what comes after the hipster?
tracking the death of the hyper-individualised, early-adopter, cool-hunter ‘hipster’ archetype and pondering what comes next.
what comes after the hipster?
It makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted... See more
judy berman • Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste
Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids.
https://www.nytimes.com/by/mireille-silcoffnytimes.comGravitas: “I care, and it’s important.” Sermons, manifestos.
Self-deprecation: “I care, but it’s not important.” Hobbies, fandoms, being nerdsniped, “merely” personal wishes.
Irreverence: “It’s important, but I don’t care.” Edgy jokes, shitposts, grifts, procrastination.
Disdain: “It’s not important and I don’t care.” Actual indifference/silence;... See more
Self-deprecation: “I care, but it’s not important.” Hobbies, fandoms, being nerdsniped, “merely” personal wishes.
Irreverence: “It’s important, but I don’t care.” Edgy jokes, shitposts, grifts, procrastination.
Disdain: “It’s not important and I don’t care.” Actual indifference/silence;... See more
Sarah Constantin • Sarah Constantin (@sarahconstantin)
This dialectic is muddy from the get-go, of course. It’s a version of the more familiar hipster trap: over time, the marginal labor of the bohemian experimentalist and taste-maker is swallowed up by the smug cartoon of the in-the-know consumer clone. But the near inevitability of this process also suggests that the first hipster was already part of... See more
Erik Davis • The Weird and the Banal
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
I’m extremely wary of the cult of contemporary self-making, and the fact that it’s become an expected part of life in the attention economy for middle-class workers.
From the college essay – the first time many of us are required to tell a selling story of ourselves in the service of social capital – to the dating website to Twitter or Instagram,... See more
From the college essay – the first time many of us are required to tell a selling story of ourselves in the service of social capital – to the dating website to Twitter or Instagram,... See more
Tara Isabella Burton • Self-Made ft. Tara Isabella Burton: The History & Future of Self Curation
In the post-hipster era, you listened to what Spotify told you to listen to. If you read a book, it was because the precise pattern of blobby pastel-coloured shapes on its cover contained coded instructions to TikTok’s algorithm that sent it zooming to the top of your feed. Your tastes and preferences were decided for you by vast crystalline... See more
Sam Kriss • All the Nerds Are Dead - By Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
we used to take pride in our sweat now we take pride in our tears