Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/01/09/were_all_hipsters_now.php

We're All Hipsters Now

Monday, January 9, 2006

Do not mistake oddity for independence.
—William Jewett Tucker

Carrying his language and his new philosophy like concealed weapons, the hipster set out to conquer the world.
— Partisan Review, 1948

First, hipsters are definitely not hippies—tie-dye-t-shirt-wearing, ice cream-making, messy, old has-beens. Hipsters are cool right now. This is because they like things that are cool, which, according to The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham (who claims to have written the first guide to hipsterism) is an outdated term. "Everything that was once cool is now deck," he explains. The opposite of "deck" is "fin." For example, Franny and Zooey is deck, whereas Clark Gable is fin. Got it?

For hipsters, every second is the final judgment in miniature: the deck cultural bits ascend to paradise, and the fin ones howl in hell. There is one exciting loophole: kitsch, which allows seemingly passé things to serve as ironically placed jesters among the authentically deck courtiers (e.g., a plastic KFC nametag worn on the lapel or serving TV dinners with wine to guests). A ill-conceived attempt at kitsch can end in disaster. To an outside observer, hipsters may appear arbitrary and capricious, but at the margin, they are absolutists. Hipsters love irony. And most of all, hipsters absolutely hate stupid generalizations, like all of those.

These sacerdotal guardians of the Cool eschew definition, in other words. There are some general guidelines, mostly useless; for example, a hipster will usually deny his status as hipster, but so do many non-hipsters, understandably. "Do not ask me what I am and do not ask me to remain the same," said Michel Foucault—some hipsters would agree with that, but they might not admit it to you. That hipsters are intense contrarians is perhaps the only descriptive statement that they can't logically gainsay. "Hipsters never admit to being Hipsters," writes Lanham, "They are too cool to broach the subject."

If it's too mean a feat to penetrate the collective psychology of hipsterdom, maybe the fin can learn about them by studying what they purport to like. According to the Handbook, hand-rolled cigarettes are cool, but not Diane Keaton's mannish wardrobe in Annie Hall. Import beers are deck, but not malt liquor, except Mickey's. Don't read Raymond Chandler; read Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon. Deck poets are Blake, Borges, Plath, Poe, Pound, Cummings, and Easy-E. Don't order Jim Beam or Jack Daniels lest you appear midtown (i.e., fin)—drink some Maker's Mark instead. Karl Marx and Che Guevara are cool, but so is Ayn Rand. See a movie directed by Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam (sometimes), and John Waters (pretty much only for Pink Flamingos). You're an idiot if you read Maxim instead of Italian Maxim. Would anyone like to listen to some Yo la Tengo, Stereolab, or perhaps an old Johnny Cash gospel album on vinyl? Yes, please. U2? Coldplay??? Uh, no. Tommy Hilfiger is fin. Pierce yourself, but don't believe that it will make you that much cooler. Do not connect your piercings with a small, gold chain. Proclaim that you relished Infinite Jest: A Novel by David Foster Wallace, but there is no need actually to read it. Deck movies often star Jeff Tweedy, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sofia Coppola, Chloe Sevigny, or the Wilson brothers, though less so now. Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Streets are pretty deck. Perhaps you'd like to smoke these American Spirit cigarettes and read McSweeney's and be deck. Or maybe you'd like to read Rolling Stone and drink this can Milwaukee's Best and be fin. High fives are no good—too much like a jock. Conan O'Brien—not Letterman—never Leno. Gram Parons is a lot cooler than Bob Seger. Art Garfunkel is better than Paul Simon. Martin Amis, not Tom Robbins. Trade in your Yul Brynner for Sarah Silverman. Do not say "cool beans," "H-E-double hockey sticks," "bustin' your chops," "playa hata" or "anywho." Rent director Russ Meyer's masterpiece Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Stop drinking those green apple martinis and "shooters." Avoid rocking out to Dave Matthews Band in your SUV or wearing a designated spill shirt when you dine. For many hipsters, laughter is fin.

There's an easily recognizable pattern to all deck items on this list: hipsters like each and every one. Still, that is just one author's opinion—I for one have never heard "deck" used in this way by a real person, by which I mean a corporal being appearing to exist in the four-dimensional space-time continuum, by which I mean to exclude the deck if well-behaved ceorls residing in my numinous hipster fantasy parallel universe, in which I rule as most august Mikado over a hipper version of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Anyway, even if Lanham once had his thumb on the hipster pulse, the wiser sort has already rejected the more obvious items on this list, by virtue of their having been leaked and printed. Anyway, at least two deck items seem objectively wrong: Tyra Banks and Zima.

There are hipsters, and there are sub-categories of hipsters. There's the UTF (Unemployed Trust-Funder) who is rich but wants to seem bohemian. This is accomplished by skipping showers, pretending to read the classifieds, working on a lobster boat, driving mopeds, and claiming to be a "freelancer." Philosophical mottoes include "Free speech for the Left!" and "NPR is a pillar of objective journalism." Polits are well- or over-educated hipsters who enjoy cutting-edge philosophy and lit-crit. They love Marxism and modern poetry; they hate John Grisham, Republicans, and television. Bipsters hail from the countryside and proudly advertise their blue-collar roots by pursuing careers in carpentry or wearing overalls. Bipsters are known to enjoy The Autobiography of Johnny Cash. The Schmooze is a hipster prototype obsessed with his career. In conversation, they will often casually mention their trysts with personalities from Page Six of the New York Post. It's the Schmooze's dream to become a powerful figure in a creative industry, like publishing.

Helpfully, Lanham includes some hipsters from history. These include Sappho, Lao Tzu, Homo Erectus ("a very fashionable species"), Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp, Cab Calloway, and Jack Kerouac. Less obvious members of the club are Catherine de' Medici ("a patron of the arts"), Paul Revere ("Paul Revere was a Hipster"), Sitting Bull ("Sitting Bull loved to chill out"), Jacques Cousteau ("Nobody is cooler"), and Bozo the Clown, pre-Willard Scott.

Here is a question of somewhat parochial interest: can a hipster be conservative? Lanham has this to say about it: "Republican Hipsters are about as silly as Jews for Jesus… More conservative Hipsters are into the Libertarian party." The sense is not that hipsters are adamant policy wonks who have a lot to say about the tax code—it's a matter of style and temperament. To the hipster ear, "Republican" sounds like Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life ("Happy New Year to you! In jail!"), whereas "Libertarian" conjures up a laid-back dude who simply enjoys liberty, i.e. marijuana. But, Lanham emphasizes, hipsters are just as turned off by anarchists and radical socialists, who by nature reject practicality, and get worked up in a very fin way. As one Dartmouth student explained, "Some hipsters also consider themselves activists, but most don't. Activism is too sincere." Furthermore, the Handbook repeatedly cites Ted Nugent and director Vincent Gallo as hipster icons, and both are Republicans. (According to the web site Gawker, Gallo's jacket is inscribed with a stencil drawing of George W. Bush and the word "hero.") Message: do what you like, but look good doing it.

Anyway, do we really need another conservative team? Perhaps unbeknownst to many liberals, conservatism—once so refreshingly straightforward and compact—has metastasized into a circus of quirky groups, each of which claims to possess the "true" conservative élan. There are neocons, theocons, paleocons—I forget already which one is supposed to make up the Radical Right. We have books on South Park Cons and Crunchy Cons. Howard Dean claims a sort of conservatism because he hates deficits. Coming soon are the techno-cons, emo-cons, meta-cons, rubi-cons. These flavor-of-the-month banner groups recall Petrograd, 1918. In conservatism the new communism?

But conservatism does currently lack something that hipsterism could teach it. For some reason—a function of the Republicans becoming the majority party, maybe—there is a rebellion against 'elitism.' A whole genre has sprung up in which a conservative chronicles the crazy antics of Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, or George Soros. Now, I think what they mean is either 'snobs,' when the targets are New England WASPs and of L.A. nabobs, or 'idiots,' when the targets are people who have no idea they are talking about. Conservatives—or anyone else for that matter—shouldn't brook snobbery or idiocy, but this rejection of elitism, the willingness to discriminate and stand apart, implies that being part of a majority increases the truthfulness of your position. The conservative 'elites' stood for many years alone against socialism and its cousins, with no reservations about contradicting 'ordinary folk,' many of whom considered the socialist dream a swell idea. Hipster elitism may be capricious and flitty, but at least it chooses to make choices.

Slightly less parochial is the question of hipsters at Dartmouth: do they exist? In the Handbook, there chapter called "The Ivy Leagues for Hipsters," and Dartmouth College does appear on one list. Move your eyes to the right, though, and you'll see "Just Kidding" where "City, State" should be. There you have it: in the most storied dives across blue America, skinny twentysomethings wearing Elvis Costello glasses cackle uncontrollably at the mere mention of our beloved College. No doubt this has something to do with the Greek System, which is apparently not an effective incubator of hip tastes.

Certainly, Dartmouth does not go out of its way to instill an urbane appreciation for the emergent. The school itself is very old, as are many of the fraternities. "New School" is a common insult, and your correspondent's casual inquiry into student mores revealed that hipsters are subject to (mostly theoretical) disdain.

One Dartmouth alumnus and hipster agreed to contribute to this article, or, as he put it, "i have all kind of time to answer ur qs, what parody i have for u, satire?" His hipster credentials also seemed solid as his favorite music includes "all eyez on me is 2 discs and wonderful boys," his favorite movie is the old, critically esteemed movie Rio Bravo. He enjoys "zinfandel and borboun and cocaine," and he likes War and Peace because "it's so great on the subway." Finally, he secured his spot by questioning the Handbook itself, "nick didnt this book come out like 6 years ago?" (Touché—yes it did.) Speaking to the Dartmouth hipster scene, he explained that "its college its impossible to be a hipster at school unless maybe your doin econ at u of chi or maybe u are british or f--- a thousand girls. or are in kappa!" He also joined a fraternity, which was, on balance, a good experience: "i ws the best, but it f---ed up my life for a cpl years, i guess i cn outdrank everyone tho. anyone who doenst f--- w frats for a minute cn grow up plz." He considers hipsters to be elitists, but "hipsters are probably nice guys." Nevertheless, "none of my friends are hipsters."

One hipster seemed to have water-tight credentials, but he was actually "really embarrassed that someone saw fit to include my name on a list of potential hipsters at Dartmouth College," which sounds vaguely McCarthyist. "That said," he continued, "at Dartmouth College, I'm probably a hipster by default, because there are so few hipsters here. I guess at Dartmouth a hipster would be anyone who listens to 'indie rock' or buys a sizable percentage of their clothing at a thrift store." To rise above your peers in taste, he says, is not especially hard in Hanover. He cites a site which explains what is popular on wretched web site The Face Book. Among the top ten most popular musical artists are Coldplay, "DMB," the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which, as you and I know, are dreadfully midtown bands. "The only thing that's vaguely 'hip' on that list is The Postal Service, and that was 2002's idea of hip," (ouch) he says, "Further, I'm sure a sizable percentage of the people who have that listed have Frou Frou and The Shins listed along side it, signifying exactly how they know who The Postal Service is." The reference here is the soundtrack to Garden State,

Furthermore, he writes that "There are times when I've dressed like the Strokes, listened to undistinguished indie s---, or enjoyed a Wes Anderson movie, but the difference between me and a hipster is that I read Vice as a humor magazine about how tedious modern 'individualism' is." Well! Maybe this fellow isn't a hipster, but only because he's hipper to the hipsters than the hipsters are themselves, i.e. hipper than hip. I mean, consider the allusive knowingness of the Garden State call. earns For what it's worth, your correspondent hasn't even heard of Vice Magazine. Such an informed denial of hipsterism may be the most hip symptom of them all.

Though a few hipsters at Dartmouth may culturally subsist via the internet, it would seem that Dartmouth as such does emanate a particularly hip aura. The Earl of Dartmouth went to a cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1904 and Royal Parkinson 1905 described the man in a letter to his father:

He was very simple but was always equal to the occasion. He went to foot ball practice. At night he seemed to enjoy the tableaux and the singing and yelling. The next morning in church he made his first speech… Lord Dartmouth seemed to be very simple, always sincere, never going too far, able to rise to every occasion.

Simple and sincere hipsters are rare if not impossible. Dartmouth President William Jewett Tucker asked his students to "Get into your mind the idea of the permanent. Covet permanent acts, permanent ideas, permanent hopes."

Outlandish antics throughout College history have also informed the smart set that students here are animalistic. Clifford Orr 1922, later of the New Yorker, described a ritual in which the freshman had to arrange for a discreet class picture, which was always disrupted by the wicked Sophs. He and his friends, sneaking toward the secret location, were ambushed by eight sophomores. "It was then that I felt the cold muzzle of a revolver against my head for the first time in my life." They were bound and driven to their captivity in the Phi Sigma Kappa barn. The next day, the Sophs adopted a more drastic measure: pulling pea-greens out of their dorm rooms and immediately ferrying them back to the barn. "Jim and Bing opened their doors in the response to the frantic pounding and so spent the night freezing in the barn," Orr explained.

Maybe, though, it's not that Dartmouth falls short of the hipsters—maybe the hipsters have declined, under the influence of the hippie and emo contingents. Etymologically, the word "hipster" derives from hipikat, a word from the West African language Wolof, meaning one who is alert or in the know. Hipster was also co-opted by naive commentators in the 1960s, who used it in article about hippies. Certainly the Beats, known alternately as hipsters at that time, lived exciting lives. While William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, attended Harvard, he almost "accidentally" shot a classmate, who narrowly escaped by jumping to the side. Another episode from Burroughs's life is excerpted from This is the Beat Generation by James Campbell:

Driven out of the house yet again by… party noises, Burroughs bought a pair of poultry shears from a Sixth Avenue store. Back at Jane Street, he placed the little finger of his left hand between the blades and cut it off. 'Waves of euphoria swept through him', he wrote in an attempt to record the incident in fictional form. The severed finger lying on the dresser was sudden, welcome proof of his corporeal reality.

He wrapped it in a handkerchief, downed a double brandy at a bar, and, feeling magnanimous, went uptown to show the severed digit to his psychiatrist, who threw him in a lunatic's asylum.

Burroughs, part of first wave of hipsterism, the beat generation, the ur-hipsterism, clearly would not object to living dangerously and living dangerously independently. Neither would a man who sheared off his own finger be too concerned with his appearance. Clearly, today's hipsters have lost something. Though on the vanguard of the artistic and literary scene and a one-time resident of Greenwich Village, Burroughs also shared something with Dartmouth's rough and tumble past. (Dartmouth has another hipster credential: Dukakis's campaign manager Susan Estrich claims to have outdrunk Norman Mailer in the basement of Bones Gates during her junior year. Way to go, Susan.)

Can't you see what I'm trying to say here? Today's hipsters are both hipsters and not hipsters. Some hipsters are beats. Hipsters are not quite ur-hipsters, who are the beats. All beats are hard guys, but hard guys are not necessarily beats. Conservatives are no longer, and never were, beats. The contrapositive is false yet plausible nevertheless. Hipsters, beats, hard guys, burn-outs, outré schlubs, jocks, neo-cons, scullery maids, Mensheviks, duffers, nerds, Anabaptists, and chartists all swim in the same delicious cultural broth.

As you can see, The Hipster Handbook is a poisonous little book that will thrust you into a dark universe of wholly fabricated human taxonomy. I'd advise against reading it, except that there is virtually no other concise guide to hipsterism on the market. And if no one reads it, the hipsters can continue denying their hipster status. And if that happens, the hipsters have won.