What does the word "hipster" mean to you?

[Heronblade]

I find the only requirement one needs is to embrace a contrary lifestyle for the sake of being contrary.

Proving the latter is difficult but often times the subject gives themselves away either through admission or overwhelming occurrences.

So a hipster is only a hipster if they're different on purpose, in your opinion?

No, they're different WITH the purpose of being different. Someone can be different and that doesn't make them a hipster, it's being different for the sake of being different that makes someone a hipster.

It's almost like there's two flavours of ice cream. Vanilla and poo. Everyone's taking vanilla but the hipster takes poo. Not because he likes the taste of poo but because he wants to fight the current for the sake of fighting the current. He picks poo because everyone else is picking vanilla.

He's not contrary because his tastes are different - contrary IS his taste. Contrary is the objective.

If one doesn?t meet that criteria for something then they?re not being a hipster about something.

They can, however, just be a dickhead.

There has to be more to it than that. One of the two biggest drivers of fashion for all of human history has been to do something different from the norm, and yet Hipsters are fairly new.

I'd say there are at least two extra attributes to the hipster- they have to like something that goes against the trend not just because the mainstream won't like it, but because the mainstream won't understand it. Because a big part of hipsterism is pretending to be on a cutting edge that was manufactured out of nothing.

The other thing about hipsters is they have to like some things ironically.

He just described a contrarian. Which you could probably claim is a hipster without the fake glasses and starbucks. Or for that matter a goth without the mascara and spiked leather.