As the spring streets in New York come back to life, local media are obsessing over hipster culture again. Recently, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, and The New York Times Magazine all ran large pieces on the hipster phenomenon in one form or another. In last weeks Time Out cover story titled "Why the hipster must die: A modest proposal to save New York cool," they describe the state of hipsterism as such:
"Yes, the assassins of cool still walk our streets: Any night of the week finds the East Village, the Lower East Side and Williamsburg teeming with youth—a pageant of the bohemian undead. These hipster zombies—now more likely to be brokers or lawyers than art-school dropouts—are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents. And they must be buried for cool to be reborn."
While I'm generally not a fan of the affection and shallowness that can reside in your average hipster, I find this description full of distorted sentimentalism about the idea of cool. What I've read also contains a sort of generational bias that comes with the territory with any of these type of conversations (people naturally discount other generations, sometimes the one they belong to). Let's talk about other social groups. You can make them all look ridiculous if you want to. Hipsters tend to be pretty global-minded and forward-thinking, however petty their cares. While a shiny target, in my opinion taking aim at the hipster (and whatever generalization you want to apply to them), is a highly entertaining but exaggerated and easy exercise.
Much more interesting to me is how critics of hipsterism in America will react when MTV rolls out the hipster experience to the masses with Virtual Lower East Side (which was mentioned in AdAge earlier this year) (sub. required) and the (rumored?) next Laguna Beach style show, "Brooklyn," which will follow around a group of presumably hipsterish teens. I heard that a few weeks ago the folks at MTV and Vice documented a Saturday night party at the L.E.S. bar "Home Sweet Home" as part of their research and development for vLES. So when the hipster goes virtual -- when a 15 year-old in Ohio can virtually see an indie band at Cake Shop -- what will this do to youth culture? Personally (I think) I'm ok with it all. Hipsterism is far beyond being some treasured culture of high integrity. If that 15 year old wants a piece of the L.E.S., I say give it to them and let's see what happens.
Posted by chet
Web
Comments
Interesting post, Chet. In many ways hipster like sites already exist online like Vimeo or Threadless. They just give off that air of hipsterness even if they're for everyone. So when you have a mainstream site like MTV, creating a "virtual hipster space," I'm not sure it will have real cred, at least among the hipsters. It kind of has to have people with that vibe behind it and believing in it; it has to be authentic.
That said, what I love about the web is that it has always had a more open spirit to it -- since the pioneers and early adopters tend to be geeks, there is more of a come as you are vibe and you'll be accepted, a vibe, that doesn't quite jive with the feeling you get in offline hipster enclaves.
Posted by: Anastasia | June 6, 2007 9:08 AM
Yes totally agree. I don't anticipate the MTV site to really appeal to hipsters (however you want to define them), but to instead make hipster culture available as a rich experience to a mass audience. Authenticity is an issue, and I imagine they're trying to bake in as much of it as they can, with the apparent Vice partnership being an indication of that.
I personally think the label of hipster is over generalized, and when it comes to hip web culture, it's hard to really lump them in there. i think it's something different that speaks to your point of openness.
p.s. for anyone insterested in the origin of the idea of hipness, i recommend "the history of hip." great book.
Posted by: Chet Gulland | June 6, 2007 10:46 AM
What happens when hipster culture is coopted and repackaged for mainstream teens? Is it still hip? This has been happening for awhile now. Looking underground, discovering trends, making them mainstream...
Posted by: Anastasia | June 6, 2007 11:07 AM
When MTV finally co-opts something, it is only three years from complete death. No need to kill the hipster. MTV will do it for us. The question is how long anyone can hide from MTV what's next. We should probably build in corporate unprofitability.
Posted by: Kristen | June 6, 2007 11:20 AM
One of the more interesting takes on the "hipster" phenom is the book "Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City." There's a good review of it on Slate:
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/11/17/lloyd/print.html
Posted by: Colin Kingsbury | June 6, 2007 12:34 PM