Hello everyone, for this week’s blog Emma and I are talking about “Hipsters gone viral”. Emma and I decided to divide our blog posts, so I will be talking about Tumblr, specifically the thread, Look at this F***ing Hipster, and the internet in general as a tool for hipsters. Comment on either of the posts, and if you are feeling ambitious feel free to comment on both.
Here is the actual link to the blog. http://lookatthisfuckinghipster.tumblr.com/
Ok, let’s first talk about Tumblr. To be honest, before this week I didn’t have much exposure to what Tumblr was, but I will attempt to quickly demystify it for everyone. (Expect me to ask someone to explain what Tumblr is in class on Tuesday). Tumblr is a microblogging website, allowing users to post content to a blog. The fact that Tumblr is a microblog is important because it allows viewers and bloggers to showcase small amounts of information and content per post. Twitter is another example of a microblog.
So before I go any further, here is the first question. Do you think the internet and microblogs as a whole are a crucial or important aspect of the modern hipster community and if yes, why? Personally, I think the internet is widely important in the modern hipster. The whole idea of appropriation can be magnified if used in a microblog. What I mean is various “new” styles and designs are so easily accessed and posted for everyone to see. Furthermore, what better way to express yourself than through daily blog posts, and artistic pictures. Then another question emerges and that is about authenticity. Throughout this semester we have focus a lot about authenticity versus the ungenuine and ironic. Do you think the hipsters use the internet to showcase authenticity? Tom in his blog post asked the question, “Is it fair to draw a line between hipster and youth culture?” which I think directly correlates to internet use. Are the people using Tumblr or Instagram hipsters, or are they just the most recent generation of youths?
Lastly, in terms of the Tumblr blog, Look at that F***ing hipster, we see a negative view of the hipster. This blog was not made to glorify hipsters, but to bring them down. It seems that, although, hipster use of the internet may have increased, anti-hipster use of the internet has increased as well. Looking at the blog, what posts in particular strike you as being pertinent to what we have discussed in class? Personally, I thought the vimeo water fight, posted on February 25 (Page 8), is a great example of the “cliched” hipster we so often see. The video showcases an extremely melodramatic water fight between people, who look very stereotypically hipster. They are smoking cigars, hiding in trees, and overall trying to appear as militaristic as possible. The caption is, “LOL. It’s funny because rich white people don’t fight in real wars.” This fits into the idea of the hipster relinquishing his middle-upper class background and striving to find danger and excitement. While probably none of the people involved in this water fight will ever actually join the army, they are trying to recreate the danger involved with war.
Thanks for reading and responding, and I will see all of you on Tuesday!
To answer your first question, whether or not the Internet and microblogs as a whole are a crucial or important aspect of the modern hipster community: I think that they are crucial. The Internet is the fastest, most cutting edge source of idea-sharing; microblogs, namely Tumblr and Twitter, consolidate these ideas into more efficient posts and publish them at the time of their conceptualization. Note that hipsters are elitist by nature and are always competing to "find" new ideas the fastest; thus, microblogs, as channels of breaking information, are inherently important to hipsters that are trying to lay claim to innovations the second they are broadcasted. However, I think that the Internet and microblogs alike are more sources of genuineness than authenticity regarding hipsterdom. With the ease which posts may be plagiarized or shared, it is easy to lose the source of original ideas. However, both copied-and-pasted and shared posts are proof of hipsters' amusement due to or preference of something. This does not exemplify authenticity, but rather, genuineness. Ergo, I think that the Internet and microblogs are, whilst critical to the hipster community, greater sources of genuineness than authenticity.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you brought the fact that appropriation is magnified through microblogs such as tumblr, and I think that it's very true. Tumblr has this handy little reblog button that allows users to copy content, whether it's a picture or a poem, and post it directly onto their own blog. Though they don't get credit for it. they still gain notes off of what they reblogged, users get approval for simply re-sharing someone else's content. This definitely brings up questions of authenticity, or more accurately highlights the tendency for a lack of authenticity on tumblr blogs. (of course this isn’t the case for all tumblrs) Despite the fact that tumblr is a breeding ground of inauthenticity, I do agree that hipsters, whether they’re “authentic” hipster’s who use their blogs as a place to post their own photography or writing, or the “commercial” hipsters whose blogs are full of photos and quotes that we stereotypically consider to be hipster. So basically, in response to your question: “do you think hipsters use the internet to showcase authenticity,” I think more often than not no. Because if we define hipsters as people who want things that aren’t mainstream, that are unique and new, the internet does the complete opposite of that - the internet is essential what makes things popular, and hipsters don’t want their identity appropriated through blogs such as tumblr, because it forces them to move on to the next trend.
ReplyDeleteI think that yes, online blogging is a vital component of what constitutes the modern hipster. For one, like you mentioned Marcus, it is an outlet for their supposed “free expression”; however, the typical blogging hipster tends to sit amongst the upper middle class, who perpetuate these homogeneous anti-democratic blogs of fashion, etc. As the “Blog Ambition” essay mentions, blogs give voice to groups that traditionally may have had less of a voice such as African Americans to express their unique perspectives on fashion through eclectic blogs; these groups of people stand in contrast to the modern hipster.
ReplyDeleteYet at the same time, the hipster’s obsession with blogging appears a bit paradoxical to me. Many “authentic” hipsters tend to wish to shy away from popular social media sites such as Facebook, so their obsession with blogging sites such as Tumblr seems to be a bit hypocritical. In fact, as seen in the message of the Arcade Fire music video, some hipsters seem to disapprove of society’s mass consumption of technology in general, further contributing to this paradox. Nevertheless, it should be noted that not all bloggers are hipsters; blogging is a popular tool amongst the entire youth generation, and hipsters only happen to make up part of it.
At it's core, Tumblr is a free flowing archive of cultural capital, information, obscure likes/dislikes, and a virtual space to cultivate an online persona. Because tumblr offers so much in the way that knowledge is transferred and passed down, it makes sense that hipsters would gravitate towards it. I think that when tumblr first started its users could have been aptly considered hipsters, however, i think that since its inception tumblr has expanded to encapsulate a plethora of identities. What is fascinating about tumblr, to me, is that it blurs the line between authenticity and inauthenticity. Because information and posts can be shared almost uncritically, tumblr creates a space that juggles irony and sincerity. By this I mean that the threat of irony can seep into someone's blog even if they are the most sincere person on the planet (okay, hyperbole, but it can happen). Conversely, I wonder if, for example, a blog like Look At This Fucking Hipster can ever be seen as sincere when they are neck deep in irony. Personally, I think L.A.T.F.H is as hipster as it gets. What is more hipster than a hipster critiquing other hipsters? L.A.T.F.H presumes to occupy two spaces simultaneously. On the one hand, by assuming they know what the hipster is, they position themselves within the discourse of hipsterdom. On the other hand, however, they also position themselves outside of the discourse by being staunch critics of it.
ReplyDeleteThe internet is definitely a vital part of the modern hipster community. Sites such as twitter, pinterest, timbler etc are where the newest trends can be showcased and replicated by their users into daily life to create hipster trends. I think these massive social media sites however are more related to the commercial hipster aesthetic. Looking specificially at twitter, The mass amount of information available to users through mass participation from celebrities to hundreds of thousands of obscure accounts, make it extremely easy to take original ideas, pictures, quotes etc and make them appear to be one's own. Copying and taking ownership is a way I think hipsters use microblogs and other social media sites to appear more authentic. On the other hand, I think smaller blogs more specific and personal to the author, tend to be more authentic in nature. They seem to be more about spreading a message especially as they are free to explore topics in greater depth with out length limitations such as you see with twitter. In Blog Ambition, Lipstickeater shows the fashion blog as a political commentary on breaking orientalist epistemologies. The article also comments on how alias', and avatars also delete race, gender, and sexuality association. This liberation from categories and their associated stereotypes is again a very hipster concept.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the Internet has become a crucial aspect of the modern day hipster, or the modern day person in general for that matter. However, to address your first question, I personally do not think that Tumblr specifically holds much importance when trying to demystify the modern day hipster. Granted, Tumblr started out as a very hip microblog, but now it has become way too well known and popular to be considered any amount of hip, it has fallen due to the never-ending cycle of the hipster. I would consider other microblogs to be a crucial aspect of the modern day hipster, though, and by “other” I mean microblogs that I, along with most other people, have not even heard about. These types of blogs would remain consistent with the typical underground hipster counterculture that we have so often spoken of. To move on to your second question, I do not think that it is fair to say that people who use Tumblr and Instagram are hipsters simply because doing one thing that coincides with what many hipsters do does not make you a hipster. If we were to define people as hipster solely by that characteristic, than the definition of a hipster would be much simpler, it would simply be a young person who uses social media. However, by that standard every single person ranging from teenagers to twenty-somethings would be seen as a hipster, but we know that that is most certainly not the case. The modern day hipster is much more than someone who actively posts artsy selfies on Instagram.
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