Been on a rabbit hole trying to figure out the true fate of hipsterdom
Been on a rabbit hole trying to figure out the true fate of hipsterdom
What I’m feeling is
- most remaining hipsters joined the techbro hive by covid
they aren’t COMPLETELY dead, just completely localized to Portland, which appears to be continuously larping the obama era zeitgeistcan any Portland hexcubs confirm that? (and also explain where all the cool stuff is, because if I were one of the actual good and grimy artists from there that I follow on Twitter, I would’ve ditched that city long ago)- checking again, Portland seems to have gotten better (thank fuck)
- pretty sure dimes square (the red scare pod autonomous region) was sprung out of a temporally displaced stray seed of the culture watered by too many esoteric conservative think tanks
- is dimes square still a thing cause god I hope not
- Assholes with too many crypto startup ideas have been handed the baton of gentrification. Pax Gastropubia has passed, but its cultural ghosts will linger on. The five minimalist dispensaries on the same block with fake neon lights inside will go under from sheer market oversaturation, the exposed brick walls with fake vines at the downtown “dive” bar may be painted over within a decade, but it won’t bring back the community that was there before- the last lesbian bar in the metropolitan area, the imports store that moved to the very edge of the city limits, the cafe that would pass for a cigar shop at first glance. All that remains is an allusion to the neighborhood’s “vibrant history” on its Google Maps description.
- Decades from now, the plasticine mixed use complexes will be condemned, their poor build quality (no matter whether the apartments above the shops were billed as affordable or luxurious) being deemed a threat to safety. A worker taking out the wiring for recycling stumbles upon a long sealed room.
- He turns on his flashlight. There’s a bowling lane (with cords to pull up the pins), a lone pinball machine in the corner, and too many decals with 80s movie references to count. The fake weathered vintage wallpaper is a vague hybrid of early 60s pastels and late 60s geometric shapes. You can faintly hear Macklemore out of an overhead speaker.
- He’s cleared out 5 restaurants with these exact motifs in the past week.
- Why did we allow 2010s vibes to get this bad?
It was fully commercialized and smothered. Stomp and clap in many commercials. Twee media became the norm. Hipsters professionalized into the corporate world as "we can have tattoos and wear flannel at work." After that there is no driving force to keep it going.
It was fully commercialized
Always was
Hipsterism was a faux counterculture designed to act as both a release valve for the frustrations of younger GenX and older millenials and an on-ramp to return these wayward youths into the fold, out of fear that someone somewhere might accidentally do something meaningful out of those frustrations. As it fully captured the youth demographic, the aesthetics and vibes of the counterculture were simultaneously subsumed by the superstructure of the greater western capitalist milieu.
All of this was by design.
It also fit in with the QuIrKiNeSs of tech companies (Google lets employees sit on beanbags? YOWZA
) that was a running theme from the Dotcom bubble up through the late 10s, which would explain why so many seem to have become techbros specificallyAs techbros were accepted into the in-group of labour aristocrats benefitting from the new superprofits being extracted from the working class of the imperial core, their aesthetics and privileges also had to become accepted within the greater superstructure.
I don't really see many 2010s-style hipsters around in Portland, which is to say there's not a shared uniform for people who aren't quirky but are trying to be.
Portland's still full of authentically quirky people, to my eye, owed largely to the fact that it has such a large queer population.
My enby artist friend's favorite spot is honestly the Lloyd Center mall. They do weird pop ups a lot and the vibe in there is nothing if not weird. One of their popups Secret Room had a pop-up in the Lloyd Center for a while and is now opening a brick-and-mortar on like 30th and Division.
Oh phew I was worried for yall
they rejected pasteurization and died
idk Black Water and Hungry Tiger are alright. Worker's Tap, too.
My theory is that they were absorbed into the greater social gene pool, and everyone is at least a little bit of a hipster now
I think retail landlords kept raising rent until the only businesses that can survive are quirky modernist boutique stores and yoga studios. Hipster gastropubs may have been a response to this too, when being a regular dive bar wouldn't get over the rent line.
I think my emo/hipster friends all grew up to be mostly granola types, but some of them leaned into the yuppie metropolitan lifestyle if they could afford it.