Identifying Hipsters

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Grant and Martha. This is Justin in San Francisco. How are you doing?

Hi, Justin. What’s up?

Hi. I’m going to ask what your thoughts were on the word hipster.

Hipster.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a toxic word here, and I’m not quite sure what it is, if it’s a word that’s used to describe a subculture or if it’s just an insult.

It kind of depends on who’s saying it and who’s taking the description.

So I’ve done a little reading up on it, and I’m still more confused, and I’m just wondering what your thoughts were about the word itself, the past, and the future of it.

Because as far as I can see, hipsters are a word maybe sort of the way hippie or beatnik was, and that at the time when these words were created, people who were actually considered hippies would never use the term.

But as time went on, they accepted it and maybe in the past would say, yeah, I was a hippie back in the 60s.

And maybe the same thing’s going on now.

And I’m wondering what you think about this.

Yeah, I’m not sure I know of any hipsters who actually call themselves hipsters.

In fact, I’m reminded of that great headline in The Onion, you know, the satirical newspaper, two hipsters angrily call each other hipster.

Exactly.

Exactly right.

So you’re in San Francisco, and you said there in San Francisco that hipster is a word that is probably derogatory.

Is there a particular neighborhood where this is more important?

Yeah, absolutely.

The mission would be the epicenter of hipsters.

And I guess the exact opposite would be the marina.

So if a hipster is walking down the street toward you, how do you recognize that person as a hipster?

Well, it depends on who you are, but I guess the stereotype would be skinny jeans, thick-brimmed glasses, maybe vintage clothing, scruffy hair, maybe riding a fixie bicycle, and maybe a little bit of the shovel-looking, carrying a pass-blue ribbon beer.

It’s kind of regional, too, but that’s the general going stereotype.

Well, that’s the stereotype as I know it. I lived in Brooklyn, New York for a long time, and I actually was just back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is hipster central. It’s like the ground zero of hipsterdom, like a hipster bomb went off there. It’s crazy.

Of course.

So you’ve nailed it. Let’s just do a quick assessment of the history of this word, but you’ve nailed the recent history of hipster, which is most of the time people don’t call themselves a hipster, but they might call other people a hipster, and it has something to do with your appearance.

You are putting on an appearance.

So it almost seems like a uniform.

And maybe it’s authentic.

Maybe it’s not.

But it’s like a lot of other people’s uniform that they’re putting on.

But it’s playing down your self-importance by underdressing or under-hygiening, if I can coin a verb here.

But at the same time, you probably spent a lot of money on your accoutrements, right?

Right.

So you’re carrying the expensive phone.

You’re carrying the expensive phone, the expensive laptop, riding the expensive bike, have the expensive jeans.

Went to Urban Outfitters.

Yeah, maybe have the expensive haircut, right?

So we have that modern version of hipster, and it looks to me as if the meaning of the word is growing more negative over time.

If you go back to the 1960s when hipster was also a term, it really kind of just meant people who were hip.

That is, somebody who wasn’t square, somebody who was in touch with counterculture, somebody who was in touch with what was happening in the art, somebody who was in touch with what was happening in music, and so forth.

And looking forward to the future rather than dreading the future.

And it slowly changed.

And in the 1990s, I began to see, and you can verify this by looking in old newspapers, I began to see that hipster started switching.

And the calling somebody hipster became a pejorative.

It became a negative.

And that suggested that you were inauthentic and that you were modeling yourself on people that you wanted to be like, but you weren’t actually that kind of person yourself.

And now I think the pejorative meaning is in full flower, and it’s almost exclusively pejorative.

There was a brilliant video shot by a French journalism student at Columbia University.

You can find this on Jason Kotke’s site.

Just go to kotke.org and look for the word hipster or hipster video.

And she goes to Williamsburg, Brooklyn and interviews people.

Are you a hipster? What do you think hipster means?

I mean, we’re talking this is the place where if you looked at almost anybody walking down the street, go, that’s a hipster, except for the few Polish people from Greenpoint who are passing through the subway, you know?

It’s really kind of incredible. And she encounters this guy, if I’m remembering correctly, who has gauged ears and like a pierced nose and the bed head and the kind of vintage but expensive clothes.

And she asks him, are you a hipster?

And he’s offended by it.

He’s offended that she would even ask the question. And I’m thinking, dude, you’re a hipster. You’re clearly a hipster.

So that’s all I got to say on that, Justin.

I mean, it’s really worth exploring, though, is how you can have a term that exists as a pejorative for people who are clearly identifiable as a group, and yet they all reject the term.

I guess you think someday people will say yes.

Back in the 2000s, I was a hipster.

I’m not old enough to have been around in the 60s, so I’m not quite sure if people identified themselves as hippies in the early days or if this is something looking back, they said, yeah, I guess I was a hippie.

And if the same thing will happen, I’m not sure how these words develop.

Well, gosh, we could put the call out to hipsters to have them call and tell us what they think, but nobody’s going to call, right?

Who’s going to self-identify?

I don’t think you’re going to get any response.

Well, yeah, I do think that some people might self-identify as a hipster, but I’m betting that they’ll have a different definition than the negative one that’s usually portrayed in the criticism in the press and on the street, that sort of thing.

Right. It would be ironic.

Well, you know, we’d be delighted to hear more from you, Justin.

If you have some more thoughts on this, pop us an email and we’ll share it with everybody.

All right?

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye, Justin.

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