirts and Lisa Loeb is releasing a line of eyeglass frames, so I can authoritatively state that the 90s are IN.
posted by muddgirl at 12:07 PM on December 4, 2009

Note that my spouse is no scenster. He's been wearing flannel since the second grade, but when it's in fashion it's much easier to find in stores.
posted by muddgirl at 12:08 PM on December 4, 2009

What ever it is the culture in 2000's are pretty much all borrowed.

Hey guys, remember when people were faxing pictures of cats with captions back in the 80s?

I'm not buying it at all. 2000-2009 is the first full decade in which a real Internet culture existed. It's a new, different world out there, and if it seems like the kids are only borrowing and re-appropriating, it's only because the information transfer is so much faster that ideas never really grow in a bubble any longer.

I think you rush far too quickly to attribute novel ideas from the past as having been original, rather than riffs on past trends. I think you forget about novel ideas from today such as Pedobear, which defy explanation.
posted by explosion at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

My spouse gleefully came home with bags of flannel shirts and Lisa Loeb is releasing a line of eyeglass frames, so I can authoritatively state that the 90s are IN.

You say.
posted by rokusan at 12:11 PM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

Depeche went from Just cant get enough to Personal Jesus all in the eighties. Thats one of the reasons for it being the most awesome decade. That and going to school early so you could play License to Ill to the other kids out of the classroom window as they arrived to school. My bloody valentine made their first record in 88. I discovered house music and had my first musical mind fuck in 89 when Frech Kiss became a hit. The 90's were really, really boring in comparison.
posted by uandt at 12:11 PM on December 4, 2009

I've been wearing the same pair of Chuck Taylors for 14 or 15 years (yeah, they're in pretty sad shape). I was going to buy a new pair maybe 5 years ago, but they were $40 or something. No way.

Truly. When Chubby & Tubby went out of business it was a sign of the End Times.

My Nephews wore them in 2002-2003. They had like five pair each of differing colors. I went down with them to buy another pair. $60. $60 mother-fucking dollars. They were $12 WHEN THEY STILL MADE IN AMERICA. Now I'm always in favor of price reflecting costs, but fuck me. They telling me how cheap that was and that was

I told my nephews fuck you. You are not buying that shit. I will buy you a $300 pair of cowboy boots made in Colorado before I buy canvass Chuck Taylors made in China for $60.

They were like "Cowboy boots? DORK!"
posted by tkchrist at 12:12 PM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

I too was cool - amazingly cool. Terrifyingly cool. So damn cool. - in the eighties. Also, skinny. Just in case you were wondering.

The only difference that I can see is that it was a lot harder to be a hipster back then. These modern hipsters camp out on my lawn and look at their i-Stuff and their TopLaps and order their threadless hipster clothes right off the tubes. They can go to Etsy and buy homemade artsy crafts and go to Whole Foods and buy organic cookies and choose to drink PBR ironically because good microbreweries are everywhere. In the eighties we drank Busch, mostly, and Yuengling and Rolling Rock because they were what was available. Even if we had the money, there were no 20 different beers on the menu at every dive bar. There was no organic section in the local Superfresh. And we made our own clothes - well, we ripped our own holes, anyway - and jewelry and art because funky cool stuff was not for sale in every mall or little shop.

We couldn't afford to take photos of every moment of our lives because film and processing were expensive as hell, so we just didn't document. Downtowns were boarded up and genuinely scary, not filled with nifty boutiques and people on bikes. And those of us with the weird clothes and the purple hair and the mismatched earrings and so on genuinely stood out and were stared at and had bottles thrown at us while we were making our way into small funky health food stores staffed by Sikhs where everything smelled of spilt tamari.

Nowadays, it seems like every single young person looks more or less alike. It's hipness turned consumer carnival and while I love Threadless and my iPod and Etsy and the wonder that is the intertubes, I have never figured out how anyone thinks that these so called hipsters are oh so different than anyone else.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:16 PM on December 4, 2009 [17 favorites]

muddgirl: so I can authoritatively state that the 90s are IN.

NOT
posted by shakespeherian at 12:17 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

I was going to buy a new pair maybe 5 years ago, but they were $40 or something. No way.
posted by uncleozzy

So if you bought a new pair at 40 bucks and wore them 15 years that's about 2.60 a year for the new shoes. So you're saving 2.60 a year for the privilege of wearing 15 year old shoes.

Good plan you got there.
posted by Dennis Murphy at 12:18 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

tkchrist i know what you mean.
I actually found a brand new pair of Made in the USA pair at a thrift store for $12. I practically cried right there and then.

and then i snatched them right up.
posted by ShawnString at 12:18 PM on December 4, 2009

I think you rush far too quickly to attribute novel ideas from the past as having been original, rather than riffs on past trends.

Uh. Except I didn't. I clearly stated that excepting for the technological culture. I fully appreciate and accept, and find valid the cyclical cross pollination of the varying generations. I don't know how I could make myself any clearer on this.

Since you were in grade school in the 80's you may want to consider if you're exactly the best historian on this matter anyway. You may want to consider that perhaps somebody who was an adult during that period may have a slightly more genuine perspective unfiltered by what popular MTV and VH1 has co-modified and is selling you about happened during the 1980's. You know. You may want to consider that before keep jumping in with a premise we pretty much mostly agree on.
posted by tkchrist at 12:19 PM on December 4, 2009

NOT

Babydoll dresses and platform flip flops for everyone!
posted by muddgirl at 12:21 PM on December 4, 2009

So you're saving 2.60 a year for the privilege of wearing 15 year old shoes.

They're canvas fucking sneakers made by kids in the far east. They aren't worth $40, even if they do last as long as the ones I've got now. It's not about money qua money.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:23 PM on December 4, 2009

I was country when country wasn't cool.
posted by pianomover at 12:24 PM on December 4, 2009

Flannel is back baby!
So happy.
It was actually a little weird to see no flannel whatsoever in San Francisco for a few years.
but now it is back with a vengence

I'm still waiting for chest hair to come back outside of the Bear community.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 12:25 PM on December 4, 2009

Wow, they did a very good job with this...hipsters, the younger ones, dress so self-consciously outrageous now that it verges on the freakish and narcissistic, and I think that's what happens when a movement becomes completely superficial and vapid.

Anyhow, I'd say it's over. I hear punk rock is making a come back.

Yeah, and get off my astroturf!!
posted by Skygazer at 12:26 PM on December 4, 2009

Skygazer: I hear punk rock is making a come back.

dude it never left green day & good charlotte 4 lyfe
posted by shakespeherian at 12:31 PM on December 4, 2009

I told my nephews fuck you. You are not buying that shit. I will buy you a $300 pair of cowboy boots made in Colorado before I buy canvass Chuck Taylors made in China for $60.

Ahh, bless you. It is a losing battle though, finding good shoes or boots made in this country. Had me a pair of Chippawa boots that lasted over a decade, just got those suckers re-soled and heeled once or twice a year (and I wore them A LOT), shined and they were good to go again good as new. Such amazing boots. I refuse to wear boots made in China, but I will wear boots from Italy and amazingly I found a very cool pair of motorcyle boots at DSW made in India.

I don't think there are any sneakers made in this country anymore.
posted by Skygazer at 12:32 PM on December 4, 2009

Oh yeah, the post itself. I thought this photo spread was actually very cute, and since it's in Paste I didn't expect actual historical accuracy. It's telling a cute story about a guy and a girl who met at a Dashboard Confessional show their senior year in high school and how their style has changed since then.
posted by muddgirl at 12:33 PM on December 4, 2009

I sense an emerging market for hipster lawn gnomes.
posted by Partial Panel at 12:33 PM on December 4, 2009

dude it never left green day & good charlotte 4 lyfe
posted by shakespeherian at 3:31 PM on December 4 [+] [!]

Dude, Green Day...well okay, American Idiot is good but Good CHarlotte is not punk rock.
posted by Skygazer at 12:34 PM on December 4, 2009

Wow, they did a very good job with this...hipsters, the younger ones, dress so self-consciously outrageous now that it verges on the freakish and narcissistic, and I think that's what happens when a movement becomes completely superficial and vapid.

Then what were Flappers, Zoot suits, Beatniks, Punk Rockers and Goths?

Fashion is superficial. Though I think narcissistic is a very loaded value judgment. If that's how you want to use the term then we can say that about the iPhone or the car you drive, too. Which is not very fair either.

Again. If it looks like people might be having more fun than you, why not have fun too?
posted by tkchrist at 12:36 PM on December 4, 2009

Oh my god! It's the Green Day/Good Charlotte punk rock argument. It's like it's 1999 all over again. Truly this is a Christmas miracle.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 12:37 PM on December 4, 2009 [7 favorites]

What was with all the 50s diner chic in the 80s?

In my hometown it was called the Double Nickel Drive-In. It's a Schlotzsky's Deli now.
posted by IvoShandor at 12:39 PM on December 4, 2009

I'm gonna start wearing fedora ON TOP of my jet pilot helmet and altitude mask. That, BTW, I wear with an aluminum kilt. And cowboy boots.
posted by tkchrist at 12:40 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

> I've been wearing the same pair of Chuck Taylors for 14 or 15 years (yeah, they're in pretty sad shape). I was going to buy a new pair maybe 5 years ago, but they were $40 or something. No way.

I've got a couple pairs of like-new American all-black high tops in the basement, still in their boxes. Every time I see a comment like yours, I wonder if I'll ever have the nerve to wear something that's rapidly becoming a desirable artifact, and then wonder if I'll ever have the will to override my revulsion at putting 'em on Ebay for the collectors.
posted by ardgedee at 12:40 PM on December 4, 2009

I sense an emerging market for hipster lawn gnomes.

So, it would look like a scruffy dolt, sitting outside, doing nothing, collecting its non-thoughts?

We're getting that right now. Why would I want to pay for it?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:41 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

I feel like I know most of the people in the spread.

My friend still hasn't forgotten how I really embarrassed her: we were at an indie mart a couple years ago and I said to her: "This place is crawling with hipsters!" She was like "SSSHHHHH keep it down. Hipsters don't like to be called hipsters."
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 12:41 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Skygazer: Dude, Green Day...well okay, American Idiot is good but Good CHarlotte is not punk rock.

ur rite mybe not as good as fallout boy but they r even better then blink 182 an dsum 41 in my oponion
posted by shakespeherian at 12:41 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

Green Day sold out when they left Lookout (man).
posted by box at 12:43 PM on December 4, 2009

What was with all the 50s diner chic in the 80s?

In my hometown it was called the Double Nickel Drive-In. It's a Schlotzsky's Deli now.

I'm not sure if that hit out here or not. We had actual diners from the 1950' still.

The movie Diner was popular in the early 80's. Lots' of movies about the 1950's then.

I think though the 50's were hip because the generation that were kids in the fifties were dominant and they kinda wanted to forget the sixties so they could do coke and vote for Reagan. Most of them sobered up, though.

It wasn't exactly a universal trend with college kids and youth culture. Not that I know of.
posted by tkchrist at 12:43 PM on December 4, 2009

If you so desire, you can find Chucks of the current not made in America variety at my local DSW for $25. YMMV on whether they're at all of them of course.
posted by haveanicesummer at 12:44 PM on December 4, 2009

> I was country when country wasn't cool.

A couple of months ago I went out to a hipster country music night here in Toronto. I had a good time and all, but when I went up to the DJ (a dude whose knowledge of country music, I had been told, was encyclopaedic) and asked to hear a Don Gibson tune he just stared at me as though I'd been speaking Esperanto and cued up a Garth Brooks track. I spent the rest of the night feeling snobbily superior and trying to figure out if that made me the hipster.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:46 PM on December 4, 2009

Good CHarlotte is not punk rock.
posted by Skygazer

Okay, knocking up Nicole Richie might not be punk rock, but there's a decent chance it's ironic as hell, thus giving them the hipster crown?
posted by haveanicesummer at 12:47 PM on December 4, 2009

...hipster crown...

I don't think they call it the hipster crown anymore. I think it's called a disco stick.
posted by troybob at 12:49 PM on December 4, 2009

Okay, knocking up Nicole Richie might not be punk rock,

Knocking up Nicole Richie is punk as fuck.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 12:49 PM on December 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

Then what were Flappers, Zoot suits, Beatniks, Punk Rockers and Goths?

Fashion is superficial. Though I think narcissistic is a very loaded value judgment. If that's how you want to use the term then we can say that about the iPhone or the car you drive, too. Which is not very fair either.

I don't use an iphone, and cars are stupid in a town with a great public transportation system.

Far, as I'm concerned, me and my circle of friends started hipsterism here in Williamsburg in the early and mid-90s. Around the new millennium or so this place became the subject of a thousand lifestyle and fashion and music pieces and the place got run over and the rents got jacked up and an ugly boxy sun-killing building with over priced condos went up on every empty lot.

If you saw some of the looks round here now, you'd understand what I mean about narcissism. It's un-moored from anything but an empty worship of the self. And a desperate need to be "seen."
posted by Skygazer at 12:50 PM on December 4, 2009

Wait, so Miller High Life is scenester now?
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:52 PM on December 4, 2009

Wait, so Miller High Life is scenester now?

I hear it's the new PBR.
posted by Skygazer at 12:55 PM on December 4, 2009

I still don't really understand just what a hipster is.

And I read these types of threads thinking I'll get it but I never do...now I can pick out a hippie and I can pick out a beatnik but ....hipsters...I have no clue.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:56 PM on December 4, 2009

It doesn't matter what I buy, I end up looking like I'm either extremely uncomfortable (fancy clothes) or getting ready to paint the garage (everything else).

I am impervious to this "fashion" as you call it, and haven't been remotely trendy since the ill-advised Curly Girl-Mullet Graduation Photo of 89.

And reading this just makes me happy that age is taking any remote possibility of looking hip further and further away. My age cohort is already into toupee and botox territory, but if you've never been hip, then you can never lose your hipness. Freedom!
posted by emjaybee at 12:57 PM on December 4, 2009

It wasn't properly 1950s nostalgia in the 80s. It was more a nostalgia about the time when the 50s transitioned into the 60s -- Diner is set in 1959, and Peggy Sue Got Married is set in 1960, but they both sort of look forward to the 60s rather than back to the 50s; the sort-of sequel to Diner, Tin Men, is formly set in the early 60s, and over the course of the movie you can see the decade turning as more and more VW Bugs start showing up on the roads and Richard Dreyfuss redoes his apartment into a fairly protoypical example of 60s interior design. Punk and New Wave, especially the stuff that emerged from the East Village scene, drew heavily from the garage band and frat rock bands of the early 60s, especially inspired by the semi-legal Pebbles and Nuggets collections that began to get circulated in the 1970s.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

i'm pretty certain that the hipster styles nowadays aren't ironic.
posted by fuzzypantalones at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2009

Far as I'm concerned, me and my circle of friends started narcissism.
posted by box at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2009 [9 favorites]

Where The Dirty Hipsters Are
posted by isopraxis at 1:03 PM on December 4, 2009

fyi: hypercolor
posted by sentient at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2009

Speaking of punk as fuck, Having Fun on Stage With Fugazi. All banter, no filler.
posted by Paid In Full at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

fyi: hypercolor

Wow, I can't wait for the young whippersnappers to find out that these things start to change color around your stinky parts (armpits, underboobage, groin, spinal sweat trough...) well before anywhere else and really accentuate them!
posted by Pollomacho at 1:10 PM on December 4, 2009

Also: Big Trouble in Little China.

Also: Buckaroo Bonzai.

I notice that every single thing philip-random labeled with a "YEAH!!" is essentially an "officially cool" re-marketed internet meme product of the 2000's. Not that I too don't like all those things and think they are "YEAH!". But the items labeled "HYPE!" are just as equally valid and no more hyped than the others. Just at different points in time.

Who cares if they're "officially cool". The point is, David Mamet, the Pixies, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Empire Strikes Back, Bill Murray, Guns N' Roses, Blade Runner and Hip-Hop are all great examples of necessary culture. They made the world a better place. And I don't argue this from an perspective of "looking back", it's from having been there at the time, an adult, paying attention to what was going down.

By the same token, Michael Jordon was horrifically over-hyped "at the time", Mario Brothers was a game for little kids, the Jamaican Bobsledding Team was about as relevant to anything as Tiger Woods car accident, Mel Brooks 1980s movies were sub-Airplane at best, Duran Duran were painful to experience sonically, Eddie Murphy was a talented guy who did everything he could to sabotage his credibility, The Blues Brothers was a boring movie and an annoying album (if you were a DJ who wanted to play cool NOW music; I was), Men At Work had half a good song, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were, again, kidstuff.
posted by philip-random at 1:11 PM on December 4, 2009

Michael Jordon: HYPE

You've got to be kidding me. There is a reason that every basketball player today has a crap load of respect for Michael Jordan. That man simply dominated.
posted by scrutiny at 1:11 PM on December 4, 2009

Me and my circle of friends started you and your circle of friends.
posted by fleacircus at 1:13 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Michael Jordan...isn't that the dude who sells underwear on TV?
posted by troybob at 1:13 PM on December 4, 2009

No no, see, he's talking about Michael Jordon, who was a high prospect coming out of North Corolina but ended up fizzling out with the Chicago Balls.
posted by kmz at 1:13 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

but i didn't trucker hat until 2003 when i fell in love with Grandaddy, whose hats were trucker hats, though they were doing trucker hats way pre-Kutcher because they lived where dudes wore trucker hats

I am from Grandaddy's hometown and throughout my youth I do not remember anyone under the age of 50 who didn't work in farm-equipment sales ever wearing a "trucker cap."

Also: Dear Jesus, I promise I will never bitch about anyone else's fashion choices again if You can, with your infinite power, make madras shorts go out of style. Please please please. Amen.
posted by kittyprecious at 1:14 PM on December 4, 2009

Wait, so Miller High Life is scenester now?

Talk to me when Natty Ice is the cool thing to drink.
posted by scrutiny at 1:14 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Hypercolor is back? Excellent. God is good. I look forward to the return of sitting around blowing into my t-shirt.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:15 PM on December 4, 2009

Buckaroo Bonzai is fun and all but it's no Repo Man.
posted by Artw at 1:16 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Repo Man is pretty awesome but it's no Liquid Sky, which is so awesome it's unwatchable.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:17 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

The unwatchability kinda dials back the awesome for me.
posted by Artw at 1:18 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

If you saw some of the looks round here now, you'd understand what I mean about narcissism. It's un-moored from anything but an empty worship of the self. And a desperate need to be "seen."

Ah. You're more concerned with the Trust-fund class.

I think then it's less about a fashion and more about the appropriation of culture with money and not really defining a style for yourself. The opposite of self-expression. And that's kinda what I was alluding to with my statement that much in the 2000's we think of as hip culture, apart (and possibly BECAUSE of) technology, is essentially borrowed and not owned.

We've completed the cycle of consumerism, right? Like, here is this trend you must follow, you buy it, it's out. Here's the next trend to be bought.

When the "hip" arty-class are doing it that's the saddest statement of all. They're the ones that should be finding or synthesizing a genuine form of self expression.

I suppose these people many called hipsters aren't the arty-class. Their the wanna-be's. The set dressing left out after the art has been priced out.

From what I can tell the arty-class is dying out. Consumerism, rising costs of living, and cuts in education funding has nearly killed it. Now, I guess, it's just enough to look arty.
posted by tkchrist at 1:18 PM on December 4, 2009

Any movie worth watching is sort of unwatchable, in the same way that punk is sort of unlistenable and great literature is sort of unreadable.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:20 PM on December 4, 2009

That's why I never read great literature.
posted by Artw at 1:20 PM on December 4, 2009

Hipsterism as the ultimate postmodern black-hole. So much money, time and effort convincing young people that they need to "learn who they really are" and "actualize" that now they are these bizarre, all-consuming, self-validating ego machines. I am desperately frustrated by this sort of thing, not because I'm a righteous puritan aggrieved by the joy of another - but because I sincerely want young people to be concerned with the world that's falling apart around them. I think this frustration is fueled by my disillusionment with and antipathy toward so-called "activist" culture and my migration away from activism and into organizing. Results oriented validation process vs. status-seeking, ego-assuaging self importance. Hipsterism - it's very middle class - in the sense of, "I've got mine so I'm okay." And God forbid they'd ever want to participate in a traditional social organization, like a church, because that would force them to sacrifice their identity at the altar of group solidarity. That is, of course, until they need help - the emergency shelter, clergy for a funeral, counseling or support at the hospital. I apologize if this sounds profoundly self-righteous it's just that this whole "hipster" thing has contributed to me feeling very left out of my own age-group and frankly I wish we (people in their 20s) would be a little more sincere, a little more outward-focused and a little less status-seeking. Stings because I have family members who let their "scene identity" really take over and ultimately ruin their lives - and because I have a little beer belly and could never fit into those jeans.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

Why I Hate People who Dress Fashionably and Have Fun
by, Alfred Oldman (A. Oldman), resident opinion columnist at RockDinosaur Weekly.
posted by codacorolla at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

Speaking as someone working his way through Joyce, you're probably making the right choice.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:21 PM on December 4, 2009

Astro Zombie: Any movie worth watching is sort of unwatchable, in the same way that punk is sort of unlistenable and great literature is sort of unreadable.

Ghost Busters / Gogol Bordello / The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:23 PM on December 4, 2009

Precisely.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:25 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is how cool I was in the 80s.
posted by little e at 1:25 PM on December 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

It is proper for young adolescents to strut and preen and be foolish.
Our inspiration was '30s intellectuals; fishbone jackets, expensive British shoes, obscure mores that were bon ton back then but that nobody else knew anymore. Girls, our target demographic, didn't understand. So in that sense we lost track of the point of it all. But we had great fun.
posted by joost de vries at 1:25 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Michael Jordan: HYPE

You guys are totally wrong. Michael Jordan's work in the 80's with the PDP Group was totally instrumental in the development of artificial intelligence.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:26 PM on December 4, 2009

Chrissie Hynde.

"I got no tears on my ice cream but you know me, I love pretending."

Isn't plaid a fairly recent trend? Was anyone really wearing it in 2003?

Flyin' the Flannel, 1991

Michael Jordon: HYPE

• NCAA Championship-winning shot
• 6-time NBA Champion
• 6-time NBA Finals MVP
• 5-time NBA MVP
• 14-time NBA All-Star
• 9-time NBA All-Defensive First Team
• Led the NBA in scoring in 10 seasons (NBA record)
• NBA Defensive Player of the Year (1988)
• Holds top career (30.1 points per game) and playoff (33.4 ppg) scoring averages
• NOT HYPE

posted by kirkaracha at 1:27 PM on December 4, 2009

Speaking of which, Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype" came out in 1988.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:28 PM on December 4, 2009

Flyin' the Flannel, 1991

Yeah, no shit. I think we're talking about the recent resurgence of plaid, not the "original" manifestation in the early 90s.
posted by muddgirl at 1:30 PM on December 4, 2009

This is how cool I was in the 80s.

Ah yes and see, this is how cool I was in the 80s. This thread got me looking through some of my 80s pictures and then I realized with dawning horror that I am actually wearing, today, almost exactly the same outfit. Knee length skirt, check. Pea coat, check. Long scarf, check. Boots, check. I think the only things I'm missing are the leg warmers, the knee length pearls, the platinum blonde dye job and the dumpster.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:31 PM on December 4, 2009

I invented the piano key neck tie! I invented it! What have you done?
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:34 PM on December 4, 2009

Fashion is superficial.

Ideally, a hipster knows that his/her dress is superficial-- which is kind of the point: there's an ironic detachment from the act of dressing in that it's all regarded as an amusing distraction. It's the people shopping at Ann Taylor and Hugo Boss who infuse their fashion choices with some kind of deeper meaning about the wearer's inner character. I got more flak from the latter group of people than people I would have, in retrospect, called "hipsters."
posted by deanc at 1:35 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

The Evolution of the Hipster 2000-2009

Your favorite primordial ooze sucks?
posted by Afroblanco at 1:36 PM on December 4, 2009

You guys. Seriously. The only thing less comfortable than Chucks is walking barefoot over broken glass that also happens to be on fire. Don't lie.
posted by elizardbits at 1:36 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, no shit. I think we're talking about the recent resurgence of plaid, not the "original" manifestation in the early 90s.

I'm pretty sure that for some people plaid never left between then and now.
posted by GuyZero at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?
posted by muddgirl at 1:43 PM on December 4, 2009

Chucks are great to lift in though. The sole is so thin and flat you might as well be barefoot.
posted by scrutiny at 1:43 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?

I view it more as an evolution.
posted by scrutiny at 1:43 PM on December 4, 2009

No, chucks are great once you break them in. It's just that the breaking in process is lengthy and painful and then once it's over and they're perfect, they move almost immediately to the falling apart stage. I actually had a ripoff pair of lace - yes, LACE - chucks in the late eighties that I dyed black - well, gray, actually, I used Rit - that were the best and most wonderful sneakers ever in the history of the universe.

Re: plaid shirts. I regularly wear my father's old plaid shirts, including one which he wore skiing as a young man - in 1947. It's made of some indestructible mystery fiber from the 40s that was probably invented as part of the war effort and it looks like the prototype of every plaid shirt ever since. Plaid button downs are not exactly new.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:44 PM on December 4, 2009

I felt a wash of cool relief spread through me not seeing anything like the way look like in that article.

This fear of being inadvertently cool means I'm an idiot, right?
posted by ServSci at 1:59 PM on December 4, 2009

Just to clarify: when I made that comment so far above about plaid being a recent trend, I meant the current, nth resurgence of plaid. I know plaid's not exactly new and has been trendy before - I had a zillion plaid flannels when I was fourteen (and four or five pairs of Chucks - including a pair of plaid ones, and ones with dinosaur and Sesame Street shoelaces). Then both plaid and Chucks kind of disappeared for a while, and I've only started seeing them again within the past year or two, and it's making me really really miss my old flannels and dinosaur shoelaces.

Also I miss my baja. Are those okay to wear again? As in, not sooo totes out of style but not yet co-opted by hipsters?
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:04 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?

Does it really matter? Will there be a test at the end of the thread? Did the hipster problem get solved in the middle of thread somewhere?
posted by GuyZero at 2:08 PM on December 4, 2009

Talking about US-made shoes upthread, I believe Adbusters wanted Blackspot shoes to be made in the US, but I think they found that some element of US factories made production too expensive. In the end, they went with union shops in Portugal and Pakistan. I just wonder: are they comfortable?

I have a friend who is stoked like none other that plaid is back in style, because she can get them more easily and at reasonable prices. It's odd, hearing from a lady in her early 20s.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:08 PM on December 4, 2009

On non-preview:

Also I miss my baja. Are those okay to wear again?

I thought they were the domain of pastafarians (white dreads), keeping them safe from hipsters. Hipsters don't imitate other cultures that are currently thriving, instead dredge up some past culture that is mostly forgotten and patch it together in some off-kilter amalgamation.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:11 PM on December 4, 2009

I have in fact seen three separate people wearing Bajas in Brooklyn over the past few weeks. I don't know if this is a Hipster Uprising or if those guys were just cold and out of laundry, but there you are.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 2:13 PM on December 4, 2009

Also I miss my baja. Are those okay to wear again?

Sure, but that weed in your pocket is now prescription.
posted by rokusan at 2:17 PM on December 4, 2009

I realized with dawning horror that I am actually wearing, today, almost exactly the same outfit.

But it is a totally cute outfit!
posted by little e at 2:17 PM on December 4, 2009

Bah. The new hipster is just the antipode of the old hipster, people who realize that they can be trendy by being anti-trendy, and thus ironic. The only thing that's "new" about it is the internet, which allows trends to spread faster and further than before, and also allows more people to observe the trends -- so the individual trends can be incredibly novel and trite and last for an extremely short period of time compared to what you or I did in high school.
posted by davejay at 2:18 PM on December 4, 2009

I started wearing flannel in 1983 and they promptly sent me to the counselor's office to quiz me on my "sudden change in behavior."
posted by The Light Fantastic at 2:22 PM on December 4, 2009

Also I miss my baja. Are those okay to wear again?

I think so. My wife dug hers out of pile of old clothes a week ago and wore it. She got four or five "Oooh, wear did you get that?" and only one "Dude, where can I score some weed? GET A JOB, HIPPY!"

The latter being from me she just ignored it and basked in her otherwise fashion glory of positive attention.
posted by tkchrist at 2:22 PM on December 4, 2009

I have in fact seen three separate people wearing Bajas in Brooklyn over the past few weeks.

Co-opting the jam-band aesthetic is the next thing. Animal Collective have been flirting with it, and their EP released last week features the first ever cleared Grateful Dead sample. Get ready for strange times.
posted by naju at 2:26 PM on December 4, 2009

Does it really matter?

I guess I just sort of assume that we all know the basics of how fashion trends move from the cutting edge to the masses, and that we don't have to have the same discussion over and over about how flannel (or chuck taylors or black nail polish or whev) is stylish sometimes and not stylish at others, depending on your cultural group, and that some people "don't care about fashion", which really means that they have a set personal style that doesn't change much, or they are a member of a subculture with a set stylistic influence.

The only different between hipsters and any other subculture is that hipsterism is sort of concerned explicitly with anti-fashion, which is just fashion in disguise. Instead of a continual process of finding subcultures on "the cutting edge" and abusing their style until it's no longer cool, hipsters are ALWAYS taken as the cutting edge.
posted by muddgirl at 2:27 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I realized a few years ago that I can't pull off Hipster. I don't do ironic detachment; if I wear a Motley Crue concert shirt, it's probably one I got from a Motley Crew concert. It's clean, and hey, I still listen to them sometimes. Same with hats and shoes and whatever.

A few years ago I found a leather driving hat that I thought was really funny, but the more I wore it, the more I realized that it was actually pretty damn comfortable and it actually looked kinda cool.

That's when I realized that I totally fail when it comes to irony. Because if I sincerely find something nifty, it's really difficult for me to mock it in my style.

Plus, I'm really lazy and generally don't give a shit.
posted by quin at 2:30 PM on December 4, 2009

I have always found hipsters to be more novel rather than cutting edge in the sense that they're merely different and not really looking to make progress per se. It seems to me that hipsters sort of deconstruct the notion of progress which is something that always gets people's backs up historically.
posted by GuyZero at 2:31 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

I guess I just sort of assume that we all know the basics of how fashion trends move from the cutting edge to the masses, and that we don't have to have the same discussion over and over about how flannel (or chuck taylors or black nail polish or whev) is stylish sometimes and not stylish at others, depending on your cultural group, and that some people "don't care about fashion", which really means that they have a set personal style that doesn't change much, or they are a member of a subculture with a set stylistic influence.

We'll stop having these repetitive discussions over and over again around the same time every discussion of a television series stops attracting comments with, "Is this something I'd have to own a TV to understand/everything on TV is crap", every discussion of sports to include comments of, "It's just a bunch of dumb guys chasing a ball", and every thread featuring someone's artwork to feature comments on someone's pontifications about why "this isn't really art."

The point is that even if we've heard it before, people show up to threads with something they want to get off their chests and/or tell people about themselves, and no matter how many times we've heard it before, they're going to use the opportunity to tell us about it again.
posted by deanc at 2:35 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity...

Every since the great Unfavening Nonsperiment, I've been dicking around trying to find new points of entry or ways to read. Recent, popular, this, that.

I've learned that as long as I leave at least one stupid remark as every 10th comment or so, Recent Activity works great.

9 more to go...
posted by rokusan at 2:36 PM on December 4, 2009

deanc- I'm responding to the people who seem to be trying to convince me that plaid isn't new, and that they love to wear flannel all the time, even though, you know, I told a story just now about my spouse who has worn plaid or flannel button-up shirts every day since he was in the second grade.

Maybe I'm misreading this thread.
posted by muddgirl at 2:39 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?
posted by everichon at 2:39 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Ideally, a hipster knows that his/her dress is superficial-- which is kind of the point: there's an ironic detachment from the act of dressing in that it's all regarded as an amusing distraction. It's the people shopping at Ann Taylor and Hugo Boss who infuse their fashion choices with some kind of deeper meaning about the wearer's inner character.

Never shopped at Hugo but I know what you're talking about and... you're wrong. The people shopping there? They're just going for a look. Period. Ironic detachment isn't just a look -- in fact, you couldn't understand it from the surface which is why it's a statement in addition to the look -- and that is the attempt to say something about character. Isn't that obvious?

The guy who goes and gets a suit probably works somewhere he needs a suit. Black or navy, wide lapel or thin? Who cares so long as it fits the bill. Being misinterpreted is never a possibility.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 2:50 PM on December 4, 2009

Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and say I'd take a tailored Armani suit as a personal expression over super-sized aviator glasses and fixie and day of the week.
posted by tkchrist at 3:09 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?

I view it more as an evolution.
posted by tkchrist at 3:10 PM on December 4, 2009

Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity...

Even if we've heard it before, people show up to threads with something they want to get off their chests and/or tell people about themselves, and no matter how many times we've heard it before, they're going to use the opportunity to tell us about it again.
posted by troybob at 3:14 PM on December 4, 2009

KNOCK IT OFF! TIME SPACE IS FOLDING!
posted by tkchrist at 3:18 PM on December 4, 2009

Michael Jordon: HYPE

To clarify. There's no arguing with the man's talent, as with Wayne Gretzky, as with Tiger Woods. But when their SMILING faces are every-f***ing-where usually hyping some toxic product (Coke, Ford, whatever) I get to cry foul.
posted by philip-random at 3:19 PM on December 4, 2009

I know plenty of people who have been rocking the "Mountain Man" look un-ironically for years. Should I call them to let them know that they were hip in 2006?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:27 PM on December 4, 2009

So, since a lot of people consider current "hipster" trends to be mostly adaptations of previous trends, I'm wondering if the associated values everyone seems to associate with hipsters were the same back then. Were hipsters in the 80's seen as ironically detached as well?
posted by Think_Long at 3:35 PM on December 4, 2009

I don't hate "hipsters" at all, but I hate people who are just putting on a show.
I met an "Ashton" once (could be the same kid, i swear) who went out of his way to tell me that I was doing everything that I liked (photography, music, whatever) wrong and that he enjoyed and did all those things in much better ways that I was incapable of comprehending.
He was a complete snobbish condescending dick and if there's a reason I don't like some hipsters it's because they're like that. If anything I wish there were more young music/art savvy people with counterculture leanings.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:36 PM on December 4, 2009

I know plenty of people who have been rocking the "Mountain Man" look un-ironically for years. Should I call them to let them know that they were hip in 2006?

Ha, yeah, I guess it did subconsciously register a little while ago that suddenly all these dudes sort of looked like me and then it stopped almost as quickly as it started. Weird.

DEATH TO FALSE MOUNTAINMEN, BURLY FOR LIFE.
posted by The Straightener at 3:43 PM on December 4, 2009

Okay, I'll go ahead and say it. That spread? My life.

(And, yeah. Now I'm solidly 2009.)
posted by lunit at 4:40 PM on December 4, 2009

(And, yeah. Now I'm solidly 2009.)

Then can you give this grampa a hand and explain what the heck that is and why it's called a "meta-nerd"? Inquiring minds want to know.
posted by deanc at 4:53 PM on December 4, 2009

As a hipster, I'd say that 2000-2002, 2006 & 2008 are pretty accurate. The rest are just generic hipster-types that would fit in any year from 2001-2009.

Vintage Queen? I've been seeing that archetype since I was a little kid, visiting thrifts stores with my art school-attending uncle in the late '80s.

Yeah. Not that it's worth bragging about, but I was pretty much groomed to be a hipster.

God, I knew that 2002 dude, too. He was great. We hung out and smoked Camels and drank PBR after Lightning Bolt shows. Good times.
posted by Kronoss at 5:13 PM on December 4, 2009

I'm dressed like a 1999 hipster
posted by tehloki at 5:15 PM on December 4, 2009

Ha, yeah, I guess it did subconsciously register a little while ago that suddenly all these dudes sort of looked like me and then it stopped almost as quickly as it started. Weird.

Me too!
posted by troybob at 5:37 PM on December 4, 2009

Then can you give this grampa a hand and explain what the heck that is and why it's called a "meta-nerd"? Inquiring minds want to know.

It's not so much the outfit, specifically, as the lifestyle. It's meta-irony about hipstersism itself. With a little bit of nerd appropriation going on (which, in some ways is full-circle to the 2000 emo-kid). One way that manifests itself is through an obsession with internet memes, like 3 wolf shirt or Rick Astley.

Metafilter, you'll notice, is also solidly "2009 hipster", if this spread is to be believed.
posted by lunit at 5:59 PM on December 4, 2009

Khazk: "Alberta Canada is still drifting around the 2008-ish style "Williamsburg", but less one-speed bike and more fedora/doughboy caps. Also cigarettes."

Yes! I saw about a half dozen of these guys on Whyte Avenue in the summer. Pre-Metafilter I would have assumed they were runaways, mental patients or vagrants, but thanks to the previous hipster threads on this website they were easy to identify. The 'filter really does expand one's horizons.
posted by Kevin Street at 6:01 PM on December 4, 2009

Cool Papa Bell : Wait, wait. Hipster evolve? Evolve into what?

The middle class, usually.

Yuppies, actually, which is what they were all along.
posted by jonmc at 6:13 PM on December 4, 2009

Also, as a recently minted 39-year-old I have this to say: ALL YOU LITTLE SHITS WITH YOUR FACESPACEAND YOUR MYBOOK AND YOUR HIPPITYHOP MUSIC AND YOUR ENERGY DRINKS, GET THE HELL OF MY LAWN!!

(note: I live in a row house and have no lawn. this does not stop me from yelling this at passersby)
posted by jonmc at 6:21 PM on December 4, 2009

This thread totally hit the spot.
posted by stratastar at 6:27 PM on December 4, 2009

It's not so much the outfit, specifically, as the lifestyle. It's meta-irony about hipstersism itself. With a little bit of nerd appropriation going on (which, in some ways is full-circle to the 2000 emo-kid). One way that manifests itself is through an obsession with internet memes, like 3 wolf shirt or Rick Astley.

As a bona fide nerd myself, I now suddenly realize why people get so annoyed at hipsters co-opting their culture.
posted by deanc at 6:27 PM on December 4, 2009

Yuppies, actually, which is what they were all along.

Goes for pretty much every "happening" subculture (hippie, punk, hip+hop, goth, you name it) when shove comes to push. Always easier to cut yr hair, get a job, eat human flesh, become your mom or your dad than hold out (throw in) for something genuinely ... evolutionary.

Now, please. OFF the damned lawn!
posted by philip-random at 6:30 PM on December 4, 2009

Mountain Man! I see them everywhere!
And shave your beard.
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 6:59 PM on December 4, 2009

I'm working on a yuppie hipster hybrid I call the yupster. It is hard, as the genetics are quite unstable at this point. I've been working with a 14th generation Nick Cave clone and a 6th generation Talking Heads drummer (Christ Frantz).

The problem is that I can't get a viable clone to live for more than 12 days, or at least after it transforms into the Tom Tom Club - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table.
posted by geoff. at 7:06 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Dude, Metafilter is fucking drowning in yuppie hipsters. They're like kudzu vine. Don;t be bringing more into the world.
posted by Artw at 7:08 PM on December 4, 2009

You start out in 1994 by saying, “Hipster, hipster, hipster.” By 2008 you can't say “hipster”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like irony, fixie and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about flannel, and all these things you're talking about are totally style things and a byproduct of them is [that] emos get hurt worse than mods.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the coolness problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to make fun of this,” is much more abstract than even the Paste thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Hipster, hipster.”
posted by ifandonlyif at 7:56 PM on December 4, 2009 [11 favorites]

The word "Hipster" is dead, please instead use, "Scenester", "Scene kid", or the descriptive "trying too hard".
posted by amuseDetachment at 8:22 PM on December 4, 2009

An ethnographic observation:
I consulted fellow Dutch mefite gnfti whether we have a trend similar to hipsters here. We couldn't come up with a clear similar trend. Although it must be said that we're both not part of the inner Amsterdam media circles I think. So we may just not have seen it.
Googling for mentions of 'hipster' on Dutch pages just turns up mentions of pantyliners and womens underwear.
We were wondering though how to call those young kids who started to wear clogs ironically.
posted by joost de vries at 8:30 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

In junior high, around 1982, I had a friend who months earlier had worshipped Yes. He got an asymmetrical haircut, started wearing Army surplus pants and listening to Haircut 100 and Japan. A few other friends began calling him "Trendy," like it was the most vile, evil thing. Some friends mocked him because it wasn't the Clash and others because it wasn't AC/DC. Paths diverge.
A year later I was stealing my mom's eyeliner and wearing an ankh earring.
posted by chococat at 8:41 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Just had a revelation on my recent, and first, trip to LA.

West Coast L.A. hipsters go to clubs and even promote club events.
I spotted a bearded, club-promoting hipster in all black who had a sidekick that was in a white v-neck t-shirt with a short beard and a load of chest hair with a little top hat -- a type of chia pet hipster.. These two working the door at club Voyeur ..deciding which 17-year-old girl with fake boobs gets in.

The whole west coast v-neck thing is sooooooooo gay. I lived in France for a few years and sporting a white v-neck is the equivalent of waving a rainbow flag. All a question of evolution and geography I imagine, but it made an impression on me.

Total lack of fixies in L.A. also..

No self-respecting D.C. hipster would be caught near a trendy night club.
The D.C. hipster lives in dive bars and house parties ..art gallery events and the like.

Also, the D.C. hipster is extremely politicized. And of course, in D.C. there is the whole bike messenger scene that is a culture unto itself -- hipster in a way, or at war with hipsters. Never figured that one out..

I've seen Williamsburg hipsters on site. Definitely overrun with hipsters, but not sure how they are. Never hung out there much. I'm 30 and I just remember thinking what a Mecca the place must be for those under 25.

There is no uniform hipster.
posted by pwedza at 8:43 PM on December 4, 2009

“Any movie worth watching is sort of unwatchable, in the same way that punk is sort of unlistenable and great literature is sort of unreadable.”
Liquid Sky is pretty unwatchable, but it’s no Pink Flamingos. Which really is no Strozek. That film killed Kurt Cobain.

“Do people even read threads anymore? Or do they just read the comments that show in Recent Activity and assume that's the whole of it?”

I like wearing Chucks more than Tabi. (Frank Miller seems to have people following me)

…yes I meant to cross comment.

Although I used to like wearing low top water boots when I was getting wet all day. For about 5 minutes everyone was wearing them. Then that stopped. Weird.

“There's no arguing with the man's talent, as with Wayne Gretzky, as with Tiger Woods. But when their SMILING faces are every-f***ing-where usually hyping some toxic product (Coke, Ford, whatever) I get to cry foul.”

Jesus doesn’t smile. Hence the longevity.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:07 PM on December 4, 2009

joost de vries, you'll find some here. Though most of the folks on these street-style blogs tend a little older and a little less uniform than the hipster core, so these photos may not depict the true Dutch hipster.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:52 AM on December 5, 2009

In my desert hovel in the Sahara, there is no such thing as irony. I've given up trying to explain American fashion and cultural trends, just agreeing that, "yes, white people are crazy.
posted by iamck at 1:13 AM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

way to go, ambassador.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 5:57 AM on December 5, 2009

The way things are smushed together in the thumbnail, I thought the person on the far right was riding a unicycle (that turned out to be the front tire of a fixie.) I was thinking "That can't be right! Unicycles will never be hip!"

(I wish I could ride a unicycle)
posted by Zed at 8:08 AM on December 5, 2009

Does that word actually mean anything? I've always thought "hipster" was like "picts." We keep heading deeper into what we think is hipster territory, and everyone there always says, "Hipsters? Oh, you have to keep heading north for hipsters."
posted by clvrmnky at 8:29 AM on December 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

Smedleyman: but it’s no Pink Flamingos. Which really is no Strozek. That film killed Kurt Cobain.

Oh man. Whoa. Blasphemy. BLASPHEMER!!

*Takes deep breath*

Okay...Smed, um...boy is this awkward. Strozek is the film Ian Curtis watched before he hung himself.

And I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask for your post-punk decoder ring back...
posted by Skygazer at 12:00 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

ooooh burn!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 12:27 PM on December 5, 2009

Okay...Smed, um...boy is this awkward. Strozek is the film Ian Curtis watched before he hung himself.

Ummm ... Ian Curtis killed Kurt Cobain?
posted by philip-random at 1:29 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Courtney Love killed Ian Curtis.
posted by Artw at 1:45 PM on December 5, 2009

Courtney Love teared Ian Curtis apart.
posted by ardgedee at 3:45 PM on December 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

I'm too hip for irregular verbs.
posted by ardgedee at 3:46 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Bizarre love tri... never mind.
posted by ifandonlyif at 7:53 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Temptation.
posted by Artw at 9:42 PM on December 5, 2009

Courtney Love Vigilantes.
posted by GuyZero at 10:07 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh well, nevermind.
posted by Artw at 11:43 PM on December 5, 2009

There are many thing I dislike online, but few of them command my ire like weird proprietary image viewer plugins. Not ONLY are they unnecessary, but they NEVER EVER FUCKING WORK PROPERLY. I don't want to bother with the ress-ing in text, or the "smart" pages that always focus on another part of the poster than the one I clicked on, or the weird mystery scripts that for some reason NEED to run so I can look at a PNG file.

POST THE FUCKING IMAGE. WEB BROWSERS HAVE BEEN LOADING THEM FOR OVER TEN YEARS.

HOW MUCH MONEY DID YOU PAY YOUR WEB DESIGNER TO MAKE SOMETHING SIMPLE SO DIFFICULT?


/rage
posted by ®@ at 4:26 PM on December 6, 2009

I'd say it probably would have been better off as a PDF, but as flash viewers go that ones pretty inoffensive. In browser viewing of hugemongous for-print images tends to suck across the baord.

Or, you know, just read the article which has the images in it anyhow.
posted by Artw at 5:11 PM on December 6, 2009

"Ummm ... Ian Curtis killed Kurt Cobain?"

You sayin' he didn't?
posted by Smedleyman at 5:10 PM on December 7, 2009