Hipster overload: the mainstream dilemma of the underground

A recent Public Policy Polling tackled a subject not usually covered by reputable polling firms: hipsters.

The poll found that only 16 percent of Americans had a positive opinion of hipsters, which comes as good news for a demographic that enjoys being outside of mainstream America.

However, a closer look at the breakdown of the data found some not-so-good news for lovers of the alternative lifestyle. Among 18-29-year-olds, half consider themselves hipsters. That’s about as mainstream as you can get. Many hipsters may claim that they were hipster before it was cool, but regardless, we have reached critical hipster mass.

Before I go any further, I feel obligated to make a disclaimer. Making generalizations about a societal stereotype, especially about a group with as elusive a definition as hipsters, is not the most prudent or responsible thing to do, and I recognize this...but I’m going to do it anyway. I’d also like to add that I have nothing against hipsters on a personal level. I know friendly hipsters and have hipster friends. Hipsters are people like anyone else.

My beef with hipsters is on a macro scale.

The hipster culture rejects what is mainstream and popular just to reject what is mainstream and popular. Whether inadvertently or not, by trying so hard to be separated from the defined demographics of society, the hipster culture has succumbed to the very groupthink it tries to oppose.

In Bloomington for example, hipsters by and large only congregate at certain bars: Atlas or The Vid. They dress only a certain way: plaid shirts and skinny pants. Going to Kilroy's and wearing a polo seems to be something hipsters are opposed to for moral reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

As a political junkie, I’m also irked by the political “activism” of the hipster culture. Again, I realize the irresponsible generalizations I’m making, but I wouldn’t be making them if there were not some truth to my claims.

For example, hipsters were heavily involved in the recent IU on Strike, and in the past, the Occupy Movement. Both of these political movements were dismal failures, due in part to the tactics used. The ideas surrounding these two social movements were based heavily on the themes of disregarding “the system” and the institutional avenues available for pragmatic change.

Trying to completely tear down an existing structure doesn’t work, but working within existing channels to make subtle, but real change does.

An anecdote that sums this up for me is a time I was registering people to vote in the Union while simultaneously a small mob of students were protesting tuition hikes. They kept chanting “this is what democracy looks like!”

I looked at my registration forms confused. No, sitting at a table registering voters is what a productive democracy really looks like.

Hipsters aren’t the only groups on campus that deserve criticism. Don’t get me started on TFM frat bros. But the point is hipsters are now too cool for their own good. 50 percent of young people think they’re hipsters. That’s sad and ironic. Hipsters are a fad, and it won’t be long before a new culture of alternative trend-setters emerges. Half of my age group should not feel the need to identify as any group, whether hipsters or frat bros. We need to stop this.

Stop believing we have to embrace certain cultural and social norms depending on what respective group we see ourselves as a part of. If you want to join a fraternity and wear cutoff tanks, go for it. If you’d prefer to wear plaid and listen to alternative records, more power to you.

Just remember we are individuals first, and we should not feel limited to the customs and beliefs of any one group.

­— samblatt@indiana.edu