Hipster rising and the trickle-down effect: Was Rizal a hipster?

If high-schoolers are catching on, it must be legit.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard the joke before: “So a hipster walks into an obscure bar you’ve never heard of…”

And that, my friends, sums up perhaps the entire premise of what it means to be a hipster. No adjoining sentence clause needed.

It’s funny how articles in the US have proclaimed the death of the hipster when, way over here, hipsterism seems to have just come into full swing. But you know what they say: When America sneezes, the Philippines catches a cold.

Incidentally, the first time I ever heard of the term “hipster” was last year, from a friend remarking on a pair of plastic neon wayfarers that another friend was wearing. The conversation, as I fondly recall, went something like this:

Friend 1: Dude, why are you wearing those shades? What a hipster. It’s raining, man.

Friend 2: Hater. It’s supposed to be ironic, man.

At the time, I thought it was just conversational banter between guys. You know, like how you’d fondly call your best friend any manner of cuss words just to show you cared. Then I started hearing the term being used on me, every time I’d pass by my org’s tambayan sipping a cup of Moonleaf milk tea. I’d shrug, settle in beside an orgmate, and continue to sip.

Even my family was catching on. When confronting them one day about the apparently new term known as “hipster,” my 14-year-old cousin jumps up and says, “I know it! It’s a clique on this iPhone app called ‘Social Girl.’” The hipster actually qualified as a high school clique? Practically anything absorbed by the world of high school meant it had to be in. This I had to see.

Social Girl is a simple enough app, a sterling example of how utterly thought-provoking gaming is today. Basically, the goal is to climb the social ladders of five cliques — rocker, sporty, girly, preppy, and hipster — and become the epitome of popularity and fashion, all while creating the virtual boyfriend of your dreams. Surprisingly, the game was very thorough.

Behold the lines falling from the mouths of the hipster clique (virtual or otherwise):

“I only drink artisan fair-trade coffee.”

“This café is too mainstream.”

“My favorite font is Helvetica.”

“I liked the new Balderlash album before it became cool.”

“Fake vintage is the new real vintage.”

“I’m obviously not a hipster.”

Now honestly, I can imagine myself saying a variation of these in real life and not think of myself as a hipster. Lined up this way, though, you notice how the subtext more or less comes into a pattern of its own. Anti-mainstream? Bohemian cool? Someone who listens to bands you’ve never heard of?

But I wanted a more direct explanation before consulting Google. So I asked another friend, who presented me with this:

Friend 3: You know how Coke has Coke Lite?

Me: Uh-huh.

He’s wearing the shades ironically.

Friend 3: Well, a hipster would be geek-lite to the geek. 

Me: Uh-huh.

Friend 3: Cubao X without Mogwai and its invasion by the rich kids!

Me: …

Friend 3: You know, a rehash of a little bit of everything from every decade. Counter-culture proponents? Pa-cool?

Ah.

Well, what got me in the end was his bit about hipsterism being defined by a little bit of everything from every significant cultural movement. Mod, punk, hippie… the works.

Being a hipster (though of course you’d never admit it to yourself) meant dipping your toes in the various pools of authenticity which have defined other subcultures, and then coming out with an identity so… mangled, that it reads empty.

I’d like to think of the hipster as the postmodern condition of our youth today. A copy of a copy of a copy; all bark and no bite. Liberal when it comes to politics, bourgeois in its background and fashion sensibilities, a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. At the end of the day, where is the commitment and political bite? And the hipster can’t possibly be ironic, because the irony is lost in translation.

They are mystically un-representable, and yet, somehow, they are. So let’s think metaphorically: Coke-lite.

The great Jose Rizal just turned 151 this week, and I have to wonder if he was a hipster; with his progressive views and vast knowledge pool, effortlessly suave fashion sense and ironic use of the Spanish language against Spain. Ah, whatever. Hipster Rizal was cool before you ever were.