Are You A Hipster? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

You're probably a hipster.

We all hate hipsters, right? They seem so smug and arrogant, with their ray bans and scarves and ironic t-shirts. Even those who CLEARLY ARE hipsters still recoil at the label. Embracing irony over earnestness, the key to hipsters is not just what they enjoy, but how they enjoy it. Borrowing from other subcultures, (see: Handlebar mustaches and flannel shirts), hipsters reappropriate these fashion elements as their own. But don't we all do that? Our own fashion came from SOMEWHERE, and certainly has been refined. Do we all have a little bit of hipster blood in us?

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[MrPerson]

I thought Hipsters were the people that were like "I did that before it was popular" with a snarky attitude.

[joshuawhere]

Here's an idea: hipsters don't exist.

Once upon a time, when the cool kids didn't understand why someone liked the things they like (particularly games or learning or books, because most of the cool kids were jocks), they'd call them a nerd or a geek; now the nerds and geeks have become cool and so those words aren't insults any more.  So this new word, hipster, has the connotation that you not only like things that aren't cool, but you're pretentious about it.  It works really well because it's not just an insult to you, but also to the stuff you like, as if no one could possibly like that with sincerity.

Since I've never met anyone who claims to be a hipster, and I've never met anyone who admits to adopting stuff ironically rather than due to enthusiasm, I'm not sure I believe they even exist.  No one has any way of telling whether someone actually is just pretending to like a bunch of disparate things unless they tell you so.  It's just the latest word to convey disdain when someone is different.

[SandraThePhox]

im so hipster i saw that looking like a hipster is to main stream so now i dress normally.

[Xplorer]

How do you differentiate someone who genuinely likes and knows about a variety of genres and who thus wishes to visually demonstrate their tastes through clothing accordingly. Every genre has "posers". People who dress eclectically are now synonymous with "poser". But how do you know they don't genuinely like those things by looking at them? Maybe there are just as many posers in the "hipster" genre as there are of punk or hip hop (both are full of people who call themselves by those titles or adorn the uniform without knowing much about it). So how do you tell?

[sierrafarnum]

People say hipsters are narcissistic and full of themselves, then they call people with beards or people with large glasses or a different music taste hipsters. How do any of those things make people narcissistic?

[Werelight]

"Everybody's a hipster" has been close to a catch phrase for me, lately.
I'm going to love this channel.

[evenjedi]

This episode is so hard for me to wrap my head around. I think I'm going to have to re-watch it multiple times. Anybody with me on that?

[nwisco]

a hipster does everything the artist does, except art itself.

think about it.

[mechanicalsnail]

I feel like following hipster trends is not the defining factor of "hipsterness, " but rather the frequent calling of attention to your following these trends and/or shaming mainstream trends makes you a hipster.

[niimmmii]

you have basically given me inspiration for half my cultural analysis essay on subculture challenging hegemony and Hebdige!! many thanks sending your way ahha x

[emub]

darn. i thought i would be able to survive this video without somehow being called a hipster. well, i was wrong.

[YayChocolateYay]

To be honest, I think you're looking way too deeply into this. People just hate hipsters because their stereotype is associated with smugness and elitism.

[TimelordPete]

i've hated the modern/current form of hipster (as apposed to say, 90s-00s when being hip or hipster was genuine & cool)
it seems they work on deliberately looking ridiculous.  then i realised that i like plaid shirts, wear cowboy boots a lot, and currently have a moustache (not a silly, curled around at the ends handlebar tache, and I'm getting annoyed with it & it won't be a lot for much longer than another week).
 i was starting to think i was a closet-hipster.   but then, i genuinely like cowboy boots (and old west junk in general, hence the tache (inspired by Revolver Ocelot)) and checkered shirts n stuff.   whereas hipsters put together ridiculous things to form a non-style, for a deliberate reaction from other people, and forcing themselves to look/be different.  
then again deliberately looking different for the sake of rebellion is kind of what punk was, and i wouldn't dare connect punk to hipster. if you saw someone dressed as a punk (over the top spiked hair, plaid shirt, tight jeans etc), would you say they were 'hipster' or 'punk'?

as far as i can tell, its not what is used, it's why it's used.  do you wear/do/have the thing because you like it, or because it's deliberately abnormal.  (wirelessly connecting a keyboard to your iPad so you can type easier, vs buying an iPad typewriter)
its almost like taking features from already existing subcultures, mashing them together and posing as something new, because its done to get the look of something new, but has no genuine heart behind it.  

i keep wondering what hipsters will do when the realise that non-mainstream has gone pretty mainstream already...

[makmar]

I think you explained it I am from San Francisco and have nothing to do with either sub culture and I thoroughly enjoyed

[ShonaMcCarthy]

I just discovered that I am a massive hipster after years of being terrified of them. I'm a walking cultural mish-mash. 

[DrZalmat]

I actually would say everyone is a Hipster at a point in his life. I myself am a geek but when i think about it i came to this subculture through curiosity and cherry picking. I watched this, played that, picked whatever i found best, but then over time my horizon broadened and i became a "full" geek.
Well... that was 20 years ago, the term hipster was unknown back then, but i think a lot of us got in their respective subcultures this way... cherry picking in diverse subcultures and then finding the one "true" passion with this process

[reNINTENDO]

I think the main reason Hipsters are so hated is become the word is so poorly defined. Is it someone who dresses a certain way and speaks ironically or someone who just isn't into mainstream stuff? If someone isn't into mainstream stuff, are they only a hipster when they vocally hate all things mainstream? I say go ahead and like and dislike what you want, but I will say I have serious issues with people who do things not because they like something but because they want people to think they do. Worse yet, I don't like the idea of people disliking something just because others do. That's a very dumb reason to hate anything and makes me think "Your interests aren't actually important to anyone. Don't be so full of yourself."

Oh, and maybe my least favorite thing that came with hipsterdom (though this may be fabricated by non-hipsters for all I know) is the use of "ironic" when a person means "sarcastic". Liking something "ironically" isn't irony. It doesn't make sense in general and is basically impossible. Most of all, it definitely isn't a form of irony.

[GirlCrafter]

The picture of Mumford & Sons you showed is literally hanging on my wall right next to me.

[zsolttildy]

who cares stop judging people on their tastes or looks

[thejuliecreative]

I was watching this like wtf how are these things he's describing hipster then I saw that it was made in 2013 and I was like ohhh