I am not a hipster. I do
not wear large horn-rimmed glasses and too much American Apparel, ride a Fixie, or exclusively drink
coffee at Intelligentsia.
I am, however,
sympathetic to (what I think) the hipster message is. According to Urban
Dictionary, “Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's
and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive
politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and
witty banter.” For me, the hipster cause questions the universality of mass
consumer culture, appreciates intellectualism, and, most notably, engages in a
nostalgia that honors a culture very distant from our tech-savvy, immediately
available information-filled 21st century. A lot has happened in the
past 30 years: the internet happened, small farm culture has been replaced with
GMOs, and people’s identities have been summed up on their Facebooks, Twitters,
and a Google search. While these advances have their amazing benefits, they
have also altered culture in more ways than we could know in the midst of this
historical moment. There are constant elegies for local grocery stores,
lamentations of the hardcopy book, and countless recollections, “remember when
we used to have to remember trivia instead of look it up on our smart phones?”
Maybe a little nostalgia
is not a bad thing.
Amidst BP oil spills,
tailored advertisements on Faceboks pages, and new online avenues of bullying,
perhaps a reclamation of past art forms and cultural practices is a good idea.
Go to the library. Rethink the ethics of mass consumer culture. Play Trivial
Pursuit without the iPad on hand.
Not that you have to
start listening to bands before they are cool or start wearing excessive
amounts of flannel any time soon. And by no means do you have to give up the
wonder of Skype or your Netflix queue.
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