Trustafarian Heartbreak

[BrianL]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

Wait a second, how did we jump from trust fund kids to hipsters?

Many of the people labeled as hipsters:
- Grew up during the housing boom, dot com bust and growing global market. They have a general disdain for commercialism, displays of wealth, mass marketing, etc. They are aware that anything they do will be marketed back to them, which is an eternal frustration.
- Believe they are screwed by social security, the state of the economy, US policies, distribution of wealth, overpopulation, inflation, etc.
- Believe in living with a light footprint. Recycle, particularly clothes which are usually second hand. Ride bicycles. Garden.
- Are accepting of race and sexuality, though distrust people who are older due to the values and biases they are more likely to have.
- Value simple education and simple pleasures over expensive luxuries, preferring to work manual labor jobs that aren't all consuming with respect to time.
- Have known only times when art was cheap and easy to produce. Self expression is valued as a ways of expressing themselves in a 'genuine' (ie not pushed/marketed by someone else) way.

Now, there are definitely ugly bits to the culture - and the fact that it became a culture at all runs against the underlying values - but it seems like some of the values aren't entirely out of line with people here. The greatest mismatch is likely the value in hard work and investing in the future. I think a lot of young people simply that the world is getting worse and there isn't much they can do as individuals to prepare for it starting from a standstill.

[jk]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

i'm more interested in the implications for real estate. my [self-supporting] son and his 2 roommates on the lower east side of manhattan just negotiated an 11% REDUCTION in rent when their lease came up for renewal.

[Chomsky]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

i'm more interested in the implications for real estate. my [self-supporting] son and his 2 roommates on the lower east side of manhattan just negotiated an 11% REDUCTION in rent when their lease came up for renewal.

This has been happening in every neighborhood, across the board. I know a number of people who have negotiated 10% or so rent reductions in 2009.

[ASH]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

******* piece of shit hipsters do not work for living.

Chomsky knows who and what I'm talking about.

I hate to put it this way, but one of the *good* outcomes of this economic tsunami is the destruction of the hipster sub - (non) culture, because again by definition, they are not self sustaining. They are leeches.

More on hipsters:


"The people you are referring to are hipsters. They walk slowly because they've got no place to be, man!"

[Slimprofits]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

Because BrianL, trust funders in Williamsburg ARE the current hipsters.

The leeches that we're talking about adopted hipsterdom from the people that you say are hipsters but actually work for a living instead of depending on a trust fund or some other such infusion of support from their parents while pretending to be starving artists with a conscience that identify with real people.

[oddlots]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

This is a funny thread. Resentment is not very becoming.

I liked what McInnes had to say in that Adbusters article:

"I’ve always found that word ["hipster"] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable," he says. "I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda."

(His pieces in Vice were occasionally laugh-out loud funny and also pure, silly trash that didn't pretend to be anything else. He can write.)

I live off Queen West in Toronto and yeah I can't stand the "scene," mostly because I feel like a false economy has been feeding a false and shallow sense of importance into the arts for years. It's the froth that takes itself for the wave. The additional fact that those I know somewhat in the scene have no interest in economics at the present, fascinating juncture further sours me on their company.

But I also know resentment is kind of a dead end. (How "productive" are those that criticize really?)

Let the kids have their fun. Times will be tough for them soon enough.

[rjwjr]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

There are going to be a lot of people of all ages asking themselves, "WTF just happened to me?" over the next few years.

Answer: Reality (or, maybe it would be more accurate to say Realty).

[cjppjc]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

Till the end of time, there will be some kind of counter culture youth thingy.

[allenjs]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

Because BrianL, trust funders in Williamsburg ARE the current hipsters.

The leeches that we're talking about adopted hipsterdom from the people that you say are hipsters but actually work for a living instead of depending on a trust fund or some other such infusion of support from their parents while pretending to be starving artists with a conscience that identify with real people.

The trust fund babies have always been the hipsters. The silly part of the article was the author's insinuation that this is something that the "West" is arriving at and exporting. America is the last place on earth to have become infested with this type of person, because we have only recently achieved the level of wealth disparity, accumulation of wealth in such large isolated enclaves, and societal acceptance of lettings one's children suck off the teats of the parents long past the age of adulthood.

These "hipsters" are exactly what you see in the central square at Suzhou, or the young adults known as QiRenEr in Beijing for many generations, and Britian knows a thing or two about the indolent "artistic" children of the elite.

As you can tell from the comments to the article (all the comments are hilarious, BTW), these kids are self-absorbed and obsessed with identity, while simultaneously being terrified of the real world. They simply have never been forced to grow up.

You get the exact same kind of comments when you ask about the hundreds of very fashionable 20-somethings hanging out in the middle of a weekday smoking, talking, and looking fantastic in towns like Suzhou. You ask, "why don't you have jobs?" They say, "Things in China are too competitive, and the only jobs the government assigned us are things that are beneath us, and our parents have money, so why should we work?" You ask, "Why don't you start a business?", they say, "Because it's dog-eat-dog here, and someone who is hungrier would undercut me". You say, "Why not go to school and learn something, or experiment with things, or invent something?" ... I ask, "Why don't you volunteer your time and help the poor, or teach kids?"

I mean, if you have the security of wealthy parents, that would imply that you could take bigger risks and potentially produce more value, right? Wrong, apparently.

This has nothing to do with schandenfraude. The issue here is that these kids represent a *massive* loss of productive potential in society. They should be the best and brightest, and contributing the most. But they piss it away. And they are obsessed with protecting their fragile egos. The Williamsburg hipsters won't even admit that their life is subsidized by daddy. At least the Brits and Chinese never had *those* hang-ups.

[Jay]

Re: Trustafarian Heartbreak

This has nothing to do with schandenfraude. The issue here is that these kids represent a *massive* loss of productive potential in society. They should be the best and brightest, and contributing the most. But they piss it away. And they are obsessed with protecting their fragile egos. The Williamsburg hipsters won't even admit that their life is subsidized by daddy. At least the Brits and Chinese never had *those* hang-ups.

Lack of productivity is an economic ramification of the hipster lifestyle, schadenfraude is the pleasure derived from their misfortune. Both are contained in the thread, schadenfraude is an emotion emanating from the poster in what is actually a social comparison, lack of productivity is an economic observation. Schadenfraude isn't the most becoming attribute, but most of it is tongue-in-cheek here.