Hipster culture: The paradox of popularity
They can be seen more frequently than ever before on college campuses, wearing flannel and thick-rimmed glasses while listening to indie bands. One might find them painting, shopping at thrift stores or expressing themselves in their own unique ways.
They call themselves hipsters, and although they revel in not being mainstream, their culture has become quite trendy. This irony is central to their culture and offers an interesting paradox.
“I do take things in the mainstream with a grain of salt,” says Brown University student Ben Polson, a self-described ‘closet hipster,’ adding that he often questions what determines popularity, especially regarding music.
When lesser-known bands become popular they often lose their former fan base in exchange for a new one. There is a famous hipster cliché that goes: I used to like that band before it got popular.
According to Polson, bands’ future music changes once they go mainstream. They become “less experimental, doing things just to save popularity and fans. The original elements that we were drawn to slowly dwindle for the sake of popularity.”
Many young adults have started to view this outlook as cool and adopt the counter-culture mantras themselves. This has led to specialized stores, brands and music for the hipster niche. Ironically, some such stores including Urban Outfitters and American Apparel have gained mainstream popularity. This has seemingly diluted the anti-mainstream culture itself.
“A lot of people that are self-defined hipsters aren’t really hipsters, they’re just trying to conform to the non-conformist to seem cooler,” says Amanda Leopold, a prospective Oberlin College student. Although Leopold has many unconventional tastes and seems quite individualist, she refuses to classify herself as a hipster.
There is a conflict among hipsters about the very definition of the label. To some, to be a hipster is to express oneself free from cultural constraints. To others, it is to wear a certain style and listen to a specific genre of music. The former constantly strives for uniqueness, while the latter strives to not be mainstream.
And yet the movement is gaining a mainstream popularity. “It’s kind of the trend these days; everyone wants to be hip so no one’s hip,” laments Leopold. “There have been hipsters since the seventies, it’s only become popular recently.”
However, Polson does not see this popularity as dangerous to the movement. Starbucks Coffee, for example, has a large hipster following despite that the franchise’s consumer base is incredibly broad, ranging from their parents to Britney Spears and Katie Holmes. “Part of the hipster culture is the irony thing,” Polson comments. “It has a lot of weird inconsistencies.”
For people looking to avoid shopping at large brand name companies, yard sales and thrift stores are suitable alternatives. Historically, these have been hipster favorites because they are sustainable and tend to be less expensive than brand names.
As the movement gains mainstream popularity, it has the potential to spread its ideas and increase support for obscure bands, thrift stores and quirky fashions. Yet these large groups of people with similar ideas may end up conforming to their own non-mainstream genre, especially if a few popular brands take the reins of the culture.
Jeremy Goldman is a Summer 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here. Reach him via e-mail at jeremy.goldman@tufts.edu
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.