It’s Time to Retire “Hipster”

We’re way past peak hipster but the media is still beating up on them; they love easy targets.

Now they’re being blamed for the absence of inexpensive groceries in gentrifying communities. The “Depressing Truth about Hipster Food Towns” screams the headline at Mother Jones.

They are also apparently to blame for the escalating prices of bones due to the obsession with bone broth, according to NPR’s The Salt.

The term hipster of course is largely meaningless. Back in the day it was a term of praise identifying beat poets and jazz musicians on the cutting edge of the counter-culture. More recently, anyone under 30 sporting a beard and showing some curiosity about culture can be so labeled. Today, apparently if you shop at Whole Foods or enjoy the mouth feel of denatured collagen you are a hipster. I guess my grandmother was a hipster.

Could the term be any more vacuous? It’s time to send it into retirement to join “yuppie” and “hepcat”.