Adbusters is the next publication up to take a shot at hipsters and their soul-numbing lack of depth, meaning or cultural relevance. This article claims hipsters can be easily identified by appropriated blue collar fashions, their love of the nightlife and a refusal to own up to their own hipsterdom resulting in scenes like the one described below:
“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the girl
sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American
Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately
warm wool coat.
“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!”
“Are you a hipster?”
“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.
Ah joyless and so full of irony the hipster, so says this article, cannot even dance with unselfconscious abandon.
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded
by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive,
intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from
his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent
thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance.
A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its
best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a
weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let
themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging
themselves into oblivion.
How is it that hipsters have found themselves so unloved and unappreciated? Who will step up and defend these media whipping boys and girls? What do these critics want anyway? A world of dudes in white baseball hats popping their collars? You won't find us on Last Nights Party any time soon, but we'd take Justice over Dave Matthews Band any day.
