So why was it uniquely hated? Was it just another “everything millennials do is bad” thing? Was it just reactionaries associating them with “muh latte sipping liberal elites”?
Dudes just wanted to dress like 40s farmers. These trends rotate like every 20 years, so why were hipsters in particular hated?
(I have to admit I was guilty of joining in making fun of it too when I was younger, peer pressure is a fuck)
I agree, but you could also say that about any aesthetic though, including cottagecore. We don’t tend to afford the same hate to the hollow aesthetic trends today that we did when hipsters were a thing
Except maybe looksmaxxing?
I referred to it as a trend before, but really I think of hipster as a subculture comparable to punk or hippie. As a subculture, it has to be evaluated on its own terms. There is a parallel between hipsters and hippies, as the name implies, but punk is a whole different thing.
A mere trend doesn’t go beyond aesthetic; there is no ideology to high-rise pants or plimsolls, although both of those aesthetics might be used by this or that subculture. Aesthetics wax and wane over the years (largely driven by corporate fast fashion, but that’s another discussion) but that movement is perpendicular to culture and ideology as such.
Being a hipster is the ideology of being a hipster, not just the aesthetic preference for thick-frame glasses and beanies. It was the rejection of the mainstream by a particular demographic, largely white urban/suburban youths, and replacing that with a distorted image of the imperial periphery. The periphery isn’t only geographical; it can include neglected communities inside the core itself, such as hillbillies and indigenous tribes. In a way, it continues a long history of psychological fixation by the privileged classes upon the underclasses. They have always been fascinated about life outside the garden, and that fascination manifests in imitation.
So what you’re saying is every rejection of capitalism becomes consumed by capitalism
The workers themselves hold a contradictory consciousness, on the one hand informed by their class interest as workers, on the other hand tainted by bourgeois ideology and some minor privileges as imperial core residents. Hence you have contradictory subcultures, confused in their lashing against the conditions of the working class.
The task of communists is to raise the level of consciousness such that the working class can clearly process their own conditions, in order to overcome them.
I think that’s mostly down to hipsters existing back when there was still somewhat of a monoculture. Nowadays everything’s so fractal that nobody even knows what to hate on.