Hipster (21st century)

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The term hipster in Stockholm city ​​marketing (2019)

Hipster is a common in the early 21st century in the media, mostly somewhat derisively used name for a milieu whose members their scene awareness - in contrast to the mainstream - extravagant express. Most of them are young people to young adults of the urban middle class . The name is borrowed from the avant-garde subculture of the same name of the mid-20th century . One sees oneself as a subculture , but is now more of the mainstream.

use

The term is used in the media rather negatively and with a mocking undertone, as it describes a rather apolitical, superficial social milieu that aggressively tries to cultivate an intellectual, enlightened and at the same time fashion-conscious otherness from the mainstream and to bring it to the fore. However, since hipsters are themselves a subculture, i. H. form a larger collection of like-minded people, their desired individuality is lost again due to the wide spread of this similarity.

The outer appearance of the hipster results from the mostly ironic connection between rather old-fashioned clothes and unusual hairstyles ( e.g. side and undercut , full beards are also common) with the clothing style that is used in the subculture of hardcore punk , especially emotional hardcore (emo) , prevails: lumberjack and flannel shirts , nerd or horn-rimmed glasses (often oversized), tube scarves, tight trousers such as skinny jeans , Vans or Converse shoes, tattoos and piercings , and often a jute or cloth bag and a knitted hat. In addition, trendy drinks such as club mate lemonade, shell headphones , smartphones , tablets or notebooks from Apple are popular . Hipsters are also often associated with bicycles without gears or so-called fixies .

A common accusation against the so-called hipsters is that they are viewed as indiscriminate serving in the great subcultures of the 1940s to the present in search of authenticity in otherness.

relevance

The grouping of hipsters, defined by their external appearance, forms an optical intersection with members of oriented alternative movements . Her diverse cultural interests typically range from modern art, photography and design, electronic to alternative rock music, independent film and alternative literature. Creativity and a mostly progressive political attitude are the central values ​​represented by this group, whose representatives generally reject classification in the scheme of "hipsters" as a superficial cultural myth .

Nipster

For a short time around 2014, groups with a similar appearance were encountered in politically right-wing circles. These groups tried to distance themselves from the martial right-wing scene through their external appearance in order to break down the inhibitions against right-wing extremist ideas among young people. For such people, connecting the hipster style with extreme right setting, the term was coined by the media Nipster (from N azi and H ipster ) used.

role models

Hipster was a term that came from the USA as early as the 1940s and especially the 1950s. Young intellectuals and their circle who lived and reported against the mainstream. Best known from the literary scene are Allen Ginsberg , Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs . They lived excessively and in a constant state of emergency. In the literature they referred to themselves as white blacks. Elsewhere during this time, hipsters were also named as those who have gone through everything in life and cannot be shaken by anything.

See also

literature

  • Mark Greif (Ed.): Hipster. A transatlantic discussion. Translated by Niklas Hofmann and Tobias Moorstedt. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, ISBN 3-518-06173-9 (original title: What Was the Hipster?, With additional German-language contributions by Jens-Christian Rabe, Tobias Rapp and Thomas Meinecke ).
  • Thomas Frank: The Conquest of Cool. Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998, ISBN 978-0-226-26012-9 .
  • Bernhard Heinzlmaier , Philipp Ikrath: Generation Ego. The values ​​of youth in the 21st century. Promedia, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85371-361-7 .
  • Philipp Ikrath: The hipsters. Trendsetter and neo-philistine. Promedia, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-85371-394-5 .
  • Andreas Spengler, Tobias Waldmann: The new hipsters - a digital bohemian? Identity construction and media staging of modern youth cultures. In: Alev Inan (Hrsg.): Young life worlds in the media society. Media staging of young people and media use of young people. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2012, ISBN 978-3-7815-1867-4 , pp. 120-140.

Web links

Commons : Hipsters  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michèle Binswanger : The inglorious end of the hipster. In: Basler Zeitung . October 27, 2010, accessed April 21, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b Jeroen van Rooijen: Monday cliché - «Zurichers are hipsters». In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 28, 2014, accessed August 3, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b c d David Torcasso: Who is a hipster? In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. March 23, 2012, accessed August 3, 2015 .
  4. ^ Christian Lorentzen. Why the hipster must die timeout.com from May 30, 2007.
  5. ↑ Daniel-C. Schmidt: The hipster with the jute bag - the new hate object. In: The world . March 10, 2012, Retrieved April 21, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Michel Abdollahi: In Search of Nazi Fashion. In: Kulturjournal Norddeutscher Rundfunk . August 4, 2014, accessed August 6, 2014 .