What is a hipster?

A ByronCrawford.com Special Report
A few weeks ago Hashim, who's always on top of these things, posted something on his site about a group of people known as "hipsters" who have been throwing some rather interesting parties in New York City, where they're from.

Of course, I was intrigued and so I set out to learn more about them. But then I couldn't find very much useful information on them, most likely because this is a fairly new phenomenon that has yet to spread outside the self-proclaimed Center of the Universe.

So I spent the last week or so doing research on the hipster movement, which I present here as a resource. I may also try to have this added to the Wikipedia or, failing that, the Urban Dictionary.

HIPSTER FASHION

While there are, of course, many different facets to the hipster lifestyle, perhaps none is more important than the hipster sense of fashion. In fact, you could say the entire hipster lifestyle is based around fashion and you'd be more or less right.

This handy chart gives you an idea of the kind of clothes your average hipster might wear, but the key idea to keep in mind is irony. For example, a hipster who isn't a trucker and probably has never even visited a truck stop, let alone showered in one, might wear the kind of hat primarily worn by truckers.

That's irony.

Similarly, a hipster who doesn't consider himself racist (none of them do) might wear a t-shirt with a vaguely racist saying on it such as, "New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico," or, "Sweatshops: Another Day, Another Dollar."

HIPSTER MUSIC

With fashion being such a central tenet to the hipster ideology, it follows that it should also extend to the hipster taste in music.

A recent trend in hipster music has been to celebrate the absolute worst trends in black music, including R. Kelly's sad and bizarre "Trapped in the Closet" series and most Southern rap. While they pretend to enjoy this music, they're actually secretly mocking black people the same way they do poor white people and Mexicans.

HIPSTER PARTIES

What good is hipster fashion and hipster music if there's no place to show them off? Enter the hipster party.

Unlike a regular party, which might celebrate someone's birthday, hipster parties tend to have elaborate themes. For example, a group of hipsters in Williamsburg, New York throw a monthly party known as a "Kill Whitey" party, where non-racist (this is key) white people get together to mock the worst aspects of black popular culture.

Says the ringleader of the Kill Whitey parties, an individual known as Tha Pumpsta, "I'm throwing this party, and it's obvious that I'm white and I'm kind of appropriating this culture but in an ironic way, kinda poking fun at myself and my origins and white people in general. I'm trying to kill the whiteness inside."

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

A hipster, then, can generally be defined as a non-racist white person who enjoys nothing more than to mock black people, hispanics and poor white people, who can also be considered hispanic. But only in an ironic way, of course.