2000 - 2010: THE AGE OF INDIVIDUALITY??

It's 2012. Earthlings are (supposedly) on our merry/scary way thru the New Age Apocalypse. There hasn't been quite enough time to really reflect about the Noughts in the beginning of this decade. After all, we're too busy thinking about zombies on "bath salts", eating tacos, getting high and whether or not aliens built the pyramids. Defining the "theme" of the past decade is difficult not due to the lack of reflective time or distraction from reflection but the lack of characterizing events or original trends. It's easy to get dressed up for a decade theme party of the past, but in 40 years from now, how will the time frame between 2000 and 2011 be characterized?




You know how each decade in the 1st World had their own type of culture kid? Usually the kid who liked to party, the kid who listened to something rowdy. Though the words "punk" and "stoner" were around long before they were tagged to specific decades, the word "hipster" is also nothing new. But "hipster" is the word we've been using, debating over, for the past ten years, and if there's anything the Hipster is definitely the party kid archetype of the past decade. Hands down, no questions asked, the Noughts will be remembered by The Hipster.


The comparisons between hipsters to past teen archetypes are grim though, prob due to the face that the hipster is undefinable due to the lack of specific music genres or fashion. Hipster fashion is based on a multitude of retro counterculture styles often times with a hint of irony (and we have a lot of past counterculture to work with). Hipsters listen to hip hop, electropop, crust punk, indie rock, new wave, no wave, chillwave, stoner metal, surf, grunge, grunge-surf, dubstep, neo-folk, 70s prog, twee, avant industrial, radio pop, so on and so forth. The pool of musical affiliation has expanded so much that we can't generalize a punk on the street and assume s/he listens to punk as opposed to just looking "punk". The Hipster was vegging out on a variety of musical horizons, all a thousand of them, what with the common era of internet playlists and everything being uselessly and meaninglessly at the touch of our fingertips. It's not easy to assume musical or political or philosophical affiliation based on uniform like one would do in the '60s with hippies or '70s with stoners. I'd never think I'd say that sort of of sucks that we've come to a point of floating around, which seems like the ultimate freedom but really just keeps us in a nothingness. The Hipster has a vast variety of movements from past times to reference in their clothes, their record collection and the objects they collect in general and not much of the right now to actually create or grow off of.


Not everyone who collects from the past is a hipster. A person can def be pigeonholed "hipster" just because they're "fashionable" and have an eclectic love of different things. However it seems the genuity of a person's interests kind of predicts where people place the Hipster hashtag. It would suggest that Hipsters are Hipsters because they are obsessed with "being cool", that they don't understand the context of what they "rip off". Maybe that's the line that is drawn. That and the fact that they don't do anything but sit around and feed off the activity around them, stupid American kids who buy shit but do not do shit with their lives or even downright abuse their livelihood. Those who like lots of music and fashion get pegged with the label unknowingly even though they may loathe parties and are appalled by the idea of fucking some random person and are terrified of being brainless. Because kids have affinity for similar sound and style, a lot of people have had to defend themselves from the "hipster" accusation, just another dirty word for a subculture-fried robot.


If Hipsters are so eclectic, borrowing so much from the past, then what defines their decade, "the Noughts", in this cesspool of subculture? What are American kids a product of? What has happened in the past ten years that affects attitudes and the cultural climate? My immediate ideas are not the most positive: reality shows boast frivolous emphasis on "me" life, an Age of Individuality mostly expressed through our purchases. That's the primary difference for what it is to be a Hipster kid in the Noughts compared to a hipster of an older generation. Because we live in the world of Globalization, the Individuality Age likely applies to ALL kids with access to products in all their variations and varieties (INTERNET SHOPPING!!). We are not limited to the stores in our specific area to make purchases for our homes, wardrobes, and other objects in our material lives. Even mainstream bricks-and-mortar stores are grabbing onto the "make it your way" ideal. Your Frappucinos are individualized so I guess it makes you an individual, too, right?


The most important factor though is that the Y Generation relies on their culture through THE INTERNET primarily (as opposed to experience, or the discovery of a loved relic through the hard work of research or word-of-mouth suggestion). In 2011, high schoolers graduated as the 1st generation of kids to have grown their whole lives with the presence of the internet. Never underestimate the power of Steve Jobs (RIP) - Apple's stamp on the last decade was ENORMOUS. Mac has perfected a marketing scheme towards more than their electronics alone; Mac products are a "lifestyle". Users maximize Apple products for ultimate music libraries, photobooths, video editing for personal YouTubes, recording their latest shitty no-wave revival band. Design minded, a hub of technological personalization, a perfect catch-all tool for the Age of Individuality, the "i" in iPod, iPad, iMac isn't capitalized though, because iWant is not for the you, it's for the everyone.


To be a Hipster is to be a personalized eclectic sub-cultural vulture, now effortless in the Material Electronic World. Aesthetics are particularly important in this equation. Thrift store threads are as popular as ever in showing "individual" style, so much that the number of vintage resale shops has increased dramatically in the past ten years. You don't have to go searching endlessly for hours at different donation-based locations when some super hip chick has been paid handsomely to snatch up all the good shit for you (and then mark up the prices some 300% more for that seemingly one of a kind "vintage" dress, an early '90s outfit that your grandma once bought on sale at Macy's for $13). If you don't wanna thrift, Urban Outfitters essentially reproduces all the latest retro-revival trends for a wide variety of cool kids, socialites, frat/sorierty girls, alternateens and modern career people alike. If that's not enough, your tattoos can be personalized and your bike can probably be personalized, too.


Load your iPod, go to Buffalo Exchange, buy a wallet with a hamburger or a cat or Aztec patterns or a cassette tape drawing on it to keep all your cash in that you will buy some more shit to show how personalized you can be. Then go to a party and be with your best friends who are also wearing tight jeans, messy hair and black framed glasses and all be in photos together while drunk out of your minds, PBRs and huge bottles of whiskey in tow! Capitalism is at its full peak and small business is more possible than ever, so there are more products for purchase in the world than ever before (thus having a unique collection of "stuff" is fairly easy to obtain). Our style through our stuff very often defines us or at least what we are into for that month.



There are a lot of professional people paying attention to what the kids are into, what they want, and they are marketing that shit to them, because the Hipster is so marketed and the idea of "hipster" is so wide spread that it practically doesn't exist anymore. It's 2012. Let's move on. 2012, a time frame that's supposed to increase consciousness, has been boosting more new age affinities, perhaps increasing conciousness in youth as well?? I'd like to think so but we are Americans after all. SHIT. 

MOST IMAGES BORROWED FROM LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HIPSTER TUMBLR, thanks!!