Obitchuary: Hipsters

By Maggie Quigley 2006-Present

Cause of Death: Urban Outfitters

With their uncanny knack for discovering strange trends before they were trendy and their habit of dismissing anything conventional with an air of ridicule and condescension, hipsters were truly one- of-a-kind.

In their prime, these young people strived to defy the clichés of a society too obsessed with brand names and mindless pop culture. They combatted the norm by inventing their own ironic brand of cynicism, and ripped clothes that even homeless people would deem shabby.

In their most organic form, hipsters dressed in grungy clothes, drank only Pabst Blue Ribbon, and scoffed at the brainwashed masses. Clad in ironically retro screen-printed T-shirts and flannels, they shivered in small studio apartments in the “bad part of town.” Slowly, to their collective horror, people began to idolize these reluctant icons of cool. Wannabes copied their (complete lack of) style and clamored to listen to their underground music. As the hipsters recoiled in fear, stores like Urban Outfitters made it easy for every snot-nosed teenager without a real identity to copy their lifestyle. And so it went. The original hipster died a slow and painful death, living out every true hipster’s biggest fear: mass appeal.

What originally began as a submersive culture quickly became a source of mockery for the uninformed. It’s understood that a true hipster could never admit to being a hipster, so the pioneers of “hip” have slunk back underground, never to be found again.

We gather today to mourn the loss of the original hipsters—beaten to death by anyone who misused the word “ironic” or purchase a brand new flannel and claimed it was vintage. Say goodbye to the unintentionally awesome generation of trendsetters. They knew about their death way before you did.