Hipsters

[Merus]

I've held for a while that there's a 'poser' subculture that desperately believe that they can adopt the intellectual stance (and thus its intellectual respectability) of a subculture by adopting the aesthetic of a subculture. Posers used to dress like goths, then like emos, and now they dress like hipsters.

[clyde]

Somewhat relatedly, I've been enjoying this:

http://daleberan.tumblr.com/post/83002114449/a-tale-of-two-hipsters

 

It is really long and I found myself disagreeing with one of the author's premises very early. I still intend to finish reading it but I want to comment on something he is positing. I would argue that the non-correct ideology that urban, american society is believing is that youth-culture is paralyzed and doing nothing. I find that notion so full of anectdotal holes that it makes me wonder why I hear it so often. In what sense is urban, american youth-culture paralyzed by moral relativism? It seems to me that I'm watching young writers want to be more like established, older writers; so they internalize all the fears that the older generation has proclaimed about the new one. No one seems to consider that it is completely false. This generation seems so empowered with social agency and moral relativism that they are active in so many fronts that it is incomprehensible. 

[Gormongous]

It is really long and I found myself disagreeing with one of the author's premises very early. I still intend to finish reading it but I want to comment on something he is positing. I would argue that the non-correct ideology that urban, american society is believing is that youth-culture is paralyzed and doing nothing. I find that notion so full of anectdotal holes that it makes me wonder why I hear it so often. In what sense is urban, american youth-culture paralyzed by moral relativism? It seems to me that I'm watching young writers want to be more like established, older writers; so they internalize all the fears that the older generation has proclaimed about the new one. No one seems to consider that it is completely false. This generation seems so empowered with social agency and moral relativism that they are active in so many fronts that it is incomprehensible. 

 

Honestly, I think it's the absence of a clear counterpart to the (wholly ineffectual but culturally definitive) counterculture movement of the sixties. Most older (and, like you said, therefore many younger) writers feel that, since they can't see students protesting on the streets like it's 1968 (except for Occupy Wall Street, which was discredited from the beginning among the majority for reasons I still don't fully apprehend), they're obviously doing nothing.

 

And then there's just the age-old belief, which I've seen even in Rome during the second century BC, that today's youth are horribly and irredeemably morally corrupted, which is whatever.

[clyde]

I filled out a survey saying that my favorite fruit is "avocado". I'm also now making my own personal supply of seltzer water at home. 

Kinda silly, but it reminded me of the title of this thread.