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Wikipedia has what I think is an extremely accurate and non-judgemental indicative definition of a hipster

> The hipster subculture is stereotypically composed of young adults who reside primarily in gentrified neighborhoods. It is broadly associated with indie and alternative music and genres such as chill-out, folk, modern rock, pop rock, and post-Britpop. Hipsters also frequently flaunt a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, vintage and thrift store-bought clothing, pacifist and green views, generally vegan, consume organic and artisanal foods, craft alcoholic beverages, and alternative lifestyles. The subculture typically consists of mostly white young adults living in urban areas. It has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior"

To me eyes there is definitely a large and distinct subculture with these characteristics.

To be a bit more judgemental, another good definition of hipster is "what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics" (Rob Horning, also in that article.)

There are so many different characteristics listed under that definition that virtually all young white people could be called a hipster to some degree.

I still disagree with the judgemental definition of hipster. You could call anyone wearing clothes that aren't totally unique "pastiche". Assuming they're wearing the clothes out of a sense of "irony" is projecting.

> There are so many different characteristics listed under that definition that virtually all young white people could be called a hipster to some degree.

I think that's pretty common in social subcultures though isn't it? It's an indicative description of something that's emerged naturally. It's not a mathematical formula.

If you want perfect that you'll need to give up trying to define cultures entirely.

That's a good point, most subcultures aren't going to perfectly describe everyone in them. I think my problem with the Wikipedia definition is that it's so overly broad that it's virtually unfalsifiable if you're young and white. That wouldn't be bad by itself (it would just be a large category of people). I guess the reason it bugs me is because it is so broad and so commonly -- exclusively, in my personal experience -- used as a pejorative.

"I think my problem with the Wikipedia definition is that it's so overly broad that it's virtually unfalsifiable if you're young and white"

Not my experience whatsoever. Philadelphia public school growing up, we had young white kids who would have unambiguously fallen into categories of "Punk" "metalhead" "goth" "hood" to just name a few of the most cliched highschool-sitcom-but-actually groups. (there was even regular assertions that "hipster" and "scene" were different but that one never really grokked for me)

Especially having lived east vs. west coast over the last decade, the assertion that there isn't a distinct subculture in a non-derogatory way that can be defined usefully as "hipster" doesn't ring true for me.

And for the most part, even growing up, I never got the sense the grouping was malicious except in rare cases. Most kids would own their tastes (usually associated with music and dress) and would probably take insult if you confused their clique :P (And less in the "you just shit on me" way, but that could happen, more in the "how the hell could you confuse that" fashion, which implies to me that others saw the same clean voluntary-group-agglomeration that I saw.)

Scene has always been a closer approximation to "colorful emo" (as opposed to "wears only black emo") and nothing like a hipster. Maybe Scene is used differently in other regions?

Where I'm from it's basically "emo-style clothing but with colored hair and eccentric outfits". Just search for "scene hair" online to get an idea of the aesthetic. "Scene/emo" tends to be the description for a lot of scene or emo aesthetics and never "scene/hipster".

Tangent on the whole emo discussion, I recently heard of "Midwest Emo Revival" after the "popular" emo subculture kinda faded from the coasts. Makes me wonder how different other subcultures can become when the popularity shifts regions or the "underground scene" gains more popularity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo_revival

re: my confusion between scene and emo/hipster, I think it was largely that scene was "just becoming a thing" as I was graduating highschool so while those who were "Down with the kids" knew the new patterns, I was 200% tuned out by then. The descriptions you give seem to contextually fit where I've heard it used since.

Re: subculture shifts and underground revivals, don't even get me started. I have a personal fascination in how what "goth" is has changed _so drastically_ over the last 30 years, (The Cure, david lynch/oingo boingo, then the explosion into cybergoth/punk, overlap with death metal, branches off into classical) Someday I'd love to read on someone who has made a study over how these shifts occur and propagate, largely with an eye for how technology has changed this in a post-internet age.

Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? There's just this assumption that people who "look like that" don't listen to punk or metal, and it's just not true. People who listen to punk or metal can be young, white (I hate to harp on the white thing, it's just the way Wikipedia describes it), live in gentrified urban areas, buy clothes from the thrift store, buy vintage jackets. Lots of punks are vegan and live alternative lifestyles. All of those things are characteristics that supposedly identify someone as a hipster. If it seems like I'm cherry-picking, I'd ask how many of the characteristics need to be met for the categorization to be true. So I don't agree that they unambiguously fall into their own "punk" or "metalhead" categories. Maybe they self-identify as punk or metalhead, but that doesn't change the fact that the definition of hipster is so broad that their subcultures are a subset of it.

"Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? "

Pragmatically, because they often _wanted_ to and designed their personas intentionally.

You seem to be arguing that visible signifiers of subcultures don't provide meaningful signal. I would disagree broadly, and specifically in that the I don't even consider "hipster" the "generic white dude." Beanies? plaid? At least where I grew up those were _very conscious statements_ and not just the median type of dress.

As you say there are people who present as one thing who have tastes otherwise. I present nowadays as a metalhead but spend far more of my time listening to hip hop. But if someone called me a metalhead I'd probably go "there's some truth in that" and understand the connotations even if it's not 100%, and I see hipster similarly, whereas you seem to find it to have no signal whatsoever.

The core of our difference seems to be whether "generic white dude" falls into hipster. I simply can't find that to be true. The aspects the wikipedia article call out, I've only found to be "norm" in places that would, again without malice, probably self-identify as "hipster", although there's a definite "grunge" overlap. (Seattle, Portland, Vermont, in my personal experience) My main point being, that does not even come close to describing the vast bulk of jeans wearing boring-tshirt-or-button down blue/white-collar loafer/sneaker wearing white dude that I've met over the course of my life. (And sanity checking myself with a glance down my 55 person teamroom :P)

This may well end up being a "you live in a different bubble than I do" which I'm not about to argue or criticize. I just wanted to chime in from a music-nerd-often-accused-of-being-hipster's perspective; if only to speak for my friend group and myself, we find these terms to have inoffensive utility.

I have the opposite reaction to the word hipster. The first time I heard/read it I knew _exactly_ what what it implied even though I couldn't (and still can't) succinctly define it. It brings an image to my mind and a smile to my face.

A hipster is a young man with a beard.