Historical Hipster Analogues

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Every indie guy I know uses the word "hipster" as a catch-all dismissive: "hipsters" listen to music because it's hip and not because it's good, "hipsters" embrace "irony" and not passion, "hipsters" ruin everything they touch, "hipsters" ate my baby. There are few, if any, self-proclaimed hipsters; the hipsters are those people who are way uncool, etc.

Are there/were there identified-target types in other music communities? Is the "hipster" sort of an inversion of the "square" who shows up at the freakout, but with the same role? Isn't it the case that "hipster" as a term of abuse only exists so that the speaker can let everybody know he's hip enough to know what the hipsters look like?

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:02 (twenty-one years ago)

hip hip!

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Don't know about historical analogues. Maybe dandies? Anyways back in the day I believe it was used to describe brothers into be-bop. My understanding is it's derisory now in application to spoiled children of the middle classes whose disposable incomes render them dismissive experts in underground music, as sarcastic as they are obliviously heartless to people less well off than them.

― Carlos D, Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Rakes and popinjays, gousters, pimps and playas. Preposterous preening puffins. Powder perves and power flyers. Flamboyards and tart tins.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, the word "hipster" goes back a ways; in fact, it's in the OED. Here are some of the OED's citations of use:

# 1941 J. Smiley Hash House Lingo 31 Hipster, a know-it-all.

# 1946 Mezzrow & Wolfe Really Blues 374 Hipster, man who's in the know, grasps everything, is alert.

# 1948 Partisan Rev. XV. 722 Carrying his language and his new philosophy like concealed weapons, the hipster set out to conquer the world.

# 1956 Observer 23 Sept. 2/5 `Hipster' is modern jazz parlance for `hep-cat'.

...and it's famously used in the beginning of Ginsburg's "HOWL", "angelheaded hipsters".

Anyway, another word I can think of with similar sarcastic application is "fashionista" but that's mostly non-musical.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:38 (twenty-one years ago)

The original hipster:
ihttp://www.utexas.edu/courses/citylife/images/socrates.jpg

― Huk-L, Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:07 (twenty-one years ago)

What I mean, though, is its current: nobody is friends with a hipster/scenester. The hipsters are this enemy-within who while not invisible are unknowable: they The Guys Who Are Ruining "It." They've existed in U.S. punk since time immemorial: the college jocks who listened to the Dead Kennedys yet are singled out for abuse by the DKs; the Black Flag jocks; jocks-in-punk in general I guess. Do scenes need The Hipster as a whipping-boy archetype to feel validated?

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Ginsburg meant it as a compliment I think btw!

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:28 (twenty-one years ago)

It's like the old cliche that the people who want to "epater les bourgeois" are always bourgeois themselves.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:32 (twenty-one years ago)

The original hipster

otm. cf acts 17,21:

For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:37 (twenty-one years ago)

woah, nice

― W i l l (common_person), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:42 (twenty-one years ago)

they had slaves, you know

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Ginsburg meant it as a compliment I think btw!

Oh yeah, all the original uses were, if not complimentary, at least not used sarcastically or derrogatorily. But I think that kind of semantic slide happens all the time with terms that label people.

Do scenes need The Hipster as a whipping-boy archetype to feel validated?

I don't think so, but "The Guys Who Are Ruining 'It'" as you put it seems like a very old and common feature of human nature and social groups.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

we used to call em "posers"

― Silky Sensor (sexyDancer), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

1958 Spectator - "Yet although jazz seems to have burst out of the locked treasure casket over which an egghead minority of hepsters crooned for so many years, it still remains a curiously unreal cult."

― wordyrappington (wordyrappington), Thursday, 17 March 2005 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

SNAP!

― Huk-L, Thursday, 17 March 2005 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

So basically, we're talking about 99% of ILM, except that for some, mainstream music is the new underground music.

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 17 March 2005 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

"Hipster" as pejorative.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 17 March 2005 16:52 (twenty-one years ago)

In my experience, people calling people "hipster" are usually the ones listening to 3 year old DFA tracks and thinking they're with it.

― Dr. Eldon Tyrell (ex machina), Thursday, 17 March 2005 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

The short story "You're Too Hip, Baby" by Terry Southern (50s/60s) nails this sensibility. Murray is a white wannabe gradstudent hanging around the black expatriate jazz scene in Paris. He knows all the right spots, has all the right records and reefer, too, but underneath the hip veneer he's empty and even clueless. Latching onto a young piano player, like all hipsters Murray gets his comeuppance in the end.

― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:01 (twenty-one years ago)

i dont think you need to be yourself cool or in the know in order to spot a hipster.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I think hipsters are what artists and critics called "middlebrow" people in the 60s. Back then, the idea was that middlebrow people were only into culture inasmuch as it got them other rewards, like status and respect; and instead of actually knowing or caring about, say, literature, they just bought the "five foot shelf" of books to feel intelligent.

There are probably 'hipsters' in every aesthetic field--so indie hipsters are all like--THE SHINS!! THE SHINS!!--and literature hipsters are all like--MCSWEENEY'S!! MCSWEENEY'S!!--and etc. etc. And just like in the 60s, people who aren't hipsters are always accusing other non-hipsters of being hipsters--so like the part in "Losing My Edge" where he namechecks all the bands creates an even smaller and more exclusive "one foot shelf" of This Heat and Black Dice or whatever, and suggests that even non-hipsters can become hipsters when they stick to a canon and get all about exclusivity--which always happens whenever we discuss hipsters.

O pernicious hipsters!

― mrjosh (mrjosh), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:07 (twenty-one years ago)

The short story "You're Too Hip, Baby" by Terry Southern (50s/60s) nails this sensibility.
Crazy.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I think there is not a damn thing wrong with being a hipster, if by "hipster" you mean someone who puts effort towards finding and enjoying things that others are enjoying. Pop culture that is just a little under the national radar. I don't have the time to found my own scene, so I take the parts of others that I find enjoyable. Don't we all do that? And until a better word comes along, I'm happy with hipster. So's my stack of 3x5's.

― Justin, Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I really like 3 year old DFA tracks.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I really like hipsters. I might be one, but I think I'm too old.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Then you're a broken hipster.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

*chuckles ironically*

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Crazy.
To clarify: in "You're Too Hip, Baby" whenever the hipster Murray goes to a jazz show, right before the set ends he goes in the men's room to wash his hand and then when one of the band members comes in, he says, without looking at the guy, "crazy" or some other one word hipster expression of approval.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

until a better word comes along, I'm happy with hipster

at that point you will be scoffed at by the hardcore, who will tentatively start using the word "hipster" again, like they used to do before you showed up and spoiled it.

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:33 (twenty-one years ago)

mrjosh OTM

The historical analogue of this discussion in the 1950's would be us debating whether or not being a 'beatnick' is a bad thing and whether they are ruining jazz.

And what is an 'indie guy' anyway? And how is that different than a hipster? The whole thing is so silly. "Hipster" is just the latest term that beantick/hippie/punk/slacker was before.

― Keith C (kcraw916), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

The flâneur, surely?

― daria g (daria g), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:36 (twenty-one years ago)

That's good. I think there is a whole section on the topic in Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

the gadfly

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Jesus and his disciples thought mainstream Judaism was for dorks.

― St. Thomas, Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Noah is the ultimate Biblical hipster.
"Ha ha, fuck you guys with no boats!"

― Huk-L, Thursday, 17 March 2005 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Prometheus is the ancient Greek hipster god, relating more to the mortals than to the flashy Olympian pantheon. He suffered for his taste, yo.

― Galen of Pergamon, Thursday, 17 March 2005 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Still,
Liking 3 year old DFA tracks is better than liking 6 month old DFA tracks.

― Francisco Monar (fmonar), Thursday, 17 March 2005 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

STUPID INDIE FUX

― Dr. Eldon Tyrell (ex machina), Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Check out how cool it is to belittle people for going out and having fun.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh come on, LA is full of horrible people!

― Dr. Eldon Tyrell (ex machina), Thursday, 17 March 2005 22:14 (twenty-one years ago)

HIPSTER HIPSTER HIPSTER HIPSTER
WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP

― Quit glaring at Ian Riese-Moraine! He's mentally fraught! (Eastern Mantra), Thursday, 17 March 2005 23:55 (twenty-one years ago)

on MTV Spring Break, Lindsay Lohan hosted a thing about spring break fashion, and in the segment on "hipster fashion", the examples they used were Maroon 5, All-American Rejects, Blink 182, David Spade and Pauly Shore. it amuses me to think that that's who these threads are about.

― Al (sitcom), Saturday, 19 March 2005 16:29 (twenty-one years ago)

hipter and hype sound alike. aren't we talking about hypesters?

― old town executive center, Saturday, 19 March 2005 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Hipster professors with hockey hair - C/D? I can't deal..

― daria g (daria g), Saturday, 19 March 2005 19:03 (twenty-one years ago)

As far as I'm concerned, if you actively hold opinions about cool/cult music/movies/art, you are a hipster. If you go to places where any other "hipsters" are (be it shows, hangouts or even internet message boards), you too are hipster. You can't say "He's a hipster and I'm not, even though we were both attracted to the same show/internet discussion group". This my belief, at least.

We are all hipsters here. All of us.

― Erotic Thundercats fan fiction enthusiast, Saturday, 19 March 2005 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Hipster professors with hockey hair -C/D?
Substitute the words "guidance counselors" for "professors" and then you've got a classic!

― Ken L (Ken L), Saturday, 19 March 2005 20:52 (twenty-one years ago)

what is hockey hair? a reverse mullet? is that what the hot hipsters sport?

― leroy, Saturday, 19 March 2005 21:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, at least in the past decade, I've seen indie rocker and scenester morph into "hipster." I probably do things that consider me a "hipster," but I'm too old to really qualify, so I'm an aging hipster I guess. Oh well.

― Sara Sherr, Saturday, 19 March 2005 23:33 (twenty-one years ago)

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