schweblog

Rockers. Jocks. Goths. Gangbangers/gangsters. Preppies.

My teenage years were filled with concern over the prototypical social molds of the 1990s. Baggy pants? All black? Flannel? These concerns evaporated by the time I hit college, one of those things that is uncanny in how much it matters one moment and how little it matters the next.

And let’s not pretend otherwise. It was vacuous. Your ability (or willingness) to drop $50.00 on a pair of JNCOs was, for a few short years, what separated the cool from the not-so-cool. A shitty pair of pants was what decided which social circles you would be permitted into and those you would be shunned by.

It all seems ridiculous. Not just seemingly ridiculous. It was ridiculous. (I’m sure said paradigms still exist, in other permutations, amongst youth today—I’m far too lazy to learn about them, although I’m sure my life as a high school teacher will enlighten me in this regard.) And now that my peer group has matured a little bit, everyone seems to be more or less comfortable in their own skins. The paradigms are gone and we all look back at the days of our youth with a smirk of embarrassment.

And now there are hipsters.

Somehow, this has caught on amongst twenty-somethings. Somehow, a weird social paradigm has managed to survive past many people’s teens and an entire generation is caught up in a milieu of tight jeans, fixed-gear bicycles, Toms, record players, and…uh…irony? And, oh yeah, obscure things you probably haven’t heard of.

Urban Dictionary’s top-voted entry for hipster is, “the blend of every failed fad of 1990s.” Independent of the accuracy of such a definition, I’m still astounded at how many people my age have committed to this…lifestyle? The thing is, I’m hesitant to call it a lifestyle because…well, it’s too easy. It’s not a lifestyle, no more than the goths, jocks, and preppies of our youth were a lifestyle.

HYPOTHESIS: The “lifestyles” (again, I use this term hesitantly) of our youth didn’t melt away, but were forced out by real (more substantial, textured, whatever) lifestyles as we developed into self-authoring adults who cultivated real interests and passions, etc.

So lifestyles/social paradigms/whatever still persist into adulthood. Hipsters are just one of them, right? Why pick on them? Well, again, because being a hipster too easy. I have many hats that I think lump me in with a group: philosophy, education, reading, descriptivist grammar. All of these are products of me cultivating a passion. Spending time doing stuff. If someone could buy a collection of Plato and become a philosopher, then my study of philosophy would be utterly meaningless. It would be silly. It would be vacuous.

One of the key aspects of these more substantial, textured lifestyles is that they are predicated on things besides owning shit. I.e., you can’t study philosophy by purchasing a pair of pants. And this, I think, is what makes the hipster paradigm so goddamn puzzling. I can go drop a couple hundred dollars on some paraphernalia, claim that my appreciation for everything mainstream is tongue-in-cheek, and become a hipster overnight. And since there’s no substantial investment required to do so, my ownership of said products is necessary and sufficient for me to become a hipster.

I thought we were done with this…?