Can everyone shut the fuck up about “hipsters” already? I’m so fucking sick of that word. The whole subject seriously bores the shit out of me and yet I constantly have to defend myself from people who call me that word as though it suddenly makes everything I have done to further rewilding insincere or fake. I usually shrug it off but i recently surfed to the Adbusters website only to see an entire “feature” article from last summer where they just talk all kinds of shit about hipsters, and now I feel I need to say something.
The first time I got called a hipster I was walking into a burrito place on Belmont Street. As I walked through the door this big biker-looking dude was ushering out his 4 year old son. He said to his son with disgust, “Watch out for the hipster.” I remember feeling angry at first thinking, “I’m not a fucking hipster.” Of course I was. I was wearing a vintage Ferrari t-shirt, tight black polyester wranglers, black Ray-Ban sunglasses, black converse and I had a mullet. This was back in like, 2003.
When I was growing up, Portland was just another quiet, small, boring city on the west coast, always living in the shadow of Seattle and San Fransisco. Thanks to former mayor Vera Katz (who hated homeless people) the town is now littered with art galleries and fancy restaurants. 5 years ago Portland was all of a sudden an up and coming arts town; it was super cheap to live here, people drank PBR because it was the cheapest beer, everyone under 30 was in a rock band and no one had ever heard of myspace or youtube.
I dropped out of high school at 16 to rewild. I took classes and spent most of time in the woods, the library or at work. I didn’t care much for the way I dressed; I wore mostly over-sized, military surplus wool clothes. I didn’t really care much about aesthetic at that point in my life because I had no culture. For the most part, I was a loner. I quit doing anything artistic (my passion was filmmaking) because I didn’t think that would help me learn to rewild. It wasn’t until I came across Joseph Campbell that I really began to see a purpose in my passion for art and cultural creativity. He said;
The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment.
I realized that my artistic talents in filmmaking and other mediums could actually help create a cultural movement of rewilding by using art to spread the mythology of it. Lonely at 19, with no culture of rewilders, never having had a girlfriend before, I began to spend more time with people. I realized if I was ever going to create a culture of rewilding, I would need to blend in with the other artists in town, and subversively spread animism and rewilding from within the arts scene.
Luckily I had some really cool friends who I worked with at Coffee People to show me the ropes. We went to the Goodwill Bins and I got a new wardrobe in 2 hours for $5. This was back when the bins was only 39¢ a pound and before the over-priced “vintage” thrift stores began sending their employees there to pick all the good stuff so that they could then up-sell it. I would dig through the troughs of clothes, holding up shirts for my friend Dave and he would look at it and turn his head thinking, looking into it for its potential. Then he would explain whether or not it would work and why. It was like taking a class on how to see cool. Dave loves clothes and talking about aesthetics and his excitement and knowledge spilled over into me. With Dave’s help I acquired my first girlfriend, Elspeth, a seamstress & clothing designer who took me a few steps further, with understanding how to dress oneself for their particular body and her classic motto, “it works if you work it.” With their help, I became a hipster fashionista practically over night.
I can hear you all saying, “what a poseur!” Let’s talk about that for a second. When I was in high school I remember this one time I walked by the most gothic kid in our school and I overheard him saying, “Then this guy was like, ‘Get outta my way you goth!’ and I was like… Oh my god! I’m not gothic!” I remember thinking, “what the fuck is that guy talking about. He is obviously gothic.” I knew immediately what he was doing; it isn’t cool to “try” to look gothic. To talk about yourself as gothic would mean you were intentionally going out of your way to dress like that and it’s never cool to admit it, because caring about shit is not cool. .
I recently pointed out to a green anarchist who claimed he “dressed however he wanted” that he wore all the right green anarchist scene clothes and topped it off with their iconic dreadlocks. By admitting I chose to dress this way, I’m no longer cool because it’s also not cool to “follow the crowd.” If being punk or gothic or hipster or anarchist is an attempt at rebelling against the mainstream, than being labeled a hipster is saying that you are a follower of a fashion trend and not a creative individual. Let’s get real. No one dresses like an individual. No one accidentally dresses like a gutter punk, hipster, hippie, yuppie, or whatever. Everyone chooses their subcultural identity. There is no way you can dress that will not lump you in with some kind of crowd. Subcultures create aesthetics. The individuality comes out of how you express yourself in that particular subculture. If you’re a gutter punk, you’ll obviously have a studded jacket, but the placement of studs or even the words you write on the jacket expresses your own individuality within that culture.
In the years that followed I made a lot of friends, partied my ass off and forgot all about why I became part of that subculture. In 2008, Portland is now like Seattle’s once cooler punk rock cousin, that finally had to get a job. In other words, the party is over. Shit is now extremely expensive in Portland and there are no jobs. I’ve seen the small town turn into a huge, strung out city practically over-night. I’ve lived through, been part of, and learned a tremendous amount about, the rise of hipster culture. I will risk my cool and admit that I am a hipster.
The best part of all is that these “critiques” of hipster culture never come from the hipster community speaking for itself, it’s always an outsider talking about something they are not a part of and don’t understand because they are either too old, jealous, or more self-conscious, then the hipsters they claim are. I (usually) don’t hear my hipster friends talking shit about people who aren’t in that scene. I’ve probably heard a dozen or more people who I don’t consider hipsters say, “Look at those fucking hipsters over there. They think they’re so fucking cool.” You know what? I bet those “hipsters” didn’t even notice you. Why the fuck do you care? Why do you go out of your way to point them out?
The largest criticism of hipster culture is that we allegedly steal symbols and styles from previous cultures but without the authenticity or sincerity with which those cultures had. Firstly, every new subculture steals from an older one. This is what old people say every time a new subculture rises. “They’re stealing from us!” Generally it’s because the old people don’t feel appreciated or acknowledged for “creating” (even though they stole it from someone else) that particular style. Secondly, in terms of the “lack of authenticity” or sincerity, every culture adapts and alters an old style and gives it a new meaning. While people complain about hipsters lack of sincerity and lack of meaning, that’s just our “new” twist.
Urban peoples lives are pointless; we are the human waste product of agriculture. We have no integrated purpose in the context of the real, wild world. We have no relationship with our landbase, except blind exploitation. Our purpose is only to serve coffee to those in power, to enter data into spreadsheets for those in power, or operate machinery for those in power. We simply shift wealth around so that we feel like we’re doing something. Though we are drowning in culture, none of it has any meaning beyond its initial consumption. Our entire culture is disposable. Our lives are disposable.
Some have made claims that we hipsters are lame because unlike previous counter-cultures, we do not rebel against previous generations. I think hipsters are rebelling against previous generations; we are rebelling against meaning. The people of my generation have all seen what those in power do to people with feelings and ideas. We’ve seen the gamut of “revolutions” and we have seen that they mean nothing in the end. Civilization continues to kill all life on this planet no matter who is in charge, no matter how much we protest, this culture wins and the earth dies. No matter what we do, we are slaves to it; we’ve been conditioned to be pacifists from birth. Rather than look foolish like our “revolutionary” predecessors, we just stopped caring at all, accepting our slavery to find happiness in novelty, irony, drugs, sex and music. Hipsters are not lame for being apathetic; civilization is lame for destroying our lives, our hearts and our landbase.
If meaninglessness is cool now, it will not be cool tomorrow. I want to break the shackles of this hierarchy and create a living world. I’m determined to make rewilding the next counter-culture. Who’s with me?
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