Hipsters? In my nerdery?

[runic knight]

Is this basically a discussion about a group that used to be labeled in an offensive manner and had to deal with that shit a lot, than they grew up, became popular, and started to label and give shit to other groups for "not being cool as they are"?

Close, it is a discussion about a group who was given that label as a result of their interests or behavior affecting how society viewed them, then they grew up, the subculture they created was monetized, and now the people who were popular and treated them like shit in the past are claiming to be part of the same group because it is now culturally acceptable to be, as well as it is a means to be seen a "unique", ironically by following the same trend as so many others, in the same vein as repeated countless times before, with Rap, Punk, and Goth subcultures being examples off the top of my head there.

Basically, you have a group given a label defined by the investment and behavior affecting their social lives, coming to terms with the shit they get for that label and turn it into an identity of their own, only for those who mocked that identity to now try to stake claims upon it with neither investment nor behavior, solely because it is the current "cool". The result being those who had to put up with garbage for their passions previously now have to deal with bandwagoning jackasses telling them they "aren't real nerds". The backlash against cultural diluting is sort of predictable, and will continue til the subculture falls out of favor for the next fad, and most of those stirring up trouble chase the fleeting hope that this next fad will make them look unique.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

pic still related​

And amazingly, that pic paints a more negative picture of nerds than any outside group could ever do.

Is that really how you view nerds? Because literally, the image on the left was the one that used to piss us off. Now we're actually fighting over it?

Well no it isn't, as evidenced by the paragraph directly beneath it saying that it's not an accurate picture.

Slightly more OT:

Assuming the information in your profile is accurate, "nerd" has been mainstream since before you were born. This looks like a variation on any generational rant: it's not exactly like how I remembered it, therefore it's bad. The same is true of any label. Or music. Or those kids these days with their jazz rock and roll heavy metal hip-hop boy bands indie music.

And god forbid we spend more time enjoying what we like and less time gatekeeping and cred checking.

Well if you think so. I never condemn anyone or anything in my post.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Oh man, people whinge a disproportionate amount about hipsters. The thing is 'hipsters' tend to actually have pretty decent taste... I actually get called a hipster quite a bit, I like nice things. Vintage plaid shirts? Hell yeah. Beard? Obviously. Obscure music taste? You bet. Have I made twee-cocktail recipes from the internet (Earl Grey gin an tonics are it)? You bet.

People take issue with a perceived vanity, a self consciousness that usually just isn't there. As I said, I -and 'hipsters'- just like nice stuff. That's it. That also means they don't overlook nerd culture like a lot of people do, because they recognise that a lot of it is genuinely really good. Whinging about some other people liking the same stuff makes you sound like those guys who whine when a band makes it big and gets a bunch of new fans. You know... Hipsters.

 

[briankoontz]

There's another element in play here - the cultural interest in the 1980s, a major trend right now and the time of the 2nd generation nerd. This is larger than hipsters, but hipsters had a lot to do with popularizing the 1980s retro examination, which will probably last at least a couple more years.

 

[CaitSeith]

My real problem is that I still have no idea of what a hipster is exactly. The more I hear of them, the more it feels like just a name for "the people who love the things I find absurd"

 

[briankoontz]

My real problem is that I still have no idea of what a hipster is exactly. The more I hear of them, the more it feels like just a name for "the people who love the things I find absurd"

That's a good thing - once a group becomes set in stone they find themselves needing to adhere to the definition rather than continuing to live life and having definitions adhere to THEM.

The long-standing (dictionary) definition is "a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream."

So hipsters are trendy, but not individualists - there's such a thing as a shared "hipster culture" as well as sub-cultures within hipsterism. Bronies are hipsters, but most hipsters are not bronies (and some arch-hipsters turn up their noses and say "Bronies are so 2010"). Hipsters get excited about some modern trend that they believe serves some function within intellectual or moral development.

What hipsters care about is culture - they want to understand it, want to be a part of it's progress and development. This is why hipsters are rarely poor - they need to have constant access to culture and the free time necessary to explore and appreciate it. There's no "den of hipsters" within an African ghetto. This is also why hipsters are often accused of being useless and idle - they really want to just sit around and talk about and explore culture all day long. They find themselves receiving animosity from workers who don't necessarily appreciate their finely tuned beards and full lush love of culture and intellectual development.

There are certain gravity sites for hipsters on the internet - it was Something Awful once upon a time, and more recently 4chan and Know Your Meme.

 

[happyninja42]

There's another element in play here - the cultural interest in the 1980s, a major trend right now and the time of the 2nd generation nerd. This is larger than hipsters, but hipsters had a lot to do with popularizing the 1980s retro examination, which will probably last at least a couple more years.

It's also worth pointing out that the people who were kids in the 80's, are now in their 30's-40's, which is the prime age bracket for the "nostalgia revival" of a previous generations trends. I'd warrant that a lot of the resurgence of 80's stuff isn't due to Hipsters, but to people who are now the people "in charge" of businesses, industries, and marketing. For example, when I was a teenager in the 90's, shit from the 70's was hugely popular.

 

[briankoontz]

There's another element in play here - the cultural interest in the 1980s, a major trend right now and the time of the 2nd generation nerd. This is larger than hipsters, but hipsters had a lot to do with popularizing the 1980s retro examination, which will probably last at least a couple more years.

It's also worth pointing out that the people who were kids in the 80's, are now in their 30's-40's, which is the prime age bracket for the "nostalgia revival" of a previous generations trends. I'd warrant that a lot of the resurgence of 80's stuff isn't due to Hipsters, but to people who are now the people "in charge" of businesses, industries, and marketing. For example, when I was a teenager in the 90's, shit from the 70's was hugely popular.

This is certainly a debatable subject. A modern interest of hipsters is VCRs, part of '80s culture and something that can't easily be monetized, so that's one point in favor of the influence of non-corporate hipsters over their profiteering brethren. But I agree in general that regardless of who spearheads a cultural influence there's always the capitalist machine waiting in the wings to maximize the exploitation of that new culture, and the more influential a culture is the more profit there is to be made from it.

That being said, the non-monetary value and meaning of culture are real. Few of us would play video games if that wasn't the case. There's an underlying reason why the 1980s are being examined by modern hipsters, and I don't think explaining it away as either "simple nostalgia" or "brazen capitalism" is accurate. As the saying goes, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[elvor0]

The real clash with hipsters and nerds comes from the fact that yes, hipsters in their attempts to seem niche, will latch onto the surface of nerd culture. The conflict comes from this new audience influencing or changing existing media to suit their own tastes, which kind of flies in the face of the nerd culture that it survived on before becoming mainstream.

This is a weird statement considering all of your following examples have nothing to do with hipsters, the examples you give would only apply to hipsters if you lump the mainstream casual crowd under the label, which is almost the opposite of what we consider to be a hipster. Even your Batman example isn't being pushed by hipsters.

And we've seen that in history. The bright, colorful superhero genre basically murdered the more adult, pulp comics. D&D's seen a lot of changes in response to the rise of MMOs (I haven't played 6e yet, but 5e was an attempt to streamline the game so it was like an MMO).

Comics moving to a more pulpy darker format has shit all to do with hipsters. The direction of comics in the 90's was pushed by comics moving into a sales frenzy pushed by big events, and speculators creating an artificial sales boom. It was a combination of the huge popularity of books like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, and the business men of the time seeing big events and shocking announcements selling more comics as something to push more and more of.

That's not what he was on about, he was on about the death of the pulp story format as Superheroes became this huge thing that took over the market. Hence "the superhero genre basically murdered the pulp comics" Not Supers moving into a darker format. Now, what is to blame for the death of pulp is something I don't know, but that's not what he's on about.

I don't agree with anything else he's on about, as he's just equating hipster with = casual.

Nerds have become hipsters. Their identity was based so heavily on unpopular niche things (the internet, video games, comic books) but now these things have become popular. And even worse! Popular with NORMAL people! The kind of people who teased them back in high school! In response, nerds have become hipsters, mocking people who aren't as "hardcore" as they are.

Nah, nerds are still nerds. Hipsters skim the surface of something that goes rather deep.

Hipsters watch Game of Thrones. Nerds read A Song of Ice and Fire before it was on TV and nitpick at the changes done to make it more palatable for a non-literary audience. I read it a few years before the TV show was announced. A friend had recommended it to me back in like... 2000. I had never gotten around to it.

Hipsters play board games, usually under an hour playtime, 2 hours max. Nerds will play Axis & Allies, a tabletop RPG or something that takes at least four hours for a satisfying session.

These aren't necessarily hard and fast rules, but the hipsters lack the bit that powers the likes of PCMR, the LARPers of White Wolf Games, the Boffers, the Warhammer players and the game completionists.

What on earth are you on about? A Hipster is not a casual. It's beyond stupid to call someone a fucking hipster because they prefer to play a shorter board game that doesn't that 6 hours to finish. My wife loves Hearthstone and Boss Monster over Magic or Talisman, but she could school you, me or anyone else on star wars ship specifications off the top of her head.

But whatever, I guess I'm a hipster because a friend of mine suggested I watch GoT back in S1 and I continued to watch it because I enjoyed it. I'm quite sure I would enjoy the books too, but they cost money I can't afford, and given their size (seriously dude, they're fucking massive, the third book is longer than LoTR, which in a 7 book (at least) saga, is fucking ludicrous), I refuse to believe there isn't some serious rambling going on.

I don't have the patience for a story lumbering about anymore, I have no idea how I managed to read LoTR when I was 9, because I tried to read it recently and I just got bored about half way through T2T. Hobbit still holds up and is paced perfectly. Inversely, LoTR movies have excellent pacing, while The Hobbit beats pacing over the head with a copy of A Storm of Swords.

The long-standing (dictionary) definition is "a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream."

So hipsters are trendy, but not individualists - there's such a thing as a shared "hipster culture" as well as sub-cultures within hipsterism. Bronies are hipsters, but most hipsters are not bronies (and some arch-hipsters turn up their noses and say "Bronies are so 2010"). Hipsters get excited about some modern trend that they believe serves some function within intellectual or moral development.

What hipsters care about is culture - they want to understand it, want to be a part of it's progress and development. This is why hipsters are rarely poor - they need to have constant access to culture and the free time necessary to explore and appreciate it. There's no "den of hipsters" within an African ghetto. This is also why hipsters are often accused of being useless and idle - they really want to just sit around and talk about and explore culture all day long. They find themselves receiving animosity from workers who don't necessarily appreciate their finely tuned beards and full lush love of culture and intellectual development.

See, I don't think that's quite right. In the modern age, I've never seen hipsters as people who persue that stuff because they love it; rather only because it is trendy, they have no desire to understand it. They're slaves to cultural trends in the same way that pretentious fashonistas are slaves to fashion trends. It doesn't matter if they actually like it or not, just that they be a part of it.