Is it possible to be part of a subculture without knowing it? Yes, of course; she is a weaker person indeed who conforms to the ordained aesthetics of a group simply so as to appear a part of that group, rather than following her instincts and later coming to realise they happen largely to coincide with the characteristics of a particular group.

While watching a Cat Power clip on youtube I came upon a discussion about ,hipsters’; a term I was not familiar with. (Incidentally, youtube comments are a fascinating forum of discussion. They're largely garbage, but occasionally, reasoned.) This one goes thus:

strizen
Classic self-involved, generation-x, hipster clone...'My life is so crazy'

honezone21
strizen, i see an "i hate hipsters" comment from you on a lot of Cat Power videos. Give it a rest! Anybody from any era who has abused alcohol and had to deal with show business would probably be saying the same things. Nobody cares about the content of your continuous thread of anti-hipster comments, we only notice the annoyingness.

strizen
I hate hipsters regardless of what song Cat Power is singing... That's why I said the same thing on both of my posts. As for 'nobody cares about the content of your thread'... Says who? You?! Speak for yourself, you have no idea what anyobdy else on youtube says.

honezone21
alright, I'm sorry for that. I just don't see how you can't be a more open minded. Some people are hipsters, so what? Granted, I'm not a fan of them either. But just because Cat Power's a hipster doesn't mean her life isn't legimitately crazy. Her emotional stress is avoidable, but who says trying to deal with it makes her self-involved? Just because people are so-called hipsters doesn't mean they don't have issues. A happy hipster is more useful in this world than a dysfunctional one.

chemicalhome
Cat Power rules... But I will say that having lived in Brooklyn for the past two years, that hipsters are definitely poisonous. There's nothing worse than waiting for the train and having to deal with all the eyes darting all over the place. It's like 'I'm just trying to get work'...Hipsters all have this high schoolish/awkward energy that is just un-bearable.I think it's because a lot of them weren't popular in high school and now the indie rock scene is THEIR high school.

,Hipster’ is an American term, which wikipedia (at 24/3/8) describes as follows:

In the 1990s, the term became a blanket description for the trend in the alternative anti-fashion fashion of middle class and upper class urban, young people moving into regentrified or soon to be regentrified neighborhoods in city centers. Often hipsters came to these poorer neighborhoods from well-to-do suburbs of major cities. In youth culture, the term hipster usually refers to young people who may have an appreciation for independent rock, a campy or ironic fashion sense, or an otherwise bohemian style.

Hipster culture is also associated with indie, independent, DIY, non commercial, and/or non profit choices of consumption in any and all aspects of life, including listening to independent rock or any form of non-mainstream music, thrift store shopping, eating organic locally grown vegetarian and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio, etc. Hipster scenes are associated with vintage clothing and vinyl records, and magazines like Vice, Clash, Nylon and the website Pitchfork Media.

Contemporary hipsters are largely associated with leftist or liberal social and political views and sometimes a general appreciation of intellectual pursuits, with an ironic lowbrow or lower class culture and subculture. In 2003, Robert Lanham's satirical humor book The Hipster Handbook claimed that hipsters are young people with "...mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes,...strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che [Guevara] sticking out of their bags."

The term is also used in a pejorative fashion, to assert that a person may be superficially following recently mass-produced, homogeneous, urban fashion trends, overly concerned with their image and the contradictions of their identity. Often in its negative connotation, 'hipsters' are considered apathetic, pretentious, and self-entitled by other, often marginalized sectors of society they live amongst, including previous generations of bohemian and/or "counter-culture" artists and thinkers as well as poor neighborhoods of color.

Philosophy
Hipsters are often associated with ecological and/or anti-capitalist political ideology. This could be as concrete as being a member of the Green Party or espousing socialist philosophies, or simply being an American Democratic Party or European Labour Party supporter. Socially, this means intrinsic support of women's rights and gay rights, especially since one hipster stereotype is being perceived as androgynous ! or bisexual despite one's actual lifestyle. Hipsters are not usually associated with organized religion and are usually atheist or agnostic.

The overall aesthetic has elements of a liberal ethos. The vintage clothing and thrift store appearance of hipsters in a modern liberal context reveals a wish to consume ethically; to avoid purchasing new clothes from large corporations accused of unfair working conditions such as Gap and Nike. This choice usually manifests itself in refusing to purchase items from large corporations such as clothing, but also extends preferring bands who are not signed to major labels and/or who do not offer their creative output for use by the advertising industry.

The hipster aesthetic of irony is often associated with the appropriation of elements of lowbrow or working class culture. Low-brow culture from the past, such as the 1970s sitcom Three's Company may be enjoyed in an ironic fashion. Similarly, elements associated in a clichéd sense with working class culture, such as trucker hats or moustaches, may be ironically worn by a hipster. The modern hipster culture appropriates some signifiers of working class identity in an ironic fashion, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Now, no delineation is absolute, but I think from the above it appears I must admit I am a hipster. Except for the parts about Vice (which I dislike), Clash, Nylon and Three's Company (which I haven't heard of), and replacing trucker hats (which I abhor) with Castro caps and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer with Vita Cola or Schlitz (neither of which I have tried, mind you; they're just brands which appeal), that’s me to a T. And evidently there is some stigma attached here. I suppose I can understand why some people – probably conservative Americans who stand for values antithetical to those above – might not like hipsters. But I think most prejudice arises from misunderstanding based on failure to appreciate subtlety. ,Hipster' appears to be just another of those trendy, hysterical terms that arise from time to time – like ,champagne socialist', ,yuppie', or ,emo'.

Outward appearance is a product of inner forces we can not see; I believe that identity is determined by neurochemistry – one need only have a cup of coffee and/or read about some of the cases involving antidepressants to become convinced of this.

Now just because a person came from a privileged background does not make their dis-ease with the modern world (or, moreover, their psychoses) any less real, nor their situation in the world any less profound.

And what on earth is wrong with „listening to independent rock or any form of non-mainstream music, thrift store shopping, eating organic locally grown vegetarian and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio” anyway? That sounds like part of the formula for a sane world to me. One of the best ways to decrease carbon emissions is to eat and drink local – the amount of emissions produced by shipping bottled water, beer, and other beverages across the globe is phenomenal. What sort of person could „hate” somebody who espouses these values? Well, a climate change denier, for one...