The graphic above shows the concentration of hipsters living in Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2013. It's no coincidence that it looks like one of those maps from a movie like Outbreak or Contagion…cause thats what this is… a map showing the spread of a remorseless (and in this case, very stupid) disease.
It's no secret how much I dislike hipsters. The staff at my office can attest to that. Sometimes they even set me off just to watch me lose my shit…
Me: Can you please complete your timesheet for thi...
Sophia: ..."hipsters".
Me: AND ANOTHER THING!… why can't these fucking assholes find time to wash their hair, its not like they don't have free time, I mean they live off their parents money, don't have jobs or go to school…what the fuck, how many hours a day can you devote to buying skinny jeans and teasing your mustache into stupid shapes?
Sophia: Got you again.
Me: Dammit!
Obviously hipsters are just the next group of "cool people". The group that thinks they have it all figured out from every angle, socio-economic, financial, health care, etc. Of course they are wrong, its an affliction of the young to think that our systems are quantifiable and easy to solve. It's an admirable notion but misguided and unrealistic.
The Beat Generation wasn't going to rebel against the man with poetry.
Hippies weren't going to defeat the man putting daisies in his gun barrels.
Hipsters aren't going to break the man by refusing to buy clothing from the actual retailer who sells them and instead getting them from a second hand store.
I see these pinheads constantly, I did a lot of research on them because that's better than picking them up by their collars in the deli where they buy their shitty beer and trying to slap the stink off of them.
Although that seems like a more direct approach, there are just too many… and my hands would start to hurt after a while.
Anyway, I looked for a long time until I found an article that seemed written from the standpoint of someone who wanted to sort of explain the hipster lifestyle, as opposed to the hundreds of snarky articles that appear written by people like me…concerned citizens who want to know why the government is not funding a study to remove these people from society.
My idea was to advertise a skinny jeans and lensless glasses sale at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then when they all arrived, filling it with trillions of gallons of shampoo until they all drowned.
That might be too expensive.
So on WikiHow, I found my answers. The article, heavily edited because it was so goddamn long is below, along with my as-usual irritating comments in red.
The Hipster
Fashion
While shopping at vintage stores remains a staple for many hipsters, this is not a given, nor does it need to be a part of the hipster wardrobe. But it helps if your outfit elicits the question: "are those the shoes they buried your grandfather in?
Wear skinny jeans. Hipster men tend to be as skinny as the women. Basically, the tighter, the better. Yes, since you now have the sexual appeal of 80-year old on a geriatric cruise, it doesn't matter if you compress your manberries into oblivion.
Wear glasses. Hipsters love ironic eyewear such as shuttershades, oversized plastic framed glasses, Buddy Holly glasses, nerd glasses, and — for those who can afford it — authentic Ray Ban Wayfarers of all the colors of the rainbow. Aren't shuttershades the oversize novelty glasses you get at a carnival for winning the ring toss? I thought so.
Some hipsters wear eyeglasses even though they have 20/20 vision! In this case, pop out the lenses or make sure they're just regular glass. This makes sense, I guess the next step is to start using a hearing aid even though you can hear and using leg braces even though you don't have polio*.
* And yes, I know that Polio is all but defeated but since hipsters are obsessed with the past, it seemed only right to choose a disease from an older time.
Many hipsters sport tops with appliques, images of animals or forests, other images, characters from children's TV, and ironic sayings or even book covers. Cause nothing says take me seriously more than a 29 year old wearing an Alf t-shirt.
Appropriately ironic accessories are mandatory, such as things kids would take to school, like an animal image on a lunchbox. It's not ironic to be an adult carrying a lunchbox, it just makes people wonder if in fact you are mentally retarded.
Essentials include a courier bag that can fit your MacBook, iPhone, and vinyl LPs (never CDs) of your current favorite band. I had to stop writing just now from laughing, I kept picturing a skinny guy with dirty hair in an Alf t-shirt carrying a Barney lunchbox and a bag full of vinyl records by obscure bands. It could very well be the textbook definition of a douchebag.
Layering or wearing things that don't match together is very hipster. It's that "I can't be bothered" look that actually takes some planning until you get into the habit. So the goal is to spend tremendous amounts of time getting dressed to look like you don't spend tremendous amounts of time getting dressed. Gotcha.
Remember that a hipster's outfit never needs adjustment should you decide to go to the beach — keep all of your urban accompaniments for the sand and surf to ironically stick out of your element. I'm not sure about this one. I don't think hipsters can go out in the sun since years of hiding in coffeehouses (not Starbucks) and watching indie bands in Brooklyn basements have left them incapable of withstanding any sunlight.
Grooming
Differentiate between essential and non-essential hygiene. There are a lot of impolite comments about hipsters not taking showers. The thing is, hipsters know the difference between essential hygiene and hitting a salon just to be turned into a carbon-copy; they're also well aware of how to pull off the greasy or just-out-of-bed look with unaware effort. They are not just comments, they are facts. If I am waiting for an elevator and I can smell you from 5 feet away, then you are dirty, period.
While hipsters do shower regularly and clean their teeth (not in my experience, see comment above) they're just less interested in forking out money for hairstyling, spa sessions, pedicures/manicures, and large make-up kits because these are signs of conforming to cultural ideals of beauty. This has absolutely nothing to do with spa treatments or spending $150 to get a haircut. There are places to buy shampoo for $1.89 and soap for less than that, there simply is NO reason why anyone ever should leave their home unwashed…unless that home is actively on fire.
Shopping
Commonly known old things associated with hipsters include Parliament cigarettes (and a devil-may-care attitude about smoking laws), Pabst beer, grandparent's clothing, bicycles with fixed gears (often ridden to the night clubs), analog cameras, and recycling and reusing almost anything (ingenuity, common sense, and fun comes into this). So basically you want to be a hobo… they also don't wash, they don't worry about smoking laws, they wear any clothes they can find and reuse things that are typically considered trash.
Reject blind consumerism. Hipsters are into "niche consumerism". If your purchase helps local retailers, the environment, the mom and pop retailer, and the craft sellers down the road, then it's hipster. This is one of those things that these imbeciles can't really explain… It is simply impossible, short of living on a deserted island, to consume within an niche. It sure as shit can't happen in Brooklyn, I lived there for 30 years and I can tell you with 100% certainty that you cannot get your food, clothes, utilities, crappy hand rolled cigarettes, rent, vinyl records, watery beer or stupid lunch boxes without going outside that "niche".
Lifestyle
Define your choice. Decide what it is about being a hipster that so appeals to you. It's hard to stay passionate about a personal style that you're adopting if you don't have clear reasons why. For many people, being hipster is about being alert to the way in which consumer culture can easily subsume us and lead us, rather than us standing back and critically assessing it. This simply translates to, if you want to live as a filthy, condescending pinhead who lives off their parents or worse has started a business selling something so stupid as not to be believed (such as an organic yam farm in your basement in Williamsburg) then at the very least have an answer ready when someone asks why you look like a clown and smell like a gym locker.
Be in the right age group. Hipsters tend to be in their teens through to their 30s,Today's "extended adolescent" era consisting of existential angst, searching for purpose and inner worth, and asking the meaning of everything. Untrue, there is no hipster anywhere asking the really important questions, for gods sake they are wearing glasses without lenses, how smart does anyone think they are?
Of course, this doesn't mean you can't be a hipster at an older age, but the fact that as you age you get less bothered and upset about the way the world works, or doesn't work, probably means you're a) not so keen to be labeled anything, b) not in need of belonging to any sub-culture, and/or c) less angry than you used to be. This was so clearly written by someone who is 20 years old, if you think that as people get older they are LESS bothered by things, then you may be the most stupid person who ever lived. The truth is, the older you get the more you are able to separate the important things from the unimportant things (like hipsters).
Hipsters tend to congregate in very urban settings and they're connected globally thanks to the Internet. In the USA, you'll tend to find hipsters in major metropolitan centers where "anything goes". Be where there are independent art galleries, movie houses, bands, and people. The rule of thumb is simple…if there is art no one likes, movies that offer no value, foods that no likes eating and music that everyone hates, you must be there. That way if one other person ever mentions any of those things you can stand up and shout, "I was listening to/watching/eating that before anyone else"!
Be educated. Aim to go to college, as hipsters tend to be well educated in such areas as liberal arts, graphic art, or math and science. This is bullshit, there are no hipster mathematicians or scientists, those people are doing valuable work in the world and hipsters just couldn't handle that. A hipster scientist would make a discovery and then tell no one and when someone else made the same discovery, the hipster would stand up and shout "I discovered that before anyone else"!
Do a lot of reading, even if it means sitting in the local bookstore using their space and not actually purchasing the books you're siphoning up knowledge from. Seek to go to higher level education if you're in your element at college. Because that's how you support your niche… by sitting in a bookstore and reading the books without paying…oh wait there already is a place designed especially for that…IT"S CALLED A FUCKIN LIBRARY"!
Education is what helps a hipster to be dismissive about the hue and cry of others; they know it's just history repeating itself, or it's all much ado about nothing. Oh, yes, because hipsters have it all figured out, 80 years ago there wasn't a single person saying the same thing, oh wait and 190 years before that and 500 years before that. Every generation has someone saying that figured it out and they are ALL wrong.
Be an early adopter. Hipsters tend to sense what's worthwhile before the trend or item becomes more popular. Again, this is amazing…if these bozos are always right about what is going to become popular then record labels, film studios and clothing designers would be solely staffed by hipsters and their crystal balls.
Many bands become famous only after hipsters first flock to their unknown performances. Many clothing trends were started by hipsters, only to be hijacked later by mainstream fashion houses. Many technical gadgets are taken up by hipsters first, only to become mainstream goodies later. Yep, if there is one solid reason why iPads are popular, its because the hipsters bought them first.
Of course, the irony of being an early adopter hipster is that once the trend or item becomes mainstream, it's time to move on to something else obscure and unrecognized. That's the trouble with being such an independent spirit; you trailblaze but you also have to keep moving on. Because if its one things hipsters hate, its somone liking the same bands they do. If this happens you are required by hipster law to hate that person as well as the band you spent the past 6 months pushing on everyone you knew, attending all their shows, getting their name tattooed on your ass, etc.
If you're really good at something like math, physics, medicine, psychology, political analysis, eco-awareness, etc., you might find yourself making amazing discoveries that are light years ahead of everyone else's thinking. No you won't, because if you did, then you would be a productive member of the world and not a hipster.
Keep a pulse on the hipster community. When some new, obscure band is on Pitchfork (preferably before), you should know about it. Check out Brooklyn Vegan (even if you don't live there), Stereogum, Gorilla vs. Bear, and the Hype Machine as often as possible, but don't make it obvious that you check them every five seconds. Ironically, I just checked out Gorilla vs Bear and the site is covered in no less than 8 Virgin Music ad banners. I guess they must be a local hometown local niche company…oh, wait its THAT Virgin?, the company that made billions of dollars in music, phones, movies, airlines, etc.
Entertainment
Read hipster classics. There is no such thing, that would imply there was a hipster culture instead of the reality that hipsters are a fad that will be gone in a few years and looked upon as something similar to other fads like the Rubik's Cube, Chia Pets and Ronald Reagan. Things to read include:
Hipster magazines, such as Vice, Another Magazine, and Wallpaper.Foreign magazines are good too. Yes, more pictures and less words or better yet words you cannot read.
Great books and poetry by people like Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg, and Norman Mailer. But of course you must claim you discovered all these writers before anyone else. That can't be too hard, right?
Watch hipster cinema. Watch independent and foreign films, as well as attending independent theater productions, such as shows by Ann Liv Young. Watch Wes Anderson, Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch movies. Generally anything that causes other people to say huh? That's what you want to be watching.
Listen to newly emerging, independent music. Hipster artists of note include Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Belle & Sebastian, Philip and Margot Fly a Kite, Electric President, Unicycle Freakmore, The Neon Frappucinos, Hand Cranked Tube Sock Apparatus Machine, Stray Kites, Toob Deboop Jens Lekman, Neutral Milk Hotel, M83, Neon Indian, Neon Neon, Lek Jensman, Margot & The Nuclear So and Sos, Edgar and His Pants-Free Lifestyle, H89u, Man Lekjens, Too Much Frickin Neon, King Khan and the Shrines and last but not least, Mozart.
Self-Expression
Remember to use perhaps the most important hipster line: "I liked them before they were cool." Another good line given the recent spate of disasters is to say something like: "I donated to Haiti... before the disaster." You mean, say stupid things?
Talk about all the obscure bands you like that nobody you know has heard of. When your friends talk about a band you're unfamiliar with, just say you've heard of them but not actually heard them. Look them up the next time you have a chance to. It'll give you more cred. You mean act like an asshole?
Use made-up words as often as possible. Or use real words that no one really knows the meaning of unless they look them up (eg. pulchritudinous, cordiform, and petrichor). You mean speak as if you were illiterate?
A hipster is known for their strong sense of irony and sarcasm. When asked a question, refuse to answer directly; instead, obfuscate, ask a question in return, or just be plain sarcastic. You mean act like a dickhead?
For example: When in a theater watching a movie, and the person next to you turns to say, "Oh, my God, that was so cool! Did you see that?", in a dry tone, reply something along the lines of, "No, I paid $12.50 to stare at the ceiling." You mean look for a one-way ticket to the emergency room?
Food
Start growing your own food and turn vegetarian. Use compost if possible. If you have absolutely no space to do this (not even a balcony or a window sill), go to a natural foods market instead. Eating meat isn't exactly popular with the hipster culture, and many hipsters tend to be vegetarian or vegan. Of course there is just oodles of wide open spaces in Brooklyn to plant your own food and of course your neighbors all love the piles of compost you'll have on your windowsill, they love it when you create a fucking Disneyland for rats and roaches.
Fruit, coffee, Asian food, etc., are all hip foods.You can't really go wrong with lunch from Whole Foods. Yes you can... a freakin salad there cost $18 bucks.
Technically, hipsters are all a bunch of foodies and love making gourmet meals. If you can't cook, get some good cookbooks today. Look this is impossible, you can't be a gourmet cook or a foodie if you are a vegetarian or worse, jesus fucking christ, a vegan and you cut out 90% of the dishes out there. Thats like being an astronomer but only studying 10% of the sky.
Socializing
Use social media. Female hipsters love to use Blogspot, Tumblr or Wordpress taking photos with their Holga cameras of cross-processed and "dreamy-like" pictures of themselves in a field, by the ocean, in forests, in their hipster rooms. Their photography usually reflects their desire for beautiful and soft vintage things. If you know of a hipster girl that knows the terms "reblog" or "follow me on blogspot" then that's definitely one of the indicators of a female hipster. Because no one else is using those phrases, hipsters invented them. They also created the internet, electricity, candy canes, feathers, Lewis Black, clouds, The Cloud, low-flow toilets, heart-shaped pendants, crocodiles and Jesus…they just didn't tell anyone.
Date other hipsters. The reason to "hook up" with other hipsters is that you're much more likely to connect and see eye-to-eye on a range of issues. The all-American muscle guy or sorority-style tanned blond are not likely to be your type, so a fellow hipster is the answer. So your tastes should run to a malnourished, pale, unwashed guy with Arcade Fire tattoos who likes to wear a wool scarf when its 97 degrees out and his grandfathers old leather shoes that give him consistent blisters.
If you break up with a hipster, text them it's over or better still, have someone else pass the message on (try an internet break-up service). Nothing too emotional, OTT, or pain-acknowledging is ideal. By text?...I guess this is because hipsters don't have any souls, I guess that makes sense, actually.
Hipster dancing, if done right, does not use so much of the hips as it does the upper body and arms. Lots of swinging your head back and forth but only do this if you're not humiliated easily (see photo below) (and as a hipster, you really shouldn't care). The goal is too look as if you might have recently suffered a small stroke or sometime in the last 15 minutes developed a palsy of some sort.
Handling Criticism
Get prepared. Be aware that hipsterism is frequently parodied or derided because hipsters bug some people. You're going to need to get used to disdainful attitudes and to work out the ways in which you're most comfortable responding. And rightfully so, if it's one thing I've learned, it's that we should always make fun of the stupid, it's the only way to make them educate themselves.
There will often be an insistence that your sub-culture is "less than" whatever it is the hater "believes" in. Again, it isn't a culture, its just a fad, no one will be doing this 5 years from now so it can't possibly be a culture. The Mayans were a culture.
As for people who poke fun at your fashion sense, remind the so-called trendy mass that their worn and torn jeans fashion was originated by hipsters who found the jeans in thrift stores and wore them years before they turned into mainstream fashion. They didn't invent torn jeans, rock bands and hippies etc have been doing it since the 60's. Since we have photographic proof of this in literally thousands of photos it means that only Hipsters would be dumb enough to claim they did it first.
Recognize the root of the problem. Realize that a lot of people who attack you may have deep insecurities about their own place in society and have very mixed ideas of what culture is, or how they reconcile the variant elements of culture with their own lifestyle and preferences. This is a common fallacy, in which someone who is made fun of, rather than examine the issue that led to the comment, instead assumes there is something wrong with the observer. In this particular case there is no bias, the hipsters are the ones who are wrong.
If the hater is harping on about your age, there is a big clue about what's really going on; they're looking at you and your friends as an amorphous group of "people in their teens/20s" and grumbling about their own misspent youth and/or what they're missing out on now! Almost everyone looks back on their youth with wider eyes at some point but I can assure you I certainly am not thinking: "Oh what a fool Ive been, when I was younger I could have stopped paying attention to basic hygiene, treated everyone around me like they are stupid and dressed like a no-skill clown". And I don't think anyone else is either.
Tip
Do your own hair. The pudding basin is an excellent old-fashioned solution for a straight haircut if that's a problem for you. Simply up-end it over your head and use sharp scissors to cut your bangs or hair edge. I believe this was the hairstyle favored by the Three Stooges.
It is common for hipsters to play instruments, and starting a band of your own is a great way to showcase your love of independent music. You don't have to be good; just be enthusiastic. This is true, since hipsters generally, by their own admission only listen to crappy bands, you don't need to sound any better than they do.
You must use either Google Chrome or Safari to go online. No Firefox or (wince) Explorer. Also never go back in time and use Netscape Navigator.
Rather than going to Starbucks for coffee, go to a local shop or make your own at home to boost up your hipster cred. Carry around a durable thermos cup for your homemade coffee; if it has a sticker against genetic engineering on the side, so much the better. Also…as Frankenstein's Monster put it best...FIRE, BAD!
Be sure to always act superior to everyone that is different to you and your peers, and never shy away from pretention, because, lets face it, you cannot be a hipster if you aren't painfully pretentious. And if its one thing that's fun, its causing people you consider friends to want to hit you all the time.
Buy a Mac, Apple TV, and an iPad. The iPod and iPhone are too mainstream now, so for your smartphone, pick up a Windows Phone, preferably from a hip brand like Huawei. Chinese manufacturers only! Yes, it's certainly not contradictory that you want to support local food, music and clothing manufacturers but then buy a phone made in a country that is poisoning itself to death and employing people at welfare wages.
In closing… sometimes, just sometimes, you may be really frustrated that other people don't get what's so great about your music, fashion, and other choices. Give it up; you won't ever see, hear, or feel the things they love the way they do, and that's because everyone is different.
Except hipsters…who all seem to be the same.
