August 1st, 2008
Hipsters: Counter-Culture or Consumer Group?
Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!
Nobody can agree on who or what is a hipster, but everybody hates them, primarily because the hipsters hate everything that is mainstream, and therefore not hip.
Now, even hipsters hate hipsters, or at least, hate to be called hipsters.
Advertisers and trendhunters are, perhaps, the only people who like hipsters — both as a consumer group with an insatiable thirst for the new, and an early adopter group to tip trends into the mainstream.
It’s really ironic that a subculture with a liberal/ anti-establishment/ anti-brand philosophy (traditional hipsters) has transformed into become a an empty, recursive, self-referential focus group for marketers (ironic hipsters).
The Adbusters cover story on hipsters (via PSFK and MetaFilter) set me off on a three day search on the internet for more insights into “hipsters consumerism”. The result is a work-in-progress collection of links which may well become “the ultimate guide to hipster consumerism”.
In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery.
