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[xraytheenforcer]

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality. (Cover story of Adbusters Issue #79, hitting the newsstands now.)

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

Comments

[regina-of-york.livejournal.com]

I liked this line:
"...they must be buried for cool to be reborn."



The cool is dead! Long live the cool!

[xraytheenforcer.livejournal.com]

Apres moi, le deluge!

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

If they think hipsters are bad, they should have seen the coke culture of the early '80s.

[xraytheenforcer.livejournal.com]

two of my friends have fairly convincingly argued that the 1980s were the last time anything truly new in art or design emerged. Having spent a fair bit of time trying (unsuccessfully) to debunk that assertion, I'm kinda left with the hollow feeling that they were right.

all that said, I'm kinda glad I didn't have to live through the 80s coke culture in any significant way.

A question: having lived thru that yourself, did you find it easier to roll with the vagaries of being a parent and dealing with teenage rebellion from your kids?

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

Having spent a fair bit of time trying (unsuccessfully) to debunk that assertion, I'm kinda left with the hollow feeling that they were right.

let me know if you find an answer. I'm too young to see the end of everything.

[xraytheenforcer.livejournal.com]

To be clear, these were visual artists and designers, speaking mostly of music, of different (generally traditional) visual art media and of various design questions (clothing, cars, electronic products). There are plenty of small pockets of iconoclasm and transgression (I would argue that body modification during the 90s is a legitimate form of expression that bucked the general trend -- it's mostly cliche now, but for awhile, piercing your uvula was transgressive. Of course, one has to buy into the idea that art isn't just shit that shows up in museums.)

I prefer to be optimistic -- we're just in a slump, collectively picking our cultural scabs. Who knows what will come around when we're not looking? :)

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my pierced bits crossed.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about art or design, though, from what I see in the papers, I might find it hard to disagree with your friends.

Living through the coke culture didn't make it easier to roll with the vagaries, I think. I'm old enough that I was sentient through the tail end of the '60s and all the '70s as well. There was plenty of narcissistic self-destruction then too, though not as nihilistic and status-oriented as the later two periods we're talking about. Plus my parents, who grew up in the '30s and '40s, were pretty good at rolling with the punches themselves. They always gave my siblings and I enough slack that we didn't hang ourselves.

I think it was a little bit of both, what I lived through and the example of my folks. Plus I'm lucky to have had kids who work as hard as they play. (Harder, even, in some cases, though we're trying to correct that.)

[xraytheenforcer.livejournal.com]

The parent factor -- never to be underestimated. I swear, hearing about wartime rationing and the Depression was always a sure-fire way to curb the materialism (at least in me -- my brother, not so much).

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

It doesn't work on everybody.

[meh-of-munich.livejournal.com]

mm, biting the hand that feeds them...not bad adbusters, not bad...