Hipsters: Subculture is dead

I am tired of talking about hipsters. This is a group whose dress, attitude, and taste have been adopted by so many people that it can not even be considered a subculture anymore. This is ironic, because hipsters pride themselves on being separated from the mainstream. However, their presence has been so documented that it has now become mainstream. Hipster clothing is mass-produced by stores like Anthropology, Free People, and Urban Outfitters. Hipster styles can be found in magazines, chain stores, and almost everywhere I look. There is even a handbook on how to be a hipster. Everyone is a hipster nowadays. Even denying that you are a hipster can be a form of hipster-ism. 

This video sums up the history and codes of being a hipster quite nicely. It also presents a paradox to of being a hipster nowadays:

Hipsters are definitely not a subculture, though they used to be. In class, we talked about how resistance and struggle are key in forming subcultures. For example, each British youth subculture was subversive to what was considered 'normal'. However, there is nothing in hipster style, attitude, or taste which "contradicts the myth of consensus" (as put by Dick Hebdige in Subculture)--the myth of consensus being the codes of the dominant hegemony (e.g. the middle class). 

 

From Key themes in Media Theory by Dan Laughey:

Subcultures operate through a system of oppositional codes that offend the majority, threaten the status quo and contradict the 'myth of consensus' suggested by dominant codes (Hebdige 1979: 18)

Laughey defines a subculture as "an underground set of practices -- usually working-class in character -- that try to resist surveillance by the dominant culture (e.g. police) as well as incorporation into mainstream culture. A subculture ceases to exist when it becomes incorporated, manufactured and packaged by commercial interests.

If this picture below presents accepted objects and style of a hipster...

  Let's see how well Urban Outfitters follow it:

Well, we've got the blazer, the cuffed pants, and white converse (or white shoes that look like converse). And that's just one picture from the fall men's catalog.

Part of why hipsters became incorporated into the mainstream is because of the internet and media. The video above cites the creation of hipster-parody memes which really brought hipsters to the attention of the general public.

Illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme, who just recently published The Unknown Hipster Diaries (which was compiled from his blog titled The Unknown Hipster) says, "subculture is dead. In this age, subcultures become documented immediately and therefore are mainstream instantly."

I agree that the presence of Reddit, Tumblr, and Lookbook have created outlets to document the rise of any subculture. The more interconnected we become, the faster subcultures become incorporated into the mainstream, and the harder it gets to create subversion. To preserve subculture then, will be to avoid media exposure.