I think it was in 'The Century for the Self' that described research in the 70's regarding the counter culture movements of the 60's. What they found was that there were a number of alternative cultures that the people not following the standard culture would adopt into (hippies, outdoorsy people, etc) to find like minded alternative individuals. They called each of these alt-cultures 'lifestyles' and found that although a majority of people claimed to be counter culture, there was only a small set of about 12 or so lifestyles that most of these people fit into.
I think 'hipster' is just one lifestyle under the above criteria.
They then used those classifications to market to people who were explicitly anti-consumerism. For example: Don't market cars, market jeeps. Cars are for squares who need to go to work for the man. When you get a jeep, you aren't buying into the system, man. You are attaining the freedom to get back into nature!
'The Century of the Self' is excellent. It explained to me how my commune-dwelling, sandals-made-from-old-tires wearing parents were converted back into happy consumers. It also cleared up a few other questions like: Why was the V-Chip was such a huge deal and then was suddenly forgotten?
I think hipster, at least in the modern sense, is an umbrella term for people who don't subscribe to the standard mainstream culture. There are outdoorsy hipsters, with expensive bikes and their own lingo, that are just as pretentious as the typical urban hipster with his fixie.
I tend not to equate the two, myself. In my mind a proper subculture differs from a lifestyle in that, typically, a lifestyle comes from above. A lifestyle tends to be given to us by Madison avenue. The outdoorsy guy gets his opinions from magazines and buys super expensive toys from mainstream sporting goods with large advertising budgets.
The urban hipster we usually decry, picks up fashion at the thrift store, whose second hand sale does nothing for Madison avenue's masters. Music choices, reading, etc comes from the trenches of like minded fans. Politics comes from, typically, marginalized outlets via books easily had at the library or second-hand book store. There's a real crowdsourcing element to traditional hipsterism. Sure, they're all wearing black and listening to the same 50 or so indie bands, but the crowd made that happen, not marketers. I think there's a real value there and this type of person is really the only socially acceptable avenue to curb, what I consider, mindless consumerism.
If anything, the internet and its ability to tie us all together has made us all urban hipsters to some extent. Now we're getting opinions from 1,000 people on goodreads, not the NYTimes reviewer.
>hipster, at least in the modern sense, is an umbrella term for people who don't subscribe to the standard mainstream culture.
hipster is the standard mainstream culture today. Just look around.
>the typical urban hipster with his fixie.
"i was biking fixie way before it was cool". 30 years ago in USSR the geared bikes were much less available even if you had money for it - it costs 130 rubles - 2/3 of an engineer's monthly salary vs. fixie costing "only" 64 rubles. Going uphill on a fixie i dreamed about unreachable gears :) With wide availability of geared bikes here biking a fixie in SF is a cool way to beat those self-whipping monks.
> hipster is the standard mainstream culture today. Just look around.
This is what bothers me so much about the term. Nobody calls themselves a hipster, and in my area at least, nobody who could be accused of being a hipster goes around thinking of themselves as some counterculture special snowflake. I ride a fixie because they're cheap and our city is flat, and I live downtown because I like to be able to walk to work, and so on. These are just normal things that young people do, generally without any pretention. Hearing people making ridiculous sweeping generalizations about how pedantic they think young hipsters are is just the same shit as complaining about Elvis and his dancing.
o! what i was talking did have freewheel. I guess it is my detachment from the hipster/fixie culture shows here as what i accidentally recently read on it was actually touting ability to have freewheel as among the advantages of fixies over geared ones.
I think you're overestimating the organic nature of "urban hipster" culture quite a bit. Its determined largely in a top-down manner like the other examples you've cited, just via different avenues. I would cite the rise of PBR[1] as an example.
Many counter-culture folk are not seeking to be different for difference's sake. Counter-culture means against the dominant culture, not against all culture.
There are people who primarily seek to be different, and that can devolve into self-parody, but that is not the only kind of member of counter-culture.
Do `hipsters` claim themselves to be `hipster` ? So far it looks like, to me, from western europe, as a derogatory term for people seeking attention and following the beard-flanelle-piercing-glasses trend.
I can spot people following that trend on the street but I can't tell if they'd label themselves as hipsters.
Hippies, grunge, punks claim to be hippies, grunge or punks.
Hipsters are people who appropriate bits of other subcultures, without paying their dues in those subcultures. A guy who went to art school supported by wealthy parents and now works in an office designing brand logos, will grow a beard and get sailor tattoos and wear the clothes of a manual worker, and he'll claim this makes him "authentic" - to anyone who'll listen, with the clear implication that he is superior to them in some inexplicable way.
That's why people hate hipsters - what they call irony is actually "being an asshole".
This is how I feel about the term. Just read through these comments - everyone has a completely different definition, most of which boil down to a few aspects of some subculture that they personally find annoying.
I think 'hipster' is just one lifestyle under the above criteria.