While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
Adbusters calls the ‘hipster’ The Dead End of Western Civilization (via Drive-by Blogging).
I may not agree on this overly dramatic tone, as hipsterism must be seen as something aligned with the fact that in a way Art History stopped somewhere in the late 70s. So, in the same way postmodernism means there are no longer vanguardists fighting both the art market and the previous vanguards, youth subversion too became postmodern, ceasing to truly exist.
I don’t even think hipsters exist. There might just be too many obnoxious douchebags, overgrown tweens caught in a loop of consumerism, peer pressure and a fix for vacuous praise, for as long as their parents can support that. Most will hit head-on against a brick wall after college, when faced with poor salaries and a job economy much worse than the economy that gave their parents material progress and enough of a surplus to generate their hipster douchebag children in the first place. Others will be lucky and have enough money to continue being obnoxious douchebags for the rest of their lives.
Same as it ever was.
Source: adbusters.org
