Retire the Term Hipster Already
The term hipster was coined in the 1940’s to describe enthusiasts of jazz music. This word vastly transformed meanings and became a large part of the North American majority’s vocabulary in the early 2000’s. The term is used to insult a large group of people who encompass certain ideas, political views, diet, style, musical taste, preference of literature and essentially anything else that is part of the infrastructure of what makes a human interesting. It is a ruthlessly unproductive word that paints giant hypocritical brushstrokes against an entire civilization. It has become a tremendously judgmental, lazy and unclear representation of contemporary culture. Examples of this notion are...
-Those feeling the need to call men wearing a ponytail a “man bun” which just further perpetuates the archaic sexism we are working hard towards decreasing.
-Assuming local cafes that practice strong ethics, environmental concerns and homemade food are pretentious.
-The notion that people sincerely appreciating art, literature, old cameras, and typewriters is somehow corrosive to humanity.
The people who are often described as hipsters are millennials and they were born into a fairly artless society that is washed over by technology. We long to have attachment with the world before us, so shopping at thrift stores and collecting antiques can be quite fulfilling. Before this term was overused to oblivion we had no criticisms towards those appreciating film photography, terrariums, records, floppy hats or whatever the hell it is now we are told not to like now. There is a stifling amount of issues we would benefit from concentrating on in this world. Making boring jokes and insults towards completely harmless people who happen to appreciate inoffensive things is not one of them. That stated-I love records (because they sound great), support local business (because no sweatshops are involved) and write about music (because I love music) so I understand I may be the demographic who is unable to fully understand the need to practice this useless term. However, I think it’s deeply important we recognize that nobody is benefiting from this anymore. If you are trying to point out that people are cultural sheep then consider why you feel the need to use this term, there is some blatant hypocrisy there. If you think it’s not cool to be cool and therefore you need to make people feel uncool by trying to be cool then you need to deeply consider getting a life. Can we please just put the word hipster to rest? Let people be people and use the leftover energy for something even remotely useful.