Hipster subculture

The hipster subculture is stereotypically composed of affluent or upper middle class youth who reside primarily in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is broadly associated with indie and alternative music, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, vintage and thrift store-bought clothing, generally progressive political views, organic and artisanal foods, alternative lifestyles and snobbery. The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas. It has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior".

The term in its current usage first appeared in the 1990s and became particularly prominent in the late 2000s and early 2010s, being derived from the term used to describe earlier movements in the 1940s. Members of the subculture typically do not self-identify as hipsters, and the word hipster is often used as a pejorative to describe someone who is pretentious, overly trendy, effete or a stereotypical term, that has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity. Some scholars contend that the contemporary hipster is a "marketplace myth" that has a complex, two-way relationship with the worldview and value system of indie-oriented consumers.

In a 2009 article in PopMatters magazine, Rob Horning asserted that the hipster might be the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics." In a New York Times editorial, Mark Greif states that the much-cited difficulty in analyzing the term stems from the fact that any attempt to do so provokes universal anxiety, since it "calls everyone's bluff".

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