The Hipster is Dead; Long Live Another Type of Hipster

Some smart, academic-types in NY have just published a book called What Was The Hipster: A Sociological Investigation. It looks at the eponymous NY Hipster community as a social class, ethnic group and a movement of sorts, and attempts to condense the whole disparate archipelago of micro-fads into one, cohesive whole. From what I gather, it’s pretty fucking accurate and not particularly complimentary.

When I read an article about it  – written by one of the authors, Adam Greig – this morning in the New Statesman, it felt like one of those game-changing ‘they’re selling Hippy Wigs in Woolworths’ moments in which an entire generation is bagged, tagged and buried… but in a good way. If somebody’s already performed a post-mortem on The Hipster, then by logical extension, hipsterism, and all the embarassing shit that went with it, is now dead. And thank fuck for that – it was a mercy killing.

It’s rare that I insist people read things, but this is one of those rare articles that just needs to be read. As I mentioned before, it’s a bit of a game changer: A Hipster’s Paradise in the New Statesmen.