Hipster Business Models: A New Book by Priceonomics | Hacker News Reader

Hipster Business Models: A New Book by Priceonomics

priceonomics.com

59 pointsrohin16 comments

I dislike the fact that they conflate being a hipster and being a maker. In my experience, the segment of makers that are also hipsters isn't really all that different from the general population. Hipster is a pejorative. Connotating it with maker puts makers in a negative light.

Maybe just go with "Maker Business Models"? But perhaps that isn't catchy enough?

The labels annoy me, unless they exist solely for the purpose of self description, with citation if necessary. Otherwise, it's so easy to project a label onto a portion of culture you've only seen a superficial glimpse of. You can imagine as you walk through New York, you are surrounded by hipsters, and they are everywhere - but that's not the same as knowing every individual person person. It's a distortion of terms and quantity. There is no reason to believe in these terms as accurate descriptors of reality - aside from maybe making less mathy sounds with your mouth to go along with predictive indicators of marketing trends.

The book is about making products that didn't exist before, so I think the authors are referring to hipsters as 'people who knew about something before it became cool'.

You can be a maker and make things that are already mainstream. Carpenters, for example, are makers but not all carpenters are hipsters.

The word for someone that 'makes products that didn't exist before' is inventor.

Hipsters and makers are unrelated to each other. One is about social signalling, the other is about making.

For example, in the cycling world the canonical "hipster on a fixie" has nothing to do with newness or functional capability. The cool is in the retro, the inconvenience, the social signalling that "I have such incredibly high conventional social status that I can afford to waste unbelievable amounts of time riding this ridiculously out-of-date and inefficient bike".

Makers, on the other hand, may be interested in making new things or old things, but they are primarily in it for the making, not the social signalling. Makers make. They only talk about it now and then when they feel like it. Get a few beverages-of-their-choice into a maker and they'll be apt to talk about stuff they've made that they never mentioned to anyone before because it just got lost in the ruck.

There are no hipsters on a desert island. There can be makers, though.

sounds like somebody's girlfriend got pulled by a hipster

What is a maker?

It's pretty hipster to demand to be called a maker

+ 1M

I personally attempt to use 'hipster' to refer only to ironic culture, people who enjoy things defensively (potentially the opposite of 'geek' whose enjoyment knows no bounds, including social expectations), and whose choices are primarily driven by fear of embarrassment (for instance, looking ridiculous so that they cannot be embarrassed by it, to know it was on purpose instead of trying and failing).

And yet, other people use words in other ways. I do not like what _I_ mean when I say hipster, but what the Priceonomics fellows mean is very different (closer to the true definition of 'indie'), and I have no problem with them associating that with makers, me personally, our industry (although tech in general encompasses much more), etc.

I got a review copy of the book. It's a really interesting read and lives up to the Priceonomics name!

Why is "hipster" the new word for Generation Y?

Because every older generation needs a word that they use derisively against the next generation. Hippy -> Hipster. Fortunately I don't like being on those people's lawns anyway.

Awfully defensive.

given that the top two comments in this comment section are attacking what they were defending, i'd say that stance is appropriate.

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