Cool clothes once worn by small children, expensive metal lunchboxes, a better taste in music than you, these are the telltale signs of a modern hipster. We bastardized the term, created in the 1940s by jive linguists to give Civil War veterans another thing to hate. The Civil War veterans died, presumably, so the word’s definition morphed over time to suit the culturally challenged. Today it functions as a one size fits all insult, launched at anyone who scolds television ownership or maims jeans in the name of summer heat. Detractors claim the aesthetic is soulless appropriation, irony for the sake of irony. They are blind.
So-called hipsters eschew sarcasm and mockery as primary motivators. They deal exclusively in the currency of comfort. They feel coziest provoking squirms. People are accustomed to conformity. Passionate monologues about the subtle contrast between Nordic folk music and Baltic folk music make people feel weird, and this feeling is a good thing. Comfort leads to complacency. Complacency leads to extinction. We marginalize beacons of nonconformity, those that future history books will inevitably laud as heroes. It is time we end this shortsighted idiocracy and craft the medals the hipsters deserve.
Princeton researchers confirmed in multiple studies that preferences in music and clothes correlate with different genders, races, and classes. Annoyance with hipsters stems from the tendency to dismiss different people as inferior. This solidifies the problematic nature of the designation. Hipster adds to the long list of words dedicated to illegitimizing divergent opinions and tastes. Everything is relative. Everyone is someone else’s hipster. The labeling and alienation are unnecessary, and the word retains no meaning. If someone is a jerk, let them know. If someone is being offensive, let them know. But don’t ridicule people for having a little fun in the scarf section.
