PBRs, farmers markets, man buns, fixed gear bicycles—all marks of the hipster, a genus whose extinction has heralded cultural monotony, social deterioration, and, above all, tastelessness. Growing up in a city in the 2000s/early 2010s, my exposure to the hipster was frequent, but it is only with the benefit of hindsight that I have come to appreciate the hipster as a final attempt to emulate the cultural production of the beatnik generation. Obviously, I am aware of the cliché tendency to romanticize one’s cultural predecessors while lamenting one’s own generation. But given the state of the Zoomers—“brain rot” was Oxford’s word of the year for 2024—perhaps a eulogium for the hipster is necessary to remind young urbanites of the heights we once aspired to.
In fact, Zoomers have already begun to look back on the hipsters with fascination: “indie sleaze” has become the internet’s favourite phrase to describe hipster culture. More than anything, the concept of “indie sleaze” is emblematic of the Zoomers’ tendency to confuse culture with consumption—for this reason, you will find many Zoomers who are hyper trend-conscious, but not curatorial like the hipsters. Simply posting TikTok edits of the Dior Homme A/W ’05 show or dressing like Julian Casablancas do not capture the essence of the hipster—that is, eclecticism and a deep sense of irony (or nihilism).
On the first point, hipsterdom was defined in part by a constant intra-group competition to be among the first to discover a new sound or develop a niche set of tastes. The result of this nonstop race to be the most niche was the development of eclectic tastes among the hipsters. Pitchfork, a hallmark of hipster media, ranked Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round” and Kanye West’s “Runaway” as the top two songs of 2010; John Maus’ We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves and Drake’s Take Care were both hailed as “best new music” by the publication in the same year. This eclecticism was definitive in every category of hipster tastes, from one’s sartorial choices (clothes were commonly thrifted, long before it became a hobby) to diet (the hipster was a consumer of both yerba mate and Pabst Blue Ribbon). Admittedly, this eclecticism led to the emergence of a sort of monoculture amongst the hipsters, but one distinguishable from Zoomer monoculture because hipsters could not curate their tastes through social media exclusively—think of it as a diverse monoculture wherein the common element was the lack of mainstream tastes.
The best part of all of this was that it was cheap; you couldn’t get away with flexing objects or purchases. Instead, the biggest flexes were seeing a band open at a house show before they blew up or defending the filmography of a Hungarian director that nobody’s heard of. If anyone could identify the band on your shirt, you were losing the game. Inscrutable tastes, a consequence of this eclecticism, was common amongst hipsters and buttressed by a sense of irony in direct contrast to the optimism of the 90s.
Hipster irony was not irony in the poetic sense; instead, it was a way of approaching a subject to make one’s views as opaque as possible and escape any easy categorization (and criticism). TV shows such as Tim and Eric and the infamous Million Dollar Extreme were successful in part because they appealed to the hipsters’ sense of irony: vulgar, off-colour, and cringe-inducing humour was acceptable because it was being performed “ironically.” The veneer of irony shielded those who used it from criticism because it became difficult—and, sometimes, nearly impossible—to determine if one was being sincere or ironic. While obviously flawed (irony and cowardice often go hand-in-hand), the deployment of irony in this way is refreshing in comparison to the Zoomer tendency towards moralization or condemnation when exposed to controversial subject matter.
At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I will end this article with a call to action: keep (or start) reading, buy tickets to house shows, and never stop trying to one-up your friends. Urban life for young people would be much more flavourful if we embraced the ethos of the hipster and developed an eclecticism of our own.