Hipster Is a Meaningless Slur

A essay in The New York Times about hipsters is as dependable as the crossword puzzle or a bowel movement. Steven Kurutz’s “Caught in the Hipster Trap,” from last Sunday, under the heading “DISPATCH,” points out that virtually every piece of clothing qualifies as hipster gear, barring sports jerseys and khakis, which definitely had a quick hot scourge a couple years ago if I remember right. Kurutz writes, “[...] I’d been linked to the tattooed, headphone-clad, hirsute rulers of youth culture, and insulted, because anyone who believes he is genuinely cool would never want to be called a hipster, that slavish adopter of trends.” Kurutz is too specific because what he describes, vaguely, as hipsters—“tattooed, hirsute”—misses the mark completely, a weak attempt to bring to life something that he admits is completely amorphous and means many contradictory things to different people. He focuses on the clichés we’re familiar with: thick-framed glasses, deft to daft use of irony, Adidas sneakers, skinny jeans, obscure music. This particular pop communal circle jerk isn’t nearly as vague as everyone thinks it is.