@Joe:

That piece is fucking on the money.

I agree! That’s kind of what I was getting at. Things like the Internet (I feel like I talk about “the Internet” changing major aspects of society all the damn time) have brought the underground and the fringe aspects of our culture into the spotlight, and broadened that spotlight so it can be more inclusive.

I do not, however, enjoy Taylor Swift’s music.

adbusters was late enough as it was on the hipsterdom is over bandwagon.

can we start the backlash to the backlash now?

I AM A HIPSTER AND I’M PROUD.

Like David Brooks writes in his book, Bobos in Paradise, the diametric opposition and the division between bourgeois, conservatives ideas and bohemian, freethinking culture has been erased. Twenty years ago you never could have worn a SST records pin next to a Hall and Oates pin on a Members Only jacket, now it’s really damn cool to do as such. I think the tedious and vaguely post-modern argument over the authenticity or signification of various ephemera hipster culture is idiotic. Hipster has always been about some kind of cultural appropriation, such as the Beatniks and African American jazz culture (see Norman Mailer’s 1950s essay about “The White Negro”).

During the height of Hippie culture in this country there was discussion of who were the real hippies and who were merely the plastic ones. Likewise, I think there’s still a discernible difference between those who danced to Justice’s “Phantom” during the Misshapes era and those who heard that song and immediately knew it sampled 70s Italian art rockers Goblin and loved the Argento film Suspiria it appears in.