Ask a Hipster
Dear Hipster: Given that SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and Spotify make it relatively simple for musicians (myself included) to put their tracks, mixtapes, EPs, and albums out in front of an internet audience, it’s almost as if …
Dear Hipster: Here’s an obviously non-controversial premise for you: hipsters are very nostalgic, and they love old-fashioned stuff so much that they’re constantly imitating past trends in an effort to color modern life with the …
Dear Hipster: Riddle me this — if all the hipsters left town tomorrow, would there be no more hipsters, or would somebody step in to fill the “power vacuum,” so to speak, such as occurs …
Dear Hipster: Even if staying outside the mainstream and being countercultural is super important, it sure is exhausting keeping track of what’s hip and not hip, so that one knows where one stands in relation …
Dear Hipster: What is the meaning of life? Is it all just a bunch of frothy beverages and salted caramels, or is there more to it? Will the tie-dye revolution ever dismantle the oh-so-fashions of …
Dear Hipster: One thing that has always bothered me is, why do fictional hipsters always seem to have it so easy? You see some hipsters on TV and movies, and they somehow get away with …
Dear Hipster: Summer is here! And it’s not canceled this year! I’d say it’s time to celebrate, but do I even need to say it? I would imagine almost everybody is super stoked to have …
Dear Hipster: Immanuel Kant famously proposed that people should be treated as “ends in themselves,” not as a means to an end. As a corollary of that principle, people are supposed to help themselves and …
Dear Hipster: Around this time of year I always feel like the world’s attention is divided, at least a little bit, between hockey and basketball. Of course, by “the world” I mean “popular televised American …
Dear Hipster: As the proud owner of a sophisticated sweet tooth, I am always a little confused by people who have no opinion one way or the other on sweets and dessert. It has always …
Dear Hipster: What does it all mean? — Thad The answers are out there, Thad, but you have to follow the clues, and it takes special training in hipster numerology and phenomenology to uncover those …
Dear Hipster: Hipsters are known for having a generally snarky attitude towards most things, but they hardly own what Oscar Wilde called “the lowest form of wit.” Why is snark so easy? — Max That’s …
Dear Hipster: Although I would tend to agree that cool hipster stuff (music, fashion, food, or whatever) pushes boundaries in a good way, one thing I have noticed time and time again is that avant …
Dear Hipster: You’d have to be a dummy to ignore the profligacy of remakes, reboots, and retro-themed books, music, and movies that have cropped up with increasing frequency over the course of the past decade. …
Dear Hipster: I get how it’s cool and hipster to have obscure, preferably one-of-a-kind aesthetic sensibilities, but I don’t get why it’s important. This is kind of abstract, but how is there any value in …
Dear Hipster: What has had a greater effect on defining what it means to be a 21st-century American hipster: movies and TV, music, or something else entirely? — AJ That’s a bit like asking, ‘Who …