My new definition of 'hipster':

[azurelunatic]

Someone, usually young/adult and white, who is pissed off that their formerly handcrafted and artisanal culture is being mass-produced for profit by an exploitative corporation.


Related: and just like that, 'hipster' has fallen out of my automatic-eyeroll category, except as it intersects with 'pretentious douchebag'.

Comments

[silverflight8]

Would that then include the segments of fandom upset at Kindle Worlds?

Which reminds me, I've been meaning to post about that, because I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

[azurelunatic]

Kindle Worlds, in my opinion, is OK for the people who can stomach the contract (which is crappy), but increases the risk that publicly posted fanfiction elsewhere, even if it's not earning anyone money, gets offered cease-and-desist notices (which still happens from time to time).

[siliconshaman]

Crap. I'm a hipster!

No, wait..I'm too old to be a hipster. I'm a punk! Punks were hipsters before hipsters were cool. Seriously, being pissed off that your (insert popular sub-culture) just got ripped off, exploited, and commidified to be sold in a watered-down prepacked form to wannbe trendsters... so not a new thing.

[konsectatrix]

*chuckle* Very true.

My personal definition for hipster ranges between 1. Those kids that are dressed the same way I was back in the day when I got crap for it, and 2. The ones that try to put on the affectations of an artist, that are totally in love with the idea of being an artist, but don't actually make stuff.

But I can totally sympathize with the subculture woes.

[xenacryst]

And, now, as is often the case in these discussions, I am earwormed by Robert Smith noting that everyone's finally all the same - everyone's jumping every body else's train.

[andrewducker]

My vague opinion is that they're people in search of The Real - which usually means that they're white and middle class, since people from that social grouping are more likely to be far enough up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to have the capacity to care about that.

This means that they come in for a lot of scorn from other groups because they care about things that other people with less don't consider worth caring about (similar to #FirstWorldProblems).

[silveradept]

Ah, I was under the impression that "hipster" always carried "pretentious douchebag" as a requirement.