Blog Hipster, please: Why calling people “hipsters” needs to go

With Pitchfork only a couple of days away, this seems like the best time to make a simple plea: Please, please stop using the word “hipster” as an insult or as a descriptor—stop using it all together, really.

Okay, so Whet Moser at Chicago Magazine pointed out in an extremely interesting article that, in fact, “hipster,” is a word that’s been around for years and years, since at least the ’40s, when it was used to describe jazz-listening white kids who tried to be uber-hip all the time. And while “hipster” can certainly be used to describe some people and some things based on that description, my beef with the word is that, nowadays, it’s just used too damn much.

Consider the fact that, frankly, at this point the idea of being a “hipster” is just too watered down to even mean anything. Groups of 17-year-olds in shirts from Urban Outfitters are not the same types of people as “urban woodsmen,” or librarians with glasses, or investment bankers who like wearing neon-colored sunglasses and going to Lollapalooza. As a word, hipster can be used, for example, to describe some guy on the street wearing an “ironic” T-shirt he bought at Kohl’s. He’s not a hipster, despite what hipster bingo might imply. It’s used to describe a guy with a beard and glasses who looks the way your dad looked in the ’80s. He’s probably not a hipster. It’s used to describe Hollywood celebrities when they decide to put on fake glasses and fedoras. They’re not hipsters. That person drinking PBR might just be cheap, and that’s okay.

If hipsters are concerned with “fetishizing the authentic,” as one Time Out New York writer noted, then there’s a thin line between fetishizing and actually being authentic, right? What if that dude with a beard actually really likes facial hair, or grew one because he wanted to hide that weird chin he has? Or maybe he grew a beard because he just lost his dad, who had one in the ’80s, and this is an homage? You never know what’s behind someone’s motivations, so lumping someone into a category, snorting “hipster” when the bearded guy makes it to the bar before you, is just shitty.

Moreover, it doesn’t actually describe anything. It’s like saying “indie rock,” or “fuck war.” Those words—indie rock and, unfortunately at this point, fuck—don’t actually mean a whole lot. They’re blanket descriptors that have been overused and watered down to the point where they just pale in comparison to thought-out phrases and descriptive words. Hate war? Then say what, specifically, you hate about it. Saying “fuck war,” or “that hipster over there” is like saying, “I’m too lazy to actually think about something deep enough to accurately speak what I’m feeling.” Use words. Describe a person in specifics, rather than in harsh generalizations. Make arguments that you can back up, rather than ones that just sound kind of shocking and mean.

“Okay,” you say. “So I won’t call the dude in the flannel and beard a hipster, but what about the guy in huge fake glasses with a handlebar mustache and a fixie? He’s a hipster for sure.” Sure, some people are trying really, really hard to be cool or to be weird, or maybe just to be themselves. But why make fun of them for that? Also, honestly, it’s just too easy. When someone writes an article about Joe Jonas getting pelted with basketballs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, writing about hipsters is just the cheapest, easiest way out, and it’s boring. It’s not funny, at the very least, and it’s insulting not just to said “hipsters,” but also to readers, who could probably handle a better description of what actually went on instead of a dashed-out generalization about who was probably at the event—based on the word “Williamsburg”—but ignoring altogether that, duh, “hipsters” don’t like sports, nor would they own basketballs. Try harder, please.

It’s incredibly easy to just say “hipster,” or, for that matter, “bro” or “frat boy,” but what does that get us, really? Those terms don’t actually describe anything specific, and if they do, for some reason, to the listener, then that description’s probably just insulting and not accurate. Generalizing is a slippery slope, driven mostly by that kind of laziness, and while sometimes it is appealing to sit back and talk about creeps in big glasses and tight jeans, what’s the point, really? Everyone’s their own person, and no one’s getting anywhere by being described as—or describing people as—hipsters.