Adbusters.
The current issue of Adbusters runs with a cover story on ‘hipsters’ and the demise of subculture and ‘cool’ written by Douglas Haddow. In the piece, he makes an apathetic, fatalistic proclamation of doom. Hipsters are the end of the world as we know it.
He closes the piece with a pretty hefty statement…
‘We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.’
Calm down Douglas.
Everything Haddow writes in the piece, has been said before by worried representatives of the establishment, about rock and roll, about punk, about skateboarding, about art, about rebellion, about anything. It’s all been said before. While I’d never compare the mythical culture of ‘Hipsterdom’ to any of the aforementioned, I would say, that it’s in the same spirit - kids, getting fucked up and trying to have a good time - OK, so they’re navel gazing, crushingly vain, overly self important kids, but they’re kids all the same, and they’re just doing what they do.
I’m not defending the Dipsters. I’m with Don Pendleton on the whole picture, but I just think we don’t really need to get so hopped up about things. Hipster (I hate even using the term) kids might represent a homoginisation of subcultures, they might be the bastard children of all the cool gangs in town, but they’re certainly not the harbingers of doom that Haddow would have us think they are.
Haddow seems to have restricted his research for the article to the internet, a few issues of Vice magazine, and an ‘Art party’ (whatever that is…). If he were to get real and flex some actual journalistic muscle, he might realise that, just because it (modern life, fun, sub-culture, youthful rebellion etc.) isn’t on the internet, doesn’t mean it isn’t going on.
There are still crews out there doing their thing, not uploading it to the internet, not wearing American Apparel, not being post-modern and having a good time at it.
I’m surprised Adbusters, usually so on-point with it’s content, could run something so dumb as their cover story.
RSS-Feed
7. August 2008 - 15:40 Uhr
yeah this is just plain silly. i think it is a question of taking everything these useless editors read on the net for granted.
there is a real world out where real things still happen just as before. what people tend to forget is that previous niché cultures were just that. Niché. Without their own media presence, which the internet has changed, somewhat. I know that the genuine niché cultures, some of which I am still a part of, exist and do so still without media presence.
That might lead to a whole other point though, and that is, in reference to this niché culture, that what you see on the net and the magazines and is being sold as “street culture” is NOT STREET CULTURE! big fucking surprise I guess to all the kids that have duped these past six for buying all the bullshit on blog a, b and c, but wake up and smell the fucking coffee boys!
This rant could go on, but I am going out for a beer. Catch my drift?
8. August 2008 - 05:07 Uhr
This is all very good conversation. There are a couple of reasons that I think it’s become a ‘Hot Topic’ (no pun intended) recently. Corporations are having a harder time trying to market their wares because they’re more confused than the kids are and that presents a conundrum to those who hold the money.
You can’t sell an instant lifestyle if you can’t figure it out and that’s raining on some parades recently.
I definitely think Adbusters is kind of stabbing in the dark on this topic. And I agree that this generation isn’t much different than other generations before it.
The atmosphere of culture has changed, the internet has allowed everyone to access the latest stuff like a virus and at the end of the day, there isn’t that march from LA and NY towards the midwest that used to exist.
If a bunch of dudes are wrapping sweatsocks around their heads and going out to party at dive bars in big cities, it used to take a full year for that stuff to spread over into other, smaller, more rural states.
But thanks to the internet, we can all be wearing sweatsocks around our heads the next day after we see it featured on a ’subversive’ fashion website.
And there does seem to be a sense of desperation coming from these people to a degree but I stank of desperation when I was a kid making JFA and Minor Threat t-shirts with spray paint and having my mom make ‘trendy’ skate clothes that couldn’t be found in West Virginia where I grew up.
So it may just be that kids are staying kids longer than they used to and that feeling of desperation is lingering longer than it has in the past.
I still think the funniest part about it is that nobody wants to be like everyone else, so they do a certain thing, wear a certain thing, listen to certain music and before you know it….all the people who were trying to be different are basically the same person from the outside in.
It’s all kind of confusing but just think of all those corporate think tanks that are trying to sell the next hip thing and recklessly releasing things like sweatsocks that you can wrap around your head. That shit is so last week anyway.
Thanks for posting this…I get a kick out of reading theories about it. I just think it’s something that can’t be explained because it’s like crop rotation. With the inundation of images via the internet, trends have shorter and shorter lifespans every year.
8. August 2008 - 11:42 Uhr
“The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.”
…and somehow, we will find ourselves eight years from now, and kids will still be cool, while some other kids will eat up what a corporation shills them, except instead of The Monkees, instead of Miami Vice, instead of MTV, instead of Urban Outfitters, instead of ‘viral web videos,’ it will be some other vector of style information that can’t wholly be relied upon without critique. This is an ageless cry. As though Douglas Haddow notices, but truly cool people didn’t tack and cut line already? C’mon man. Did he just wield the word ‘hipster’ like a curse? Well, you’re already 20 points down in the first quarter, Douglas.
Somehow we will make it. Well, _we_ might not, but there’s always some kid that’s genuine and cool, and he/she will.
9. August 2008 - 02:00 Uhr
So weak that Adbusters would print a story like this, let alone lead with it on the cover. I had always thought Adbusters was a savvy publication, that it knew what was going on, socially and politically.
We need to quit worrying about what it means, quit analysing and critiquing, stress less about what it all means for the ‘future’, relax, and just get on with things. Writers and magazines, cultural commentators and social critics will always try and define cultural movements, bidding to be the first to isolate creative enclaves and new strands of output, but it’s getting harder and harder, like Don said, because the trends have a half-life that is only getting shorter and shorter.
That said, I should probably take my own advice and go and paint something…
…or maybe order some sweat-sock head-bands from www.hype-ster.org.
22. August 2008 - 23:02 Uhr
I thought the article had its poetic moments that served up the essence of the hipster.
23. August 2008 - 10:54 Uhr
‘Essence of Hipster’
A new fragrance available this fall - It’s a heady mix of coke-sweats, infused with subtle, hoppy tones of Pabst Blue Ribbon and the sweet musk of vintage flannel.