What Happened to the Hipsters?

to find out where they went, we must find out where they came from

One of my first articles, What Happened to the Neckbeards? followed the archetype of the fedora-tipping, leather trench coat wearing geek who was simultaneously obsessed with women, hated women, and terrified of women, all while assuming that he would get ass for opening doors. Perhaps I was too charitable, but my theory was that “neckbeard” wasn’t a permanent identity, and that many of these men grew up, stopped being neckbeards, and simply became regular geeks who married other geeks.

Lately, I’ve seen a few people asking the same question about hipsters, and having just written about 2010s nostalgia, I feel like I’m the person to answer the question. The modern definition of “hipster” depends greatly on whether the person using the term remembers the 2000s hipsters or the 2010s hipsters, but either way, they recall a quirky group of urban young people who seem to have disappeared.

I have a great deal of experience with hipsters, given that I have spent time in New York City and San Francisco, between the years 2005 and 2016. And I think to understand where hipsters went, you first have to understand who they replaced—and what made hipsters so different from all the other weird subcultures in recent history.

I recall the first hipster I ever saw. His name was Dustin, and he went to my high school in 2006. Tall, skinny, with the mismatching snub-nosed face of a cherubic 1920s baby and long shaggy hair, he was effortlessly cool and popular. He was part of the coolest rock band at our school, and on the school field trip, my dorky friends and I snuck out of the hotel room at night so we could look through the window and spy on the exclusive hotel party he was throwing (it was, regrettably, not that compelling.) He was the first straight boy in our school to wear skinny jeans—something that we assumed was reserved for gay guys (at the time, the assumption was that the bigger your pants were, the less gay you were, and straight guys were still terrified of looking gay.) In fact, Dustin was a bit androgynous, with his long hair, slender build and willingness to wear tight, brightly-colored clothing. In a way, this proto-Harry Styles was showcasing his masculinity in a way that was completely new to us: he was so virile and masculine that he could look a little bit gay, and it was okay.

Hipsters like Dustin were counter-cultural, but in a way that didn’t apply to the punks and Goths of the 2000s. Hipsters weren’t aligned with mainstream society, but they weren’t rebelling against it—they were simply too good for it. To be a hipster was to be “above it all.” Hipsters were into music you have never heard of, not because the music was weird and edgy but because you weren’t cultured enough to get the reference. Hipsters wore clothes you might have found odd, not because they wanted to shock you but because they were plugged into a world you could never dream of understanding. And to make fun of hipsters was to “punch up.”