Banter Voices

Quote of the Day: Hipsterism and the End of Western Civilization

By Ben Cohen · March 18,2013

| 423 Views | Society and Culture

If you dress like this, you're a dick...

Hipsters: Irony in motion

Douglas Haddow at Adbusters sums up the vacuous ‘Hipster’ movement currently plaguing most industrialized nations:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

And his description of the dance floor at a Hipster party is beyond priceless:

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.

villemar

This is a great article and dead on. I’d like to share the source article with friends, but ironically (used correctly), it’s from Adbusters, who in my personal opinion represents the political form of Hipsterism, that being anarcho-nihilist hipster douchebaggery. Oh well. Great topic regardless.
JMAshby

I cannot stop laughing at the dance floor description.

“The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks.”
- Aaron Litz
  
  Hipsters would actually probably take that as a compliment, too.
http://twitter.com/StewbieDoo Stewart Smith

I think that, if anything, this will simply lead to a new movement that feels as outrageous and defiant as the hip hop and punk cultures were. Something that is as stuffy and self-aware as the hipster movement means you’ll always have a group of people who essentially feel oppressed and repressed by it and will do what it takes to break that mold.
- Benthedailybanter
  
  Problem is Stewart, Hipster tend to have a habit of engulfing any new movement and turning it into something ironic and trendy. Which then fucks it up and renders the new movement meaningless. It’s a powerful culture meme as it is formless, yet can assume all forms. Not sure how it can be defeated.
  - http://twitter.com/StewbieDoo Stewart Smith
    
    They do have a habit of engulfing movements, but I think that’s just a symptom of their youth. Every hipster has to age eventually, just like the hippies eventually grew out of being hippies, another movement that people got all hand-wringy over as destroying the current and future culture. This will eventually die out, much in the way that most every other dominant, visible, potentially destructive cultural movement has only to be replaced by something else.

Banter Voices

Quote of the Day: Hipsterism and the End of Western Civilization

Most Read Articles Today: