http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2009/06/19/hipster-is-just-a-word-for-someone-youre-worried-is-cooler-than-you Comments On: Hipster is Just a Word for Someone You're Worried is Cooler Than You by Jonny Diamond en-us Copyright 2009 The L Magazine. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The L Magazine readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The L Magazine. wil@desert.net (The L Magazine Webmaster) Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0500 Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
I am a liar. I was not in the cosmetics store. Not that one. They refuse to sell me products derived directly from whales, which I can respect as an admirer of various forms of aquatic life (especially the Dumbo Octopus and other freaks that populate those deep environs) but which leaves me bereft of proper materials from which to extract the various oils required to pay homage to gods I shall not name, because they belong to a neighbor and not to me, and because sometimes acting neighborly has you doing the same favor over and over again, and sometimes that favor involves procuring arcane items to be placed atop the lone horizontal plane of crooked altars, while other times it involves things far more (or maybe far less, in specific terms) mundane, such as lending a cup of sugar or agreeing to exchange a double-yolked egg for a less fucked-up one (some folks are really scared of those little ovo-gemini).

So no, I was not there. But I did hear about it. And strangely, I kept hearing about it. One person overheard and recounted. Another had seen it from outside. One was in the bookstore and had thorough details. Another heard about it all and retold and retold. Then the write-ups, the pictures, the reviews, the intrigue. From every angle, that certain ubiquity. The kind that makes you wonder why you're sometimes a conduit for things recurrent to you from disparate sources.

And on that note, now, and to get to what might have been the only thing worth leaving here:

Baader Meinhof, anyone?

Because the phenomenon is real. A syndrome, even.

And these groups are not unrelated.

And neither is either unrelated to pre-Renaissance humanists.

Pico della Mirandola is one of my all-time favorites.

The French call him Pic de la Mirandole.
Posted by Paul D'Agostino]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:15:25 -0400 The L Magazine Posted by MikeLindgren]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:31:53 -0400 The L Magazine
So, a word for young people with cutting edge-creating approaches to art, style and politics -- approaches often referred to as "hip".

I've got it!

"Hippies"!
Posted by Mark Asch]]> Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:37:43 -0400 The L Magazine
I think, though, I'm trying to salvage the term hipster (or even reappropriate it) from the convenient demographic marketing tool it has become. That's the scary part, the speed now at which "counterculture," or whatever you want to call it, gets swept up in the whirlwind of marketing and commodity. (See Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" for a chilling, enlightening break down of this).

So this is what I'm curious about: every city, since cities began, has always had a (relatively) interesting subset of young people who've sought to dedicate themselves to capital-A ART, refusing to conform to whichever set of conventions might offer them a chance at a comfortable day-to-day existence (and yes, some of them come from the suburbs and that really shouldn't have anything to with anything, to suggest it does is just banal nativism). These are the people who are the first ones to dress in a weird way, who try weird shit in whichever art they're into (which fails half the time, but still) and who aren't afraid to stick out. Of course, eventually other people catch on to certain affectations (from a fashion perspective) and approaches to art, and then all of a sudden it seems like you have a bunch of thoughtless conformists. My point is that this huge second wave of adopters are not hipsters — hipsters are the ones out there doing the weird new shit, dressing in weird ways (I realize some might dismiss the affectations of outward style, but that kind of affectation has been a part of every interesting art movement over the last two centuries, from Bloomsbury to New Wave and on). Again, this is me wanting to reclaim the word, which is perhaps lost.

Bohemians sounds dated... What do we call these people? (And yes, we have to call them something.)



Posted by Jonny Diamond]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:22:19 -0400 The L Magazine
the people in those pictures don't really look like hipsters either. and the majority of the fixed-gear crowd is more worried about the latest loft party than obscure ultra-leftist manifestos. they certainly wouldn't risk f-ing up their precious bikes to impale you, or anyone, on a matter of principle. unless their hot-pink rims had been called into question, and then they'd probably just beat you with their bike-lock chain (though, on second thought, the importance of wearing said chain around the waist for other fixed-gearheads to recognize would probably render its use as a weapon off limits.)

i WISH hipster signified individuality, eccentricity and bohemianism. though it's certainly synonymous with youth, at least in nyc, and especially williamsburg, them hipsters are hive-mided, consumerist trendies: true children of the suburbs from which they came, and to which they presumably (please god) will eventually return.

they are, in fact, the ones who've most bought into a certain subset of that "high-end aesthetic," and appear to be completely unbothered by the issue of "zero content".

power to the frenchies, however. is there an emoticon for a raised fist?
Posted by fistster]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:45:36 -0400 The L Magazine