You know your pretentious yet easily-categorized "scene" is coming to an end when you can purchase a novelty handbook about you and your peers.
Cases in point:
The Official Preppy Handbook (published 1980)
The Official Slacker Handbook (published 1994) -- Only one left on Amazon.com but more are on the way for nostalgic Gen-Xers.
And, most recently:
The Hipster Handbook (published early 2003) -- Buy it used on Amazon and see where an early hipster spilled cappucino ... on the page about overpriced coffeehouse syndicates!
A Field Guide to the Urban Hipster (published
late 2003, as a habit common to hipsters is "reading," there came a need for two books.)
The LA Times this week
ran an article pointing out a "trend" toward defecting hipsters: The un-hipsters? The hip-less? The Who Cares?
According to the article, to be a hipster is a lot of work. A ton of effort, really, just to keep ahead of the only semi-hip Joneses. What with the Internet, the blogosphere, the proliferation of still-edgy-and-underground-but-could-get-mentioned-on-
The-O.C.-any-day-now-killing-their-"hip"-factor webzines, music, movies and books; the constant barrage from supposed trendmakers divulging that what you wore five minutes ago is, um, so five minutes ago. And why would you want to go back to five minutes ago? Five minutes ago is so 1987, Heather. (Oops, just been told pop culture references are decidedly unhip.)
To be a true hipster, you can't like what you like if even a mini-majority of someone elses already like it. You've better be on the prowl at all moments, finding the newer because the new is old.
As much as the article holds some truth -- I mean, why cultivate your hipsterdom if even your leisure time ends up feeling worklike -- it sort of misses the point.
That being, there is no "hip."
Originating from the word "hep," hip's definition is
characterized by a keen informed awareness of or involvement in the newest developments or styles (Merriam-Webster)
And the word "hip" was not invented to describe the hipster as they were defined earlier this decade.
However, there is pretty solid agreement that the word "hip" is a variant of "hep" meaning "wise to" or "informed." During the 1930s, some of the big-bands of swing, like Benny Goodman's and Count Basie's, were called "hep," meaning the musicians and arrangers were "in the know." A later phrase of similar meaning would be "in tune with." Jazz devotees were called "hep-cats" although the term was not popular among the musicians themselves. (Straight Dope)
Going by the dictionary definition, hip could as easily be used to describe someone well-informed and in the know with regard to the latest trends in kitten sweatshirts or Franklin Mint collectors' plates. ("Wow, Betty, I haven't even seen this Dale Earnheart memorial plate in the Pennysaver yet and you've already got that one and the Pope Benedict and Justice John Roberts commemorative plaster statues. You are so HIP!")
You could be a hip gardener. A hip stamp collector. A hip hypochondriac. ("I think I have a rare and nearly undiscovered disease common only in squirrels." "Well, Earl, that's cause you're so dang HIP!")
Because, really, all hip requires is that you be a bit better than well-versed on whatever it is that interests you. Which is potentially pretty cool until you realize that you can't be a hip devotee of network television, blockbuster movies, major league baseball or classic rock because those things are all purposely omitted from the true hipster repertoire.
The "hipster," as it were, is just yet another social construct. Something probably invented by a group of marketing executives to simplify, categorize and underexplain a new youth culture. A handy checklist of traits, characteristics and concrete "must-haves" (from an ironically out-of-touch slogan T-shirt to a pair of ugly-chic eyeglasses to a vintage-look record player to a copy of
Adbusters magazine to wrap around a decidedly unhip copy of
US Weekly) to make an attempt at an all-encompassing "trend" that really doesn't suit everyone that they're trying to reach.
No matter what the construct, eventually there will come a backlash, a defection to something more simple or more complex. The LA Times piece goes on to say how that virtual stomping ground of hipsters, CraigsList, has gone from a holding place of ads for apartments in hip neighborhoods and jobs in hip industries, now features an activities section for unhip activities, from bowling and lacrosse to badminton and chess.
The movement toward these old-school hobbies will likely gain a name like Sincerism and its denizens be called Sincerists. Never once is it considered just a natural progression of time, that the original hipsters have matured and just like what they like, hipness be damned.
As someone born in 1977, just between the end of Generation X and the beginning of Generation Y, sort of in between "slacker" and "hipster" -isms, maybe it's easier for me to comment as an impartial outsider. Maybe those of us to enter our 20s at the tailend of a decade -- notice all those aforementioned handbooks are published at the outset of the 80s, 90s and 00s -- are able to escape quick categorization.
And, well, that's pretty damn cool, don't you think?
