The nature or popular culture is changing on what seems like the daily basis as new products, ideas, music, movies and even T.V. shows come to forefront. With so much content becoming popular and then promptly disappearing back to peripheries of society, using or appreciating these new ideas that become popular before they do, has become one of the only ways we have prolonged exposure to them, before it becomes almost impossible to find any semblance of their influence in society. Thus, finding those ideas before they hit the mainstream becomes some sort of achievement. However there are those who enjoy incessantly boasting about their achievements – Hipsters.
The term “Hipster” is almost always subjective to what each individual considers to be “mainstream”, and the forms Hipster manifest themselves is almost always different. This means that the stereotypes of a hipster with a flannel shirt and beanie, who always complains about how someone isn’t eating or making food that is organic or vegan, aren’t always true, and one of the largest contributors to this perception is IFC’s Portlandia, depicting the hipster culture in Portland.
The reality of a hipster is slightly more nuanced than usually depicted and some people can just appear as “casual” hipsters. For example, even if you are having a casual conversation with someone and you mention a show on T.V., these casual hipsters would most likely respond with a description of how they watched that show before it became a pop culture phenomenon. Regardless of the representation of the people being hipsters, a common theme shows how they almost try to make it so that you won’t enjoy that piece of popular culture that you are.
Similarly, there is almost always a common phrase that almost every hipster has said in their life, when describing anything that they liked before it became popular and it almost always goes something like, “It’s sad that they had to sell out.” The key aspect of this is the selling-out part, as it is one of the main ways hipsters tends to lessen the appreciation of a certain piece of art. If a musician changes their style and suddenly get popular or if a show gets popular after one season so it slightly changes its presentation, hipsters would be the first to call them out for “selling out” rather than appreciating artistic growth, which hinders others from liking them as much as they could.
Ultimately, the stereotypes of hipsters is typically wrong, but the common feature is that they take away from the experiences of many people, which hurts general culture.
