How to Live Without Irony (Hipster Irony)

New York Times ^ | November 17, 2012 | Christy Wimpole

[nickcarraway]

If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living.

The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things.

He is an easy target for mockery. However, scoffing at the hipster is only a diluted form of his own affliction. He is merely a symptom and the most extreme manifestation of ironic living. For many Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s — members of Generation Y, or Millennials — particularly middle-class Caucasians, irony is the primary mode with which daily life is dealt. One need only dwell in public space, virtual or concrete, to see how pervasive this phenomenon has become. Advertising, politics, fashion, television: almost every category of contemporary reality exhibits this will to irony.

Take, for example, an ad that calls itself an ad, makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It pre-emptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself. The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism.

[A_perfect_lady]

It reminds me of writing I've seen about the French aristocracy of the 18th century right before the Revolution. A Dangerous Liaisons sort of mentality. But you're right about kids. I never had any, and didn't really grow up till I became a teacher and had to deal with other people's children all day. It's been a revelation.

[Tax-chick]

Bill doesn’t wear glasses, but Andrew #2, the most fashion-forward of his friends, has wire rims. So does Tom, my other teenage son.

Andrew #1, the friend I like best, has a stupid beard like glued-on black sandpaper. It reminds me of “Pat the Bunny.”

[A_perfect_lady]

My students sometimes show up in black rimmed glasses. They have no glass in them. I’m guessing it’s an Irony thing.

[Tax-chick]

Now that’s weird.

[A_perfect_lady]

They’re 12, 13. Their goal in life is to make teachers stare at them, nonplussed.

[equaviator]

Irony is overrated.

[Tax-chick]

Oh, at that age, I can see it.

[Sherman Logan]

You’re right about the ancien regime analogy. Not all of the aristos were like that, but many of the trendsetters were. And of course, just as today, they could indulge in this pose because they were insulated from reality.

What is most interesting is what happened when the languidly sophisticated and uninvolved aristos ran into people who took things very seriously indeed. The insulation melted and many of the ironists lost their heads.

Serious people will invariably kick the crap out of ironic poseurs.

It is unfortunate that people so often confuse irony with humor. In actual fact I think irony is the deadly enemy of true humor.

[marron]

Most people drop the “student of cool” routine when they are forced to confront real life, and become committed to the life they are living.

Another thing: having the courage to be who you are openly without apology, and believing what you believe openly and again without apology renders the whole studied ironic pose meaningless.

There is a place for irony of course, as one tool among many. If its your whole tool bag, though, you probably aren’t building anything.

[virgil283]

You’re right...Yet his show wasn’t about baby boomers but young adults of the ninties, who “Unlike many other sitcoms, Seinfeld focused less on a plot-driven story than on minutiae, such as waiting in line at the movies, going out for dinner, buying a suit and dealing with the petty injustices of life.”
Baby boomers in the ninties had careers, wives, children and mortgages. No time for worring about imaginary things. Thats why I said it’s a generation about nothing....

[x]

Born in 1977, at the tail end of Generation X, I came of age in the 1990s, a decade that, bracketed neatly by two architectural crumblings — of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Twin Towers in 2001 — now seems relatively irony-free. The grunge movement was serious in its aesthetics and its attitude, with a combative stance against authority, which the punk movement had also embraced. In my perhaps over-nostalgic memory, feminism reached an unprecedented peak, environmentalist concerns gained widespread attention, questions of race were more openly addressed: all of these stirrings contained within them the same electricity and euphoria touching generations that witness a centennial or millennial changeover.

WTF? Seinfeld? Friends? Jon Stewart? Slackers? The '90s were ironic all over the place. 9/11 was supposed to be the end of all the Lettermanesque hipster ironizing.

But then, every past age is bound to look "simpler" and, I guess, less ironic, than the present -- especially to those who really don't remember those days very well.

[blueunicorn6]

Dear Christy; thank-you for sharing your thoughts with us. I haven’t been so underwhelmed since Geraldo Rivera found an empty bottle.

[radiohead]

A site I like to visit from time to time: http://diehipster.wordpress.com/

[a fool in paradise]

HIPPIES were hipsters too. They were the joiners, not the original freaks in the scene.

The saying is The Haight changed (the visitors took advantage of the free store) once the tide of hippies came to town.

[a fool in paradise]

The author is basically describing the predominant style of the current generation of college-educated, urban twenty-somethings, which is to basically laugh at everything and believe in nothing. The only antidote is an intrusion of cold hard reality into their otherwise sheltered lives, which I fear is imminent given the results of the recent election.

Post-modern irony died on 9-11-2001 but it came back like Carrie a few weeks later.

Recall when Dan Ratherbiased and David Letterman shed it tear for the days when we could just laugh again and talk about simple minded bullstalin.

[a fool in paradise]

"I WRITE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, YOU'VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF IT.

[a fool in paradise]

Take, for example, an ad that calls itself an ad, makes fun of its own format, and attempts to lure its target market to laugh at and with it. It pre-emptively acknowledges its own failure to accomplish anything meaningful. No attack can be set against it, as it has already conquered itself.

Stan Freberg was a master of the form in the 1950s and 1960s. This educrat needs to do more research.

Oh wait, to the writer he probably seems to be wearing his glasses "ironically".

[a fool in paradise]

Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention, all qualities more esteemed in earlier decades. Inwardness and narcissism now hold sway.

Obviously forgot when the coming-of-age baby boomers ushered in the ME generation.

And just like the hipsters of today, they did piles of cocaine.

[a fool in paradise]

I came of age in the 1990s, a decade that, bracketed neatly by two architectural crumblings — of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Twin Towers in 2001 — now seems relatively irony-free.

Does not know of what she speaks.

[a fool in paradise]

The grunge movement was serious in its aesthetics and its attitude, with a combative stance against authority

It was a combat against the crap the music industry (hello Warner Bros.) was trying to shove down audiences throats. The last time so many small labels were actually able to get radio airplay and chart and concert hall success. Oh, and WB bought percentage stakes of many of these sorts of labels so as to own a piece of whatever took.

By the mid-1990s though, the indie labels were out in the mass marketplace, replaced by boy bands and girl pop stars (Nsync and Britney Spears et al).