hipsters and the life course

Our friends at City Pages offer a cheery end o' the decade look at the 10 things hipsters couldn't ruin: 1. Flannel; 2. Sunglasses; 3. Pabst Blue Ribbon; 4. The Internet; 5. Coffee; 6. Beards; 7. Electronic Music; 8. Macintosh Computers; 9. Irony; and (my personal favorite), 10. Actually Liking Things.

The list is a clever ode to authenticity, distinction, extended adolescence, narcissism, and the leisure class, chiding twentysomething hipsters for mock-enjoying things that we, the authors and readers, genuinely and truly enjoy. All this presumes, of course, that neither authors nor readers were ever insecure loudmouths swilling PBR in foam trucker hats.

Well, maybe not, but we were hipsters -- or at least their generational equivalent, putting the tastes and preferences of peers and elders through the "meatgrinder of cool." When I started reading City Pages (or was it Sweet Potato?), I was an insecure skinny-tie wearing loudmouth, affecting and mock-enjoying the narrow lapels of my father's generation (now inexplicably cool again via Mad Men). I'd guess that every cohort passes through a hipper-than-thou period -- the fads change, but the attitude persists. If there's anything distinctive about the current generation of hipsters, it is their almost mature capacity for self-awareness (see, e.g., hipster olympics, stuff hipsters don't like. stuff hipsters hate).

This seems to go deeper than simple consumption -- it reminds me of a favorite quote from David Foster Wallace on age, cohort, and values:

The intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and values in this country is one of the things that's gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like "It's really important not to lie." OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I don't really feel it. Until I get to be about 30 and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can't trust you. I feel that I'm in pain, I'm nervous, I'm lonely and I can't figure out why. Then I realize, "Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie." The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't, that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel.

So I'm guessing that something will change for today's hipsters, just as it changed for David Foster Wallace and for me -- probably by the age of 30 or so, if only because the aging hipster role is so unattractive. But there are consolations for the formerly hip, including the final item on the City Pages list -- actually liking things:

Between the average hipster's love for all things ironic and a shared nostalgia for the more obnoxious parts of '80s and early '90s culture, this decade found twentysomethings parading around in ironic wolf t-shirts, reminiscing about crappy sitcoms, and competing in endless debates over who loves Journey and Styx the most. Somewhere in the mix, we almost forgot how to really, honestly enjoy things without feeling deeply ashamed or writing it off as a "guilty pleasure." Luckily, being a humorless a-hole is only fun for so long, and the majority of us understand that feeling actual joy about something isn't going to kill us.