After Authenticity

The aggressive cynicism of hipster responses to popularity reveal how deeply the hipster identity was situated within the authenticity paradigm. Hipsters clearly experienced a loss of value whenever something they liked entered the realm of mainstream pop culture.

From after authenticity by subpixel.space

So there’s a weird thing going on where there’s abundance, and yet, at the same time, we’ve become really conservative about our own styles, because people fundamentally don’t want to adopt things that feel inauthentic to them, or will be judged inauthentic.

And because culture is so ephemeral, there’s just more stuff that people are worried that —