{"id":10365,"date":"2014-06-24T01:10:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T09:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=10365"},"modified":"2014-06-24T01:10:52","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T09:10:52","slug":"the-mighty-hipster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/the-mighty-hipster\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mighty Hipster"},"content":{"rendered":"

To paraphrase a quote misattributed to Mark Twain,\u00a0 Rumors of the death of the hipster are greatly exaggerated.<\/span><\/p>\n

How many times have you come across a snide appraisal of hipsters, whatever iteration hipster is current at the time, with the conclusion that the species has hit rock bottom. Hipsters are so over, just look at them.<\/p>\n

The last time I read something like that, hipsters were kind of effete and emo, remember them? And they had to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon for some reason.<\/p>\n

Chris Sanderson<\/strong>, a trend forcaster, explains:“The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster. The word no longer had the same meaning.”<\/em><\/strong> Oh please, Chris, as if.\u00a0 Then there was\u00a0 a report last month from researchers at the University of New South Wales who discovered that the hipster look was no longer “hip.”<\/p>\n

I’m down with Chris’s notion that there are now two<\/em><\/strong> types of hipster: “Contemporary hipsters \u2013 the ones with the beards we love to hate \u2013 and proto-hipsters, the real deal.”<\/strong><\/em> So, okay, the Real Deal means ‘us’ and the faux hipsters are ‘them’. That’s cool with me, I guess.<\/p>\n

Hipsters were once people who rejected societal norms. White people who liked black jazz, people who read William Burroughs or Iceberg Slim. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t about a uniform that signaled you were cool and in-the-know.<\/p>\n

I still like the definition of a hipster as someone who was into whatever you’re into, 5 years ago. He has moved on and you will never keep up with him. I can reliably turn to my Nephew Russell<\/strong>, who was riding a fixed bike years ago. He is too hip for Facebook, not to mention Twitter. Whatever browser he uses for the internet, you’ve never heard of it. Whatever coffee you drink, he knows a place to get better coffee and it’s not a chain, either. It’s a given that he despises hipsters.<\/p>\n

This Sanderson guy, the hipster expert, predicts an ‘overhaul’ in hipsters as we now know them\u00a0 He predicts “A more macho look, almost to the point of caricature, in a bid for men to reinforce their identity.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Uh-oh, he’d better be wrong about this. The hipsters I’m seeing (whether proto, meta or crypto) are already bearded and scruffy enough to be woodsman and ax-murderers. Will they adopt an even more primitive look, like early cro-magnons? Whatever the next wave turns out to be, I’m confidant that the hipster will be here til the end, a survivor, like the mighty cockroach. Just more annoying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"