Barbelith Underground > Conversation > Defining "The Hipster"

Counterculture (also "counter-culture") is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day,[1] the cultural equivalent of political opposition. from Wikipedia.

You name some great musical heavyweights, wildstalion - However, every single one of them helped define our current western culture even if they were considered "counterculture" when they started. Their values and norms became mainstream. (What did Kurt stand for, anyway?) Musically you cover from Pop to Punk to New Wave to Grunge. It can be argued that this has continued with Emo. (From what I've read, Emo has become a large movement in South America, where people who follow the trend risk daily beatings by the more macho element of that society while promoting acceptance of their values. Any bblither from South America please correct me if I'm wrong)

The Adbusters article calls Hipsterism a death of Counterculture. I think that the counterculture has gone into hiding behind masks of irony. We live in Right Wing times and the percieved counterculture movement traditionally has leftist ideals. It seems a logical step to take right/consumerist trends and spike them with irony. It's being very subtly in-your-face all the while remaining ambiguous.

You site AA as an example: The founder, Dov Charney may be sexist at worst, or pro-sex/erotism at best, but as Haus points out, he has created a fair-trade, pro-worker company which produces quality goods. The models he photographs are not plastic barbie-dolls, they are real people (He does tend to like them young and slim, granted, but he does not go for the unreal fake "beauty" ideal. Hell, he may have even been a partial inspiration for the new Dove campaigns...) He has also taken on an industry which mostly employs third world sweatshop labour and has thrived even while promoting socialist ideals.

While the numbers have shrunk, there are still the anti-corporate crusaders, the environmentalists, the human rights protesters, etc... This is the face of the new counterculture: Blank. Anonymous. Online. Surely many of them are hipsters out in the real world? While we in the west have lived in relative prosperity for the past couple of decades and it seems that we have had less and less to bitch about, there will always be a counterculture to a greater or lesser extent.