Today I am talking about hipsters. I don't know if I am one, some days I think so, other days when there are actual hipsters around I don't think so.
I have this problem where there is mainstream culture, and then there is hipster/indie culture, and then outside of that there is me. What I am saying is that I am too underground to be a hipster. I am at a greater depth than hipster because there are a lot of hipsters but only one me. What I mean is that I don't know too much mainstream music, I do know a little of the core hipster stuff, but then what about everything else? Most of me falls into everything else. Hipsters won't know my bands and I won't know theirs.
Then you run into the problem of a culture that prides itself on uniqueness and how it is becoming more mainstream and how there is hipster music that is mainstream relative to hipsters but is obscure to mainstream. So is it still hipster to listen to something that is mainstream hipster? And now, I don't mean like listening to Lady Gaga ironically or anything, I mean like Neutral Milk Hotel or Mumford & Sons or The Strokes. It's mainstream to hipster culture, but unknown outside of it. Does this music still bear cred even though every hipster knows it? I would argue that no, if every hipster knows it, it has become too mainstream to be any big deal. I know bands like Phantom Power and Part Timer that most hipsters wouldn't know, so it should be more hipster to know those.
I have this problem where there is mainstream culture, and then there is hipster/indie culture, and then outside of that there is me. What I am saying is that I am too underground to be a hipster. I am at a greater depth than hipster because there are a lot of hipsters but only one me. What I mean is that I don't know too much mainstream music, I do know a little of the core hipster stuff, but then what about everything else? Most of me falls into everything else. Hipsters won't know my bands and I won't know theirs.
Then you run into the problem of a culture that prides itself on uniqueness and how it is becoming more mainstream and how there is hipster music that is mainstream relative to hipsters but is obscure to mainstream. So is it still hipster to listen to something that is mainstream hipster? And now, I don't mean like listening to Lady Gaga ironically or anything, I mean like Neutral Milk Hotel or Mumford & Sons or The Strokes. It's mainstream to hipster culture, but unknown outside of it. Does this music still bear cred even though every hipster knows it? I would argue that no, if every hipster knows it, it has become too mainstream to be any big deal. I know bands like Phantom Power and Part Timer that most hipsters wouldn't know, so it should be more hipster to know those.
If you base a culture on individualism, you'll find that everyone is individual in the same way.
