Hipster Jew » Hipsters

Breaking News: No One Knows What ‘Hipster’ Means

IronyOnRye — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:39:59 +0000

So I get sent a video the other day that documents a French immigrant’s struggle to understand English, specifically the word “hipster.”

Hey, Miss, get on board. No one else understands it either. From the bewildered and offended hipsters she interviews to the guy on last.fm who told me my taste in music was “entry level hipster garbage,” the word doesn’t really have a concrete meaning anymore (if in fact it ever did) and is now more like a generic insult than anything else. When you get called a hipster because you like Arcade Fire, who won a friggin Grammy (note: I do not like Arcade Fire), we have a word that has gotten too big for its original connotations. Too mainstream, if you will.

The hipster is sort of this cultural boogeyman, a vague ‘other’ that exists outside of the person using the word. It’s one who likes everything you don’t know anything about, and sometimes ruins the things you do know about, just by listening to them/watching them/knowing about them. But it’s always someone else: no one ever calls themselves a hipster. Not even that guy in the video with the sixtyten facial piercings and the jeans so tight that he must have used a crowbar to get into them that morning. Someone else is a dirty hipster, someone else is inauthentic enough to stop listening to a band once they get a big break, someone else is asinine enough to ask for a vegan meal at a steakhouse. Not me, never me.

It’s this ridiculous paradigm that sets up the absurdity of someone with thick-rimmed lensless glasses wearing a scarf in June, sipping a free-trade latte denouncing some other person as a hipster. What they have in irony, they lack in self-awareness. Remember that hipster trap from a while back? Odds are pretty good that a hipster set it.

At this point I’m just going to show the video and ask what you think. Is “hipster” a meaningless term? Or does it just mean “every white person living in an urban area”? Am I thinking too hard about this? Where does “hipster” and all the people unwillingly labeled as such, go from here?

// laughingsquid.com

New Orleanians renounce their “hip” title

Mikvah McElroy — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:46:55 +0000

There is a bit of a debate going on in NOLA right now about the “hip” status of the city. “Travel + Leisure” recently ranked us as number 4 in the America’s Best Cities for Hipsters list. After Seattle, Portland and San Francisco comes the Crescent City in all of its grungy glory.

I’m pretty sure, however, that this strange, new, “hip” quality that people are attributing to the insurgence of young twenty-something “hipsters” is really nothing new. San Francisco has always been fucking cool. And so has New Orleans. These are all cities that have always been considered to be open-minded cultural and social hubs.

Author of this article on the Gambit BestofNewOrleans.com blog-spot, Alex Woodward refers to Travel + Leisure as being nothing but “farts-for-brains soothsayers.” He entitled his blog post about these hipster-lists “Stop Writing About Hipsters”, and voraciously denounces the proliferation of this filthy system of hipster-ranking.

Apparently, this is what makes New Orleans a hipster-destination:

“The Crescent City has a legendary cafe culture and a rich music and arts scene. The newest version of hipster bohemians are found in the Marigny area, a historic neighborhood with colorful architecture and good spots to sample the city’s top-ranking bar scene, such as the Hi-Ho Lounge and Mimi’s in the Marigny. To dress the part—and see why the city ranked near the top for both indie boutiques and flea markets—check out the local vintage shops, such as the Revival Outpost on Magazine Street.”

Woodward is vociferous in his sarcasm:

“If you do any of the above, you’re a trendsetter! Look at you! It must’ve taken generations to craft these things — having a beer at a dive bar, watching live music — into something so cool they merit a new word to describe just how cool they are.

He goes on to discuss the terrifying new YouTube web-series “American Hipster” which will soon be doing a New Orleans segment.

Also to be found on this You-Tube channel:

Hipster Grandmothers that sound suspiciously like several of my Jewish female relations.
Oh, vom.

Print Media Still Clueless ‘Bout Hipsters

IronyOnRye — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:13:11 +0000

The other day while flipping through an issue of Newsweek, I was reminded why no one my age gets news in print form. Reading through an article trying to explain Coachella to Newsweek’s target demographic is painful enough, even if they manage to get all their facts straight. Of course, they didn’t. And this made your friendly resident hipster sociologist upset.

Saying something like “Hipsterdom’s indie- music extravaganza” to describe Coachella is fine, until you say this in the very next paragraph: “A showcase for such pop immortals as Madonna, Jay-Z, Paul McCartney, and Prince.” One of these things is not like the other… and until you work up the give-a-shit meter to look up the term “hipster” on Wikipedia or at least goddamn Urbandictionary, why are you being paid for your shitfest of an article? Here I am, sculpting the perfect article out of the finest prose and syntax while this clown uses phrases like “hunka hunka burnin’.” What does that even mean?

I’d be more forgiving of a fellow writer if it was a one time mistake, but in the final paragraph here we go again: “The fest is typically a Hollywood-heavy affair, teeming with movie stars, models, porn performers, and reality-TV regulars. This year they’ll be able to take in indie-pop sensation Florence and the Machine, the hit-making French house-music producer David Guetta.” Hollywood, Guetta, and reality TV is the kind of shit that hipsters despise, make fun of, and expend all their energy trying to avoid. And once again, five minutes on the internet would have told the author this.

The convoluted point is this: Five minutes of Google usage would have made this article informative instead of hilariously wrong and out of touch. And yet, the author didn’t care enough to get things right and still got paid for it. Print journalism in a nutshell. Maybe the internet didn’t kill print journalism; it just pulled back the curtain and showed the public how lazy reporting was doing all of the killing. Moral of the story? Read HipsterJew for news about fests and hipsters. We might not get paid, but at least we know what the fuck we’re talking about.

Check out Newsweek’s bad quality control regarding factual stories here.

Let the Hipster Hunger Games Begin

Chicky — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 21:49:18 +0000

I saw the Hunger Games and it made me feel emotions briefly. Now that I have watched it, let us laugh at Hipsters, because that is the logical next step. Laughing at Hipsters is always finny, especially in parody form. So laugh laugh laugh laugh your vinyl records away and other lazy cultural tropes because that is the entire existence of the internet. Make one funny joke and then wait for every other person to smash it and smash it and smash it into little meme pieces until you hate the original joke and you don’t know why but there is a feeling of hollowness inside your very soul (see: Shit ________ Says).

Does the internet reward lazy? If so, why aren’t I famous yet? #lazyandapathetic

Now THIS meme is actually offensive and therefore 1,000 times funnier than the video.

/Flavorwire

A music video with Jake Gyllenhaal creepily murdering Hipsters?!?!

Chicky — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:29:01 +0000

I’m not sure what’s going on here, so someone please help me? Jake Gyllenhaal is murdering Hipsters with a historically white, upperclass weapon like it’s his job? Then he trains to some sick JUSTICE-esque beats? Is this a jealous thing or just some sick revenge fantasy? All I know is that Jake Gyllenhaal doesn’t need to go on a serial killing murder tear to impress the ladies. He’s just doing it for fun.

/ Question for the Skins fans out there: It this more like a bad episode of Skins from the first season, or a good episode of Skins from the 3rd season?

// Thanks Mr. Healy for the find.

Is ‘Portlandia’ the new adjective for ‘Hipster’?

Chicky — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:08:10 +0000

Salon extensively covered the use of Portlandia comparisons in recent culture. The NYtimes, Gawker, and GQ were all perpetrators of this lazy crime. The list is astounding, (check it out here) but it also leads to a more important point. As the idea of ‘the Hipster’ has become mainstream, from politicians calling Obama a Hipster to having shows on MTV about Hipsters, news outlets are looking for new ways to describe fads/trends that young people participate in.

Historically Hipster has a negative connotation and is used to demean someone’s taste in music, fashion, art, even beer choice. That’s where Portlandia comes in. Portlandia is self-aware. It makes fun of the people it supposedly represents. And Portlandia has tapped into the Hipster-hating conscience of the American majority. So instead of being negative about Hipsters, we can be faux-positive while comparing a combo-vegan-sushi-dog-daycare center as ‘being something right out of a sketch from Portlandia.’

This way we’re being both condescending AND showing off our knowledge of post-college pop culture. And isn’t that the most Hipster thing you can do these days?

// Rereading this post, I definitely feel like this is the type of op-ed piece you expect to read in a Portland alternative weekly. Maybe even as part of some Portlandia-esque sketch.

/// That was meta.

Kreayshawn calls hipsters ‘cool’, laments #hipsterproblems

Chicky — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:00:40 +0000

Kreayshawn is my girl! Always there to defend us Hipsters at random Goodwills when duty calls. Oh, you’re kind of a Hipster AND you’re thriftstore shopping? STEREOTYPE ALERT!

“Being in, is like, what’s ‘cool’ but in America, doing what isn’t ‘cool’ is what’s really cool.”

Elegant, succinct words for the common Hipster by the common Hipster.

LONG LIVE KREAYSHAWN (Cray-Shawn?) 5 MORE YEARS!

“Hipsters” (the Movie) Totally Not About Hipsters

Alex - Resident Goy Writer — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:23:22 +0000

It’s a 2008 Russian musical film about Russian kids from the 1950s. I’m gonna sue for false advertising.

On the other hand, its is a foreign film, so, points for that. Especially if you saw it years ago.

Future Hipsters

The Duckman — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:41:41 +0000

Last night, Chicky mentioned how my birthday was coming up in a month. A few moments later, he sent me this video. So what. I’m the oldest consistent contributor to Hipster Jew. Big deal. Make fun of me. It’s not like I’m going to be buying designer depends anytime soon. I just bought a pack last week and they usually last me awhile.

But in all seriousness, I hope I’m this cool when I’m 80.

Schlitz Pretends to Know What She’s Talking About: Youth and Culture

Schlitz Lipz — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:04:55 +0000

One of my guilty pleasures is reading articles and books about how our culture is dying, our generation is a clusterfuck, and the world is going to be demolished by nuclear war leaving nothing but the twinkies. [Ed note: Unless bankruptcy beats out a nuclear holocaust.]

I love hearing about how our generation is so selfish that we’re cursed to years and years of nothingness, as is claimed in this article. Or something like that.

And I get it. We are selfish. We are obsessed with taking pictures of ourselves. And drinking Starbucks. And playing with our iPhones. And purchasing record players but not actually owning records.

You won’t find one of these at my house. But you WILL find one of these.

We do these things, it’s true. But you know what?

Every generation has dealt with the older generation being CERTAIN that they would ruin everything. Every generation has role models that can be frowned upon. (I will never consider Marilyn Monroe a GOOD role model for young girls.) Every generation has had its positive [generalized] characteristics and it’s negative [generalized] characteristics.

Our parents didn’t end the world with their mistakes and we won’t either.

Have a little faith, hipsters.

We can do this.

And now, let’s watch a cat video.