Death Knell (?)

Or, Adbusters, Hire Me! I wrote your hipster cover story when I was twelve.


Soulless narcissists or unwitting heirs to a dead America and enjoying the after-party?

The thesis of Adbusters' cover story is that hipsters signify the decline of Western civilization. Besides the fact that it appears they've gotten ahold of some previous publications, it's a hauntingly articulate account of the vacancy that has supposedly come to define our generation: "It's an odd dance of self-identity-- adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaim it." Douglas Haddow is upset because hipsters don't give a fuck about anything, a stance that has been well articulated in the past.

First, attacks on the hipness are no fun if they don't assess the context in which the "hipster" phenomenon has spawned. Why do urban twenty-somethings with DIY haircuts who majored in graphic design "attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties"?
Because their parents are rich and falling apart, America is rich and falling apart, and no one, least of all a bunch of twenty somethings raised on a steady diet of sex as a commodity from age four, knows how to fix anything. And why should they want to? There are lots of drugs and lots of good looking people who've yet to prove themselves boring at every party there is.

****** We have a lot of money and a lot of memory. We know what is cool, we are not cool, we want to be cool, we can buy what is cool, we will buy what is cool.

Second, another obvious justification of hating hipsters is that "they killed cool." No, they didn't. If "cool" was invented by Chuck Berry in 1949, or was it Jack Kerouac in 1947, or was it Oscar Wilde and his absinthe in 1920 or was it Manet and his anger and defiance in 1870, it's been leading up to this. Hipsters are not holding the gun, they only wandered onto the scene of the crime and stumbled over some dead bodies. If a 17 year old on E with a mohawk and vintage high tops breakdancing at a party means cool is dead, that's fine. Something else will grow out of that.
If it seems like there's nowhere else to go, its because what is cool if not "subversion of the mainstream," bucking conventional institutions (capitalism), ie wearing DIY and a fuck you, then maybe Jack Kerouac wins. We are the counterculture's wild-eyed children, millions of us, multiplying and dumb like rabbits. And yeah, a lot of what people call "hipsters" due to their leggings and eyewear are boring and stupid. Welcome to America. Thanks, mass media, for making us all hate ourselves. Now, can we all get over our eating disorders and move on? (Haddow: "the dancers are too-self aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion." The other side of that line: we are nothing, can be nothing, if not painfully self aware.)("Everyone needs to quit hating themselves. That's what needs to happen."-Kel)

Here's the answer: hipsters are an amalgamation of punks, hippies, and every other subculture that has grown out of American culture (ie smug consumerism) since the last bomb dropped in WWII. There just happen to be no more wars to fight (oh, wait, except for the ones we save for poor people. Oops.) Haddow believes that hipsters are a consumer group, not a subculture. Sure, some well-accessorized college kids are vapid idiots with an excess of personality disorder and American Apparel shirts to layer. But the term in question is also used to include those who buy vintage clothes, cut their own hair and ride bikes, i.e. chose to live outside the crushing ubiquity of the American consumer market. So the end of western civilization is progress by another name. If "hipster" can include rich cokeheads with expensive jeans, semantics is to blame for the entire issue here. Hipster can dismiss the talentless, the self-induglent, the stylish, artists and cokeheads as "hipsters" in one fell swoop. Here's the hole in that argument: some of "them" are creating valid art. If a certain pair of glasses or cut of a pair of jeans renders someone's creation irrelevant, we have to ask ourselves just who the shallow pawn in the situation is. For every company who's cashed in on our defenseless generation's style and sold it back to us, there's someone who realizes it and vows to fuck the system. Deviance and defiance are at the basis of "cool" and always will be. (Adbusters, then, is the hippest thing there is. )

Finally, if there is a generation of Americans who can do nothing but grow ironic facial hair and sleep off a hangover while hating itself, it's America's fault. Where was America, our neglectful parent, teaching us those supposedly noble lessons about... just what exactly? Should we be working for Goldman Sachs instead of going to dance parties? Should we be wearing Ralph Lauren on a yacht, living the American dream? Should we be arming ourselves against the government, starting a youth militia to re-build our failing democracy?

We have been abandoned.

We're the bitter and drunk orphans of a parent who bought us things instead of gave us direction.
All we can, should, will and want to do is spend the family fortune on our favorite habits, go to parties and try to get our rocks off.

UPDATE: this brilliant post calls bullshit on useless and lazy hipster hating.