Norms and Sanctions

     When spending time with your hipster friends, you should know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

UNNACEPTABLE- Using plastic, styrofoam or other environmentally unfriendly materials.
YOU WILL BE- Gasped at, glared at, and given a quick environmental science lesson.


UNACCEPTABLE- Listening to pop music.
YOU WILL BE- Given an eye roll and handed a Front Bottoms vinyl album.

UNACCEPTABLE- Anti-minority, anti-feminist, misogynistic or misandry-laden speech. Hate speech.
YOU WILL BE- Screamed at, yelled at, called names, and given a list of reasons why you should respect that group.

UNACCEPTABLE- Expensive clothes.
YOU WILL BE- Looked up and down, given a shake of the head and ignored.

Values, Material/Non Material Culture, Sanctions, Beliefs

     The hipster movement has its claws deep in free thinking, political involvement and awareness, cynicism, uniqueness, artistic expression and music. But, the culture we all know and, for the most part, have a distaste for, is visibly recognizable. Teens everywhere can look at an item and tell you, "Wow, that's so hipster." But, ask them to identify which shoes look "New-Age" and they will probably look at you blankly. To illustrate this for you, I will write for you some hipster sample speech and opinions on some topics. Take a look at the elements of the below material culture and how mainstream folks are muddying the waters of the hipster movement, which is most obviously running upstream because mainstream is laaaaaaaame.

CLOTHING

The above diagram would disgust mostly any true hipster you presented it to. The clothes are new. "The clothes are stylish. This was clearly taken from a magazine, which is a fortitude of mainstream media. This is a true upset to the movement." True hipsters would be appalled that people are recreating the outfits they found in a thrift store with their ruggedly individual and uncaring sense of fashion. The fact that people would TRY to look hipster makes real hipsters vehemently angry. And, not only that, but, you cannot recreate Haley Hipster's outfit and then CALL it hipster. That word is not a self describing adjective to any true hipster. It is uncool, childish, and "for posers" to CALL yourself a hipster. If you are truly a hipster, you will not describe yourself as so. "That, is a hipster," Haley says, pointing to the girl wearing a Neff beanie and Guess jeans and a flannel from garage. "I," she says, pointing to her thrift store flannel, mom jeans and brother's Converse shoes, "am not a...." quietly hissed, "...hipster."

MUSIC

 

According to hipsters, music (which is a ridiculously fundamental part of the movement) is uncool unless it is underground. You do not like a band unless you've been to every gig and knew them months before they released their self titled album. "This woman is destroying our country by feeding into its conformist and capitalist ideas and playing her senseless, distasteful, meaningless, overproduced music on the radio, also leading to the ostracize-and-laugh at sanction of the poor kid who doesn't know her newest song. Besides, she's not even good live. I heard her back when she was Kathryn Hudson, and she sucked, and she sang gospel music, and she went from praising Jesus to prancing on a pole at that awards show. What a sellout. See, this is what the mainstream music industry does to artists. The fact that she played an awards show makes her duly uncool, because that is a mass production put on to further inflate the egos of non-brilliant artists who are recognized just because the mainstream culture can regurgitate the words to their synth laden songs. Next." 

"I. Can't."

The hipster clutches his chest, shakes his head, strokes the banzai tree in front of him and mouths, "I am so sorry."

Hipsters are very environmentally conscious. 

"Don't you understand what you are doing? Do you understand that this is WRONG? You are not only using a PLASTIC water bottle that WILL, MARK MY WORDS, WILL, wind up in the ocean, but you are POURING IT into a glass which you will then WASH WITH MORE WATER. WHY couldn't you have just put the water from the TAP DIRECTLY into the glass and drank THAT? Is it because your immature taste buds have only ever known the American luxury of bottled water? So you're using more water to clean the water from the PLASTIC bottle you drank to clean the glass you drank out of? The glass from IKEA? WHEN YOU HAVE PLENTY OF PERFECTLY GOOD MASON JARS YOU COULD HAVE USED INSTEAD OF BUYING A GLASS? Unless it's from a local glass blowing artist. That's cool. But you have bad taste, so I assume it isn't."

Other things you should know on this topic:

• Hipsters are most often democratic, and very much so. They are pro choice, pro abortion, pro birth control, advocate for the LGBT community, and will fight you to the death readily if you disagree by pulling out obscure facts from obscure speeches that you haven't seen, and they will make a great argument.
• Hipsters are usually fond of either being without religion or with a nature-based religion like Buddhism. They love the environment, so this makes sense. 
• Hipsters are fans of being ironically cool. If your grandpa wears it, hipsters will probably like it. If your mom wore it in the nineties, hipsters will probably like it. If no one would ever wear it in public, hipsters will probably like it. Irony is huge. Symbolic meaning is huge. Prius's are small, and you'd think they were important, but actually they aren't that good for the environment and everyone and their mother has one, so, they're not cool, and hipsters knew that a month before the study was published, because apriorism is also huge. 

All joking and satiric learning aside, hipsters are to be respected, in my opinion, as most other movements are. My objectivity as a writer is about to redeem itself when I tell you that, they have causes and they fight for them, causes we should all be aware of, like environmental safety, the dangers of consumerism and unoriginality, supporting your local economy, human rights, political involvement, arts, and inclusion. For a highly exclusive group they are very tolerant of minority groups and wish to lend a hand in ending oppression. Hipsters may be different than the rest of us and maybe you would call them "pretentious", but no matter how right or wrong you are, hipsters do some good, and they know the truth about their movement. And they knew it way before you, or anyone else. In fact, the truth will be totally different by the time the mainstream grasps it. Case in point? The Prius. 



What You Should Know To Begin

      Hipsters may possibly be, although not to their liking, one of the most fashionably, musically, and trendily impactful subcultures among the youth and early twenties crowds today. Their group is considered a blend of different styles of the same type of person. For example, some hipsters are teen girls who like to walk around town in high waisted shorts and sunglasses and bandeaus and Dr. Marten shoes, clutching their records dearly to their chests. Some hipster girls prefer to wear pants and shirts and conservative clothing with little to no makeup and oversize glasses, reading their feminist zines and sipping a Jones soda. Hipster men come in many different shapes and sizes as well, including the beanie wearing, guitar playing, hoodie clad 22 year old who will probably ask if his original band whose name is in French can play in your basement, and the 25 year old hipster with a handlebar mustache and a plaid shirt on, mouthing the words to a Bon Iver song from before he sold out as he scowls at you from his Prius.
     However, all of these people have things in common which link them to their subculture, things deeper than the material culture. They have a distaste for consumerism, for the unfair treatment of the environment, for the mainstream culture that their small (but rapidly growing) group sits in the middle of. Hipsters are considered to be a blend of other anti-establishment movements from the past, such as hippies and beats and punks and grunge kids. They are a thriving body of hatred for the "uncool, mainstream" things around them. Hipsters prefer the fringe, and will walk as far away from the mainstream American culture as their pleather combat boots will take them.