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Hip. What it used to be was something much different than is commonly referred to as hip today. The past 10 years at least has totally dissolved what hip used to be. Hipsters don’t exist anymore, even though there is a group of people that consider themselves hipsters or that other people call hipsters, they simply aren’t hipsters. It’s been going on for years and i’ve been struggling to find the culprit or the turning point. Was it the 90′s? The last real counter culture movie was Fight Club, however i feel that it was ahead of it’s time, and if released now might actually spurn a counter culture. However it merely reached cult status where people who desired the status quo to be splattered on the walls, wistfully and quietly hoped something would happen or someone would do something about it.
Hip was really defined in the beat generation, hip was someone who ‘got it’ like a secret society member you could pick out in a crowd – a secret scholar, artist, genius, player, socialite – someone who bucked the trends, set the trends or flat out refused to do anything by the social norm. It was the beginning of the counter culture. It spanned decades but seems to have died. I’ve considered the hippie culture as the death before, but i think it was premature, yes the hippie culture was the advent of the new ‘hipster class’ where there is a big social movement that yes is bucking the overall trend of society, however was a marketable group, a group that wannabe’s and hanger on’s would be able to wear a uniform and be a part of the group with out really getting ‘it’. However then came punk, and i’m talking about actual punk, not anything that claims to be punk past 1982. Punk died then friends. Anyone who claims to be punk (rich kids trying to join another group to be cool, and call themselves punk). The reason punk isn’t punk today? Punk was about smashing all the social norms in the face – it was about anarchy. Tell me what ‘punk’ kid you know wants that? Not in a society that accepts punks now – where tattoo’s, weird hair cuts, funny dress are as an accepted part of society as roided out Ed Hardy Douchebags. If you are apart of something that is accepted by society, than you are not counter culture, and you are not hip. But punk did die. Was that the death? In the 80′s the pressure to be cool (look wealthy) started to take off. But you still had the rebels, the undercurrent of hip, people who didn’t accept it, not because they were nerds, but because they were hip.
Hip is not wearing trendy clothes. Listening to trendy music. If everyone does it, it’s not hip. I laughed when someone told me once that they were shocked to see me dressed a certain way because it was hip – i laughed (cried inside) because it wasn’t hip, it was trendy. The two are as a far apart as left wing and right wing americans. Hip was being a part of a small group of people who got ‘it’.
What’s it? Well that’s the thing, if you don’t know what ‘it’ is, you ain’t hip. That was always the definition. Think of Kerouac, think how he’d be acting in this generation, you think he’d be a roided out douchebag? Or perhaps a neo-hipster wearing skinny jeans and pretending to be an artist? Doubtful.
I concede that one of the issues of not having a counter-culture anymore is our post modern world which incorporates everything and references everything ad nauseam. What can you do anymore that is different and unique – it’s all been done before right?
Game. Game seems to me as the only last vestige of counter culture. It’s something not everyone gets, not everyone knows about, not everyone does. Getting game, you get ‘it’. A social way of being that only members or people who know about ‘it’ know what you’re doing. Game is the new hip, the new counter culture. If everyone in the room thinks you look hip, it means you fit in, you look normal, you look status quo, you might look good – but you are not ‘hip’.
At some point hip changed to being with it. But the ‘it’ changed somewhere and i still don’t know where it died. If game is the new counter-culture, it too is being sucked up by the masses by websites like my own, contributing to the spreading of ‘it’ to the masses. It’s an endless cycle. And as much as Game may be the closest thing to the new counter culture, we are lacking in literature (outside of Roosh and others) that create a cultural shift, a change – we lack movies, actors, painters, musicians to change the way we look at the world, who changes the landscape of our culture. By definition game can’t do that, anyone who’s famous is just running fame game, and can’t influence non-famous guys to run the same.
So i’m reaching the end of this article and i’m left wondering if this mundane bland politically correct world will suffocate in it’s replication of boring sameness. Recycle everything and you are left with nothing new. A strong telling of the true state of decay our society is in. I figured the first decade in the new millennium would be this way, and that we wouldn’t have a generational imprint until the new decade awaiting us. I may be right, but i may be wrong. I however do not think i can endure another decade of the same. I’m bored, i thought i just had a.d.d. but it’s not that, it’s just that no one is interesting anymore, not in the least. I’m literally bored to death with most people in 20 minutes. It’s only the dying and out of date hipness in my brain that keeps me entertained with people these days, as internally i shake my head at them and mock them endlessly, while smiling and nodding on the surface.
