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So here goes Generation Y: an over-fed, over-stimulated, hyper-alert, politically correct amalgamation of currently young people, the first to spend the entirety of their lives infiltrated and exploited by the media. Within this generation lies an intriguing subculture of "individuals" who can only be described as the Hipster: a person who walks among the masses in daily life but does not associate his or herself with the norm, shunning every day mainstream ideals for cutting-edge obscurity. Once a Hipster trend goes public, it is immediately shunned; there are no main-stream mindless followers in this group.
The eclectic Hipster finds his/her tastes and interest gravitating away from the everyday mainstream culture and into the subculture of their creation. You can find them in every town. These groups of teenagers (who are quickly stumbling into young adulthood) have hangouts that are attributed to the "scene," including music, books, clothing, and even food choices. In accordance with their penchant for visually stimulating concerts and a radically divergent style of dress, their repartee is continuously witty and they humor is scathingly dry.
To be a hipster is to be in a state of continual social awareness and subsequent awkwardness. It's perfectly fine to be a nerd, so long as you acknowledge the fact. In a nod towards this movement, they value education and display this tendency in their speech patterns and in their highly pseudo-intellectual dialogues. After all, name dropping is the hipster's favorite sport.
There is no question that this movement is unique to Generation Y in its nature, but at its core, it is simply a melting-pot of previous social revolutionary movements of the not-so distant past. Pleasing elements from the modern (mod), punk, hippie, and certainly more alternative cultures are all wedded under the hipster label. Unquestionably obsessed with its individualism, this movement is at its most basic level a copy-cat of its precursors. With all of its pretentiousness, this movement does find humor in its banality and is inevitably harmless. For instance, this article could be considered the completely hipster thing to do. In truth, with its tenants of health, environmental, and political consciousness it could be argued that the Hipster is one of the best (or at least most interesting) thing to happen to America's youth in a long (significant-to-my-age-bracket) time.
