Hardcore Hipster

This consumer trend has its origins in the underground music genres of metal and punk rock. Once the preferred forms of expression of a generation frustrated with and rebelling from society, now more commonly associated with the trivial preoccupations of the young bourgeois. They roam together in large groups photographically documenting their every movement and express their unending dissatisfaction with life and the world through online communities. This hipster can be typically spotted with any combination of body piercings, strange hair cuts, black themed clothing, heavy eye-makeup, and a dour expression. Look for the Hot Topic tags invariably hanging from one of their 20 articles of clothing to identify them.

Earthy Hipster

This hipster looks to disguise their consumer preoccupations with more earth-friendly trends. Their watered-down views can be traced back to the original mindset of what was once a counter-culture by listening to the music of Bob Marley, who at one time was the voice of this revolutionary sect. Although their clothing style was originally the mark of creative lower-class seamstresses and tailors who eschewed the more common, more expensive popular brands, it is now the mark of “refined taste” as it now has its very own designer name (Valija Gitana) with price tags that only the privileged can match. What was once the every-day clothing of a people who shared ideals rooted in peace, closeness with nature and solidarity of man, has become the party-clothes of the fashion divas.

The Revolutionary

Evolving from a bloody history of revolutions in South and Central America, Cuba and Chine, this hipster is possibly the most acute personification of irony in present times. Typified by the untrimmed beards and long hair hailing back to those of militant revolutionaries in the 60s and 70s, liberal use of red arm bands and five pointed stars, heavy combat jackets, and shirts emblazoned with the face of the dead Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. If ever there was a prostitution of a set of ideals, this certainly is it. Although it seems painfully ludicrous, these young bourgeois remain ignorant to the point that they don’t even realize that they contradict themselves. Instead of adhering to the communist anti-upper class anti-consumerism ideals that el Che has come to symbolize, they remain blind to the fact that they are the people who these movements aim to educate and that the owners of the factories that churn out identical shirts every minute are the people who these movements aim to destroy. A perfect example of what was once a counter-culture being mutated into another corporate venture.