Hacker News Reader

Comment by williamcotton | Hacker News Reader

Can of Pabst wearing a trucker hat while listening to The Rapture... Oh wait, that's 2003...

Fixed gear bicycle wearing an ironic Christmas sweater waiting in line for a fried catfish sandwich under the Williamsburg bridge... Sorry, that's 2007...

Chambray shirt drinking a cocktail made with hand picked elderberries reading MissionMission on an iPad... Nuts, that's 2011...

Can we all agree that the term hipster doesn't mean anything?

Seriously, I've seen the term bandied about for a decade now and its definition changes every 9 months.

View on HN

It's basically a way for those who don't have an interest in cultural changes around them to deride others. Fads and trends are actually fun; they bring new music, culture, and experiences to our lives. Deriding people for collectively discovering new angles on life is dumb as shit.

It's basically a way for those who are secure in their own identity to inform others of the essential pointlessness of their existence. Fads and trends are actually a con-trick; they bring new cults of personality to our lives. Deriding people for not buying into your neurotic bullshit is dumb as shit.

Let me quote you two of the many definitions of "hipster":

>a person who is keenly interested in the latest trends or fashions;

>a person who is hip.

I think that, by definition, the meaning of the word is to change oft.

Hipsters are a type of avant-garde mainstream, that takes symbols, styles and other things from subcultures they don't belong to (e.g. Fixies are from the New York messenger culture). Because they do all this to not be in the mainstream and the mainstream adopts many of their things, they're constantly changing.

It seems to me that Norman Mailer used the term in the 1950s, praising hipsters, and that William Styron, likely in response, damned them in one of his novels about that time (Set This House on Fire?). But however cool and ironic it might be to be seen reading Styron and Mailer in 2013, I don't think I'm up to it.

It changes with its subculture. The word "hipster" is always used chiefly by members of the subculture to describe what they themselves aren't.

Hipsterism is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

With apologies to Oscar Wilde (and to hipsters everywhere)

> Seriously, I've seen the term bandied about for a decade now and its definition changes every 9 months.

That's the main point of it i guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com