Feb

Since When Is It Hip to Be Sad?

As my friend Maya and I were laughing over the pitch-perfect captions on Unhappy Hipsters, I wondered how Dwell Magazine (where most of the photos come from) could not know that they were selling people images of emotional isolation. “How can they believe this lifestyle is something lust-worthy?” I asked. Or was Dwell actually deconstructing modern life with a sly wink, and Unhappy Hipsters just happened to be in on the joke?

“I don’t think so,” said Maya. “I think it’s hip to be sad.”

Which blew my mind a little.

I mean, I know we’re still swimming in a post-grunge culture. I know “fun” died with the ’80s, and that I shouldn’t be surprised when depression becomes a national pastime. But maybe that’s why I was so startled by this possibility.

I always thought hipsters were supposed to be counter-culture.

If so, what are they doing spending all their time being navel-gazing fucks? That’s what the rest of the world is doing! When the word of the day is emotional desolation, shouldn’t hipsters be the ones having dirty, sexy, colorful, senses-shattering, mouth-watering, eye-boggling fun? How else are we supposed to know what the mainstream is doing wrong?

Or is self-fascination the kind of cultural black hole you just can’t pull back from? Did the hipsters go too far, with their wheels greased by decades of Nirvana, The Killers and The Cure, to be able to switch gears and head towards the light? Have we lost our anti-establishment bellwether to the seductive embrace of Room & Board?

If so, we might be really fucked.

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Tags: America, bullshit, perception, pop culture, Sociology

Posted by Justin Sociology Subscribe to RSS feed

Whitney

I think what it's hip to be is cynical and dismissive and we've started to treat the words Hope and Idealism as pejoratives and that's the heart of the problem. Since Hope was a big thing in the election, people started to think Hope and Help were actually the same thing. Yet the difference between Idealism and mere inspiration is that Idealists know their target, and they put everything into trying to get there. It can make them a little angry and outraged from time to time, but they have a sense of urgency. I hope the idealism we start out with doesn't really go away- but instead, we learn how to work with what we've got to move forward to where we want to be, and stop "wishing" that magically someone will show up and solve the problem for us instead.
People get sad when they get disillusioned, which means realizing that getting to where you want to go is gonna be hard and no one else will do it for you. But that's when we have to dig in and start making change happen, rather than just giving up and walking away.

Evan

Hipster truly is the new Yuppie.

Katrina Miller

I think "counter-culture" is becoming the new mainstream. I know, that's an oxymoron, but I think it's true. It's "cool" to be a nerd, Apple (Think Different!) is now in everyone's pocket, and "Hipster" is the new Yuppie.

Maybe it's just February getting to me, but I sure could use to replace all those drab muted blues and browns and brushed steel, with Reds, and Oranges, and sparkles and enough bling to choke a unicorn.

x_fairy_x

It's not hip to be sad.

It seems the box is getting smaller and smaller, and instead of getting out, they're squeezing themselves to fit in.