what is a modern HIPSTER

There are three definitions of a modern HIPSTER according to "What was the hipster? Sociological investigation."









All of them seem to have a few things in common;

term HIPSTER is always PEJORATIVE, this isn't a term people would apply to themselves;

"If subcultures always known snobs, and collectors, and connoisseurs, the character of the hipster's claim to knowledge may be somehow different."

What was the hipster? Sociological investigation.

the idea of PRIORISM - The hipster, both in black and white incarnations, in this essence had been about superior knowledge.
Anatole Broyard

This superior knowledge serves hipsters either as a self-assertion or as compensation.

"... hipster is actually identifying today a subculture of people who are already dominant. The hipster is that person, overlapping with declassing or declassifying groupings - the starving artists, th starving graduate student, the neo-bohemian, the vegan, the bicyclist or skate ounk, the would-be blue-collar or post-racial individual - who in fact aligns himself bith with rebel subculture and with dominant class, and opens up a poisonous conduit between the two."

What was the hipster? Sociological investigation.

"Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care."

Time, July 2009