How is education and class relevant? You don't have to be stuffing flowers into rifles or smoking on the back step of your high school in goth makeup to be considered part of a counterculture group. Maybe they don't seem counterculture if you're surrounded by them. Many contemporary hipsters try to confute the fact that they are hipsters and claim that hipsters are not a counterculture group. Maybe they're right in a way. As more people adopt the style, its uniqueness fades away. But the self-denial I've seen is akin to, if not as stark as, a dude specifically wearing women's clothing and then denying that he's a transvestite, even as the two have different cultural significance.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
a) hipsters are not counter-culture. they are bourgeois. middle-class. well-educated. they consume just like anyone else. hipsterism is a fashion-style or lifestyle choice, if anything, but it certainly is not 'counter-culture'. they're not anarchists living on a commune. occupy wall street was not a 'counter-culture', it was a protest by the established bourgeois middle-class against the ruling class. if anything, they are progressives and reformists, in the liberal bourgeois tradition.
b) calling someone a douche without having met them because of the way they look is exactly the same bias as hating a black person because he has black skin. whether or not you 'choose' it is irrelevant; the judgement is one made and performed on your behalf, not the object's. it reveals only your own prejudice. so when roc posts a bunch of images saying hateful things about hipsters, or calling them "stupid" or somesuch, just because of how they dress, i am merely reflecting the same line of thought about the way he looks. it's lazy and easy. never claimed it was smart, clever... or correct (it's far from correct). but i'm just mirroring his behaviour.
The underlying point to my recent posts here is that you're comparing people poking fun at a lifestyle choice to people poking fun at something you have no control over: race. You brought a racial epithet into that discussion as a way over-the-top counter to him making fun of hipsters. From a third-party perspective, I would call that a mistake even if you think you were right in the matter and convince everyone that you aren't a racist. Personally, I don't think you are one either. I'm not either, but I wouldn't be eager to give people material so I had to desperately rail against the accusation and disprove it.
