Hipsters

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
1

I think early on like in childhood the impulse is to be cute, athletic and charming, cuz this makes you popular, Etc

If you are those things, you have no reason to change, delve, explore, contrive. You are in harmony with your world and all is good.

If you are not those things, you are in disharmony with the world and must change, adapt, contrive, And figure out where your harmony lies.

So once marginalized and rejected, you feel small, and perhaps you’re a nerd or a nobody or the invisible middle, a spectator, a hopeful.

Your body has failed you, your nature has failed you. So you focus on the mental and start contemplating, searching for an identity, and this extra thought leads to extra perception, extra self awareness, extra appreciation of the complexities of life and culture.

I believe it is from this cesspool that hipsters are born, and this includes philosophical types and to some degree artists.

Life holds intrigue and wonder, but sensual pleasure and power, acceptance and belonging, trump wonder and conceptual immersion. If the universe hurls gifts at you, wonder becomes less important.

Bottom line: hipsters are reformed losers. Thinkers are failed doers. Artists are disconnected or alienated from the physical and must create meta-sensual realities.

Popular and beautiful graceful people who seem shallow and myopic are actually the base of natural man, we would all be like them in spirit if we had equal blessings. Our ideas, morality, irony, curiosity, rationalizations, wisdom, all reactions to that initial sense of rejection.

2

So youre saying that its good to be a bit of a loser because that’s where art is born? I hate hipsters.

3

No, actually I’m saying it’s bad to be a loser, and that art is made by and for losers.

Winners don’t need to make or consume art because their life is already art.

I once dated a hot blond bimbo who mostly dated quarterbacks. It was 1995 and she had never heard of Kurt Cobain.

I wasn’t sure how to think about this. It would be easy to feel superior. But if you trace back the steps for me knowing who Kurt Cobain was, versus her not knowing who he was…

She was too busy living in a kind of real nirvana to need to know about the band Nirvana.

All of my delving into fringe music and art (creating or consuming) ultimately comes from alienation and the pull to find my place, my own kind of acceptance.

She had no such task plaguing her, for her own, her place, was wherever she happened to be, she had a skeleton key to human happiness.

When you really think about it, knowing about Cobain’s pain seems like a bad thing to do when you can instead fuck in a jacuzzi, but I didn’t have any takers at the time.

4

…and i still would prefer a happy blond bimbo over an obnoxious hipster. I hate hipsters.

5

Gamer, I suppose you’re partially right. It all works when she is the young hot bimbo. But what happens when she hits 50 and the wrinkles appear along with the sagging tits, the butt-spread, the tipped bladder from bearing children, the not-flat belly left over from baby making. There is a limit to how much plastic surgery can accomplish. The superficial may work for awhile, but it is also a form of stagnation, and when age finally makes it’s appearance, she either becomes the faded rose or the pathetic youth seeker destined to fail.

I met a few of the “hot” babes, dated a couple, and finally started thinking with the head on my shoulders. I stopped playing with barbie dolls because even I could see that it couldn’t last. In fact, the most physically beautiful girl I ever met was the ugliest bitch I ever met. She was the poster child for the term “skin deep”. I’ll take all the hipsters I can find. No one I call friend hasn’t been through hellfire and returned. The golden people? Yeah, until it turns to shit and they have no answers. Life isn’t a perpetual carnival cruise…

6

Resource curse played out in flesh and blood. :smiley:

7

Hipsters seem contrived and pretentious to me.

I talked about hipsters on here before:

The thing about hipsters is they are all about a specific kind of alternative niche scene – totally distinct from grunge, goth, or prep to name a few – that involves an identifiable choice of clothing, music, film, food, etc. Theirs is a fairly conscientious culture with sophisticated but not inexpensive clothing and the appearance of sophisticated worldviews. I think hipsters think they are creative and inventive, but their MO seems mainly to be NOT something else, to be not mainstream, to cause no harm. It is a very reactive, “in-group” mentality. If someone identified as a hipster I would think them less likely to be a good leader or capable of real change and astonishing new ideas. They seem to put “conscientious” fashion (I use the term fashion broadly here) and trend above real authenticity. I personally find the whole culture very pretentious and without much substance. I’m not alone in this impression-

[size=85]"Hipster culture has been described as a ‘mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior[s].’ Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York argues that ‘hipsterism fetishizes the authentic’ elements of all of the ‘fringe movements of the postwar era—beat, hippie, punk, even grunge,’ and draws on the ‘cultural stores of every unmelted ethnicity,’ and ‘regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity.’ (From Wikipedia)[/size]
[/quote]
[size=85]“Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses.” (From Urban Dictionary)[/size]

8

[size=85]“Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses.” (From Urban Dictionary)[/size]
[/quote]
I like this. Reminds me high school LoL

There was this group of so-called Punks in my high school who eschewed everything “popular” in favor of counter-culture. They were pretentious assholes who were so concerned with being “different” that none of them realized they were all the same.

9

Yeah, the nonconformists, aka: alternative conformists.

10

There are all kinds of wannabes wherever you look, but the real hipster (Gamer’s definition) isn’t the superficial show-off. They don’t go out of their way to be noticed, they are mostly what I would call a “country dog”. They just go about making their lives and the lives around them as best that they can. A clue: A hipster artist doesn’t think or call themselves an artist. They aren’t interested in the label, they’re interested in the work.

11

I’m thinking “Hipsters” is the wrong term, having read the OP.
Though it’s an easy thread title to attract Hipster-hatred, which is ironically pretty “hip” these days.

In response to the actual sentiment behind the OP, I can confirm that it’s got little to do with a failure to be cute, athletic and charming - I was all these things as a child. I was also just a bit weird, and far more interested in intellectual challenge than people. So as far as the rest of the thread goes, sure - becoming a loser most certainly helped me along the path of focusing on the mental, and general contemplation.

Dunno if that’s a bad thing though. It’s not like “winners” never feel pain, for all the glorification and idealisation that you’re attributing to their lives, whether or not their pain is like Kurt’s - they just don’t tend to “get” the music. No necessary reason why they should like one kind of music over any other, if any at all.

This thread just seems like an excuse for self-pity. Something eating you, man?

12

This thread is over my head.

13

Nothing eating me. The idea occured so I wrote it down. Hipster may not be the right word. Sub in the word thinker. My motivation for thinking hard has always been general feelings of discontent, angst and simply not feeling at home in my surroundings or even my skin. The creeping realization that Thought can be a retreat from body in the same way that TV can be a retreat from thought.

14

But are you sure that thought is a retreat or is it just letting self go and becoming immersed in your curiosity? I’m sure there are many who use all sorts of distractions to avoid self, but the people I think of as hipsters or thinkers tap into their curiosity and go to places of discontent and not feeling at home on purpose - the purpose being learning and growing. I don’t agree that the thinker is the loser. The perfect people are never really perfect, and the fact that they rely on the superficial to “feel at home” simply won’t last forever.

15 
 There's definitely a lesson here. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say the thoughtless and artless are [i]superior[/i] just because their childhood wasn't defined by an initial rejection, but at the very least the Aristotelian who are stuck thinking that being a snooty academic is the ultimate expression of mankind that everybody would do if only they were able...they should think twice.  Academia is just a job, not an accomplishment just by virtue of participation.
16

The word “trendies” encapsulates this for me.

17

I didn’t intend to suggest superficiality, but the opposite. In my example, what’s superficial is the indulgence in excess curiosity and thought for its own sake. My contention (i’m playing fast and loose here, I know) is that we wouldn’t be impelled to think or learn or grow unless we were somehow thrust into this realm by some form of physical rejection measured against our surroundings. So this would even apply to later in life, where cute/charming is analogous to other things that make one at ease and harmonious later in life. This could still likely be a sense of cute/charm/grace, the ability to succeed easily at whatever your world tends to expect from you, and to reap the associated rewards. Tent, even an old guy like you knows the value of a good smile and an easy laugh, at any age, so don’t even pretend to tell me this stuff doesn’t matter after a certain age. I’m also old, at 42, so you can’t pull the age card with me.

Fent: I don’t aim to use the label “superior” without qualifying what that means. But yes, they are superior in certain senses. On the axis of being in harmony with their surroundings.

One analogy that comes to mind is masturbation. We have the urge for intercourse for a reason. If we had constant access, we wouldn’t masturbate. I think curiosity and mental exercise are there for a reason, too. When these begin to fly forward for its own sake, something’s lost, or something’s added, reducing a kind of experienced purity and harmony. What I’m essentially regurgitating is Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge and the fall from grace.

And the awareness that if we are logging on to this site, we are very, very far from the garden.

Would you rather eat cheese (and apples) in a garden with epicurus [sic] or bask in the garden blissfully naked with Eve? Not that we have a choice.

It’s easy to argue the virtue and joy of the former, after the fact when nothing can be done about it

much thornier to argue against it, as my current attempt seems to attest

and speaking of apples, have a sweet year, l’shana tova

18

I agree broadly with what you’re getting at.

What I’m reminded of is the saying necessity is the mother of invention. If you’ve got a drive or desire for something (popularity/sense of identity/acceptance), and your first method to attain it (being cute, popular &/or charming) fails to satisfy the drive, then you try new methods to get there (art/philosophy/culture).

I don’t think either is more natural than the other, or that you have to be rejected from others in order to begin the second method. Speaking for myself, I began my path into ‘loser’ territory because I hated and was unsatisfied by my shallow life, and those around me who I considered equally shallow.

At the end, it’s whatever fills the hunger. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

19

I’m curious why hipsters engender so much hate, and more curious about which other groups hate them, and why. I don’t think the blond bimbo/quarterback demographic cares much. It’ other losers, the ones who’se failures forced their gaze inward, whose being in the world did not find a proper channel for its expression of will to power, the broken hammers, the horizonless, angst engendered resentful cynics, i.e., us, who have something against hipsters.

But why? We’re so much alike; at least the starting point is the same. We’re both losers.

I think it’s because of the lack of honesty, or at least the fact that we don’t believe them when they seem to be saying they’ve left the losers compound. Nobody believes them. They donh’t believe themselves. Hipsters are terrible liars. Watching a hipster at a bar with their tight pants, huge earnings, tattooed forearms and weak beards is like seeing an obviously gay guy talking about that hot chick’s huge cans.

20

i personally don’t hate hipsters. i don’t tend to hate anyone. a person is too complex to be defined as a hipster, i like it better as an adjective to describe a thing, like an article of clothing. i use “hipster” as a catchall term to describe people who had to make a second effort because the first effort failed. the first effort is the first choice high priced real estate: beauty, popularity, physical prowess, natural charm and gregariousness. I do sort of resent the idea that
someone would even dare pretend that they are not these things by choice. my belief is that if you see an uber skinny dude working an espresso machine with hardware in his face, it’s not because he chose not to play football and be rich and mainstream and knee-deep in pussy. It’s because the universe showed him all these things and then said bluntly: not for you. And so he had to find another identity, one where he could feel strong and beautiful, and this realm he chose was the realm of mind, culture, expression, false rebellion, fringe, irony, classlessness, kitch and so forth. As noble and scintillating as all that is, it’s the SECOND FIDDLE. Period. If he pretends otherwise he is lying to himself.

I don’t have a problem with what he did, per se. Nor do I have a problem with how he did it, which smacks of simple adaptation. And in this particular niche there are winners and losers, people who are naturally good at hipsterdom and painfully bad at it. My contention is that THOSE people who are bad at it are us.

We failed at getting the hot cheerleader. Then we failed at getting that hot hipster chick – you know the one. She’s even scarier than the cheerleader, with her mini dreads and gorgeous lips and super skinny arms. Those foreboding glasses. Fuck, just fuck. So here you are. A philosopher. Now what?

Our we the noble seekers we think we are, or are we playing out the THIRD CHOICE lifestyle and mindstyle? Or both?