Relevance, as a social construction but also as a measuring stick for socially-dependent ideas of self worth, has been one of my primary concerns since 2007. In 2007, a little blog started called Hipster Runoff, more commonly known as HRO. Over the years, Hipster Runoff has been an incredibly poignant and striking critique of “hipster” culture, which existed, ironically, far before the word “hipster” was invented in the 1940s. Being a “hipster” is consciously going against mainstream influences and appreciating things that mainstream audiences do not normally expose themselves to. It’s a counter-culture, but the awareness isn’t always on purpose. That awareness might come out of an honest lack of appreciation of widely accepted ideas or trends.

Nevertheless, HRO came about during a time of backlash against the hyper-individualism that “hipster” culture began to create. Once it became a stereotype, it ceased to be “cool,” and hipster culture’s associations with pedanticism and snobbism became better known than its roots as a descriptor of a person with unique tastes and highly adaptive appreciations for culture.

Once the stereotype was built, it was, of course, used pejoratively by mainstream types and started a flame war that still rages today. 

When you call someone a “hipster,” you’re basically telling them that the choices they make are not theirs to make. When you call someone a hipster because of the clothes they wear, because of the music they listen to, because of their dietary choices or because of any choice they choose to make obvious to you, you rob them of their own individualism. You see them not as a human being with passions and unique opinions, but as a robot acting in accordance with whatever counter-culture is dictating.

Guess what? That goes against the very idea of being a “hipster.” That’s why people, like me, who are referred to as “hipsters” hate being called hipsters. A conversation will go like this: “I like the television show ‘Twin Peaks’,” says Person A. “You are a hipster,” says Person B. “Ugh, I hate being called a hipster! I’m not a hipster,” says Person A. “That’s exactly what a hipster would say,” says Person B.

That circular logic not only makes zero sense, but it also stops discussion of whatever Person A was trying to bring up. Instead of an informative talk on a revolutionary television show, Person B has derailed the conversation into an attack of Person A for literally no reason whatsoever. If we could only communicate with gestures, it would be the physical equivalent of signaling with nonverbal gestures that person A loves the film they are currently watching, and then person B punches person A in the face for having that opinion.

When you call someone a hipster, you are refusing their individual identity and you are ignoring their capacity for choosing to do something simply because they really wanted to do something

Next time you see a person you would want to call a “hipster,” think about how they make a lot of decisions independent of being purposefully anti-mainstream. Stereotypically, hipsters are pedantic and snobbish, but applying that stereotype to people via calling them hipsters is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By attacking someone based upon their unique opinions and highly adaptive appreciation of culture, you’re not doing anyone any good.