Chance has it that you have caught yourself singing a verse or two of the catchy, all singing, all dancing YouTube sensation, “Being a Dickhead’s Cool”. The video hit the internet last autumn and is the latest addition to a popular canon of online material poking fun at London’s most fashion conscious tribe – the hipster.
Urban Dictionary says a hipster is an individual “who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool”. For websites such as Hackney Hipster Hate, Look at this Fucking Hipster, and Things Hipsters Hate, that definition would also include anyone who owns a fixie bike, a pair of lensless glasses, eats very little and sports a silly haircut.
Across the pond, hipster hating has been around for some time. One of the first hipster hate websites to appear was Die Hispter, which streams from South Brooklyn, New York. It appeared in 2009, but was taken down when the site administrator realised you could run blogs for free – a trick he learned from hipsters.
“I wish I was as savvy as hipsters – who discovered blogs, the internet, and everything you see around you – and not just a dumb Brooklyn townie,” he admits.
The bile that appears on the website is bracing. Regular “hipster beating” posts describe humiliating trendy victims: “Today, I saw a Pinocchio-bodied, cupcake blogging, urban beekeeper… So I cracked him in the jaw so fucking hard that his teeth turned into baby powder.” He says they are purely comic, but could also be a way of venting frustration.
But the beef runs deeper than appearance: “Aside from the fact that I hate seeing adults try so hard to be cool, the worst thing about hipsters is they are the sole reason why rents have doubled and tripled in Brooklyn over the last decade.
“Hardly any hipsters really ‘work’. They do gigs. They assist. They’re almost always part time.”
Colin Munro Seymour, who appears in the “Being a Dickhead’s Cool” video along with “one million” of his friends does not believe that hipster hate in the UK stems from their vague, unrealistic occupations, or the fact that they are state-subsidised students.
“In Montreal, where I’m from, hipsters have day jobs they don’t like. They might work in a cafe or a shop, but they consider their real role to be an artist. In London you can’t exist unless you’re driven.”
Colin works for Mark Fast, one of Hackney’s most exciting young designers. So for him, work and the hipster aesthetic are intertwined – a feature that defines London’s creative industries.
“I love playing dress up every day. If you’re someone who believes in freedom of expression, it seems unlikely you’re going to want to tone that down. I could never see myself working in the City, for example.”
Perhaps it’s a little ironic that a student makes one half of the duo The Grand Spectacular who created and performed “Being a Dickhead’s Cool.”
Rueben, 23, studies medicine in Brighton but visits east London regularly, although he’s no hipster.
“The song was meant to be a little bit of fun based on the people we saw there. I would never think of their style as cool but I never wanted it to be a direct insult.”
Rueben was unaware of the video’s impact until he hosted a party in Shoreditch last month in honour of the song where everyone came dressed as a hipster. He couldn’t tell who was a genuine hipster and who wasn’t. The joke had come full circle.
Now Rueben has been asked to gig at that great hipster mecca – Glastonbury. “I said to the guy, ‘are you sure? Are you absolutely sure about that?’”
