Hipster Hate

Back in October, my roommate told me to watch the show Portlandia. I only knew that Fred Armisen from SNL was on it, but other than that, I really was clueless what the premise of the show was. Well, I decided to watch the first few episodes with him and the show opened my eyes to a whole new subculture that was being parodied, hipsters. Apparently, Portland, Oregon is the #1 hotspot for hipsters, something we’ve discussed in class. While I’m not the kind of guy who judges people for their tastes in clothing, music, food, etc, I do find the hipster movement to be somewhat of a trend perpetually shifting. Once there is a particular band that “sells out” or goes “mainstream,” then hipsters seem to immediately drop the band and movie on to something new. I find Portlandia not only parodies this culture, but also the people who view them so intolerantly. It’s a shame that we feel we have to negatively critique hipsters. This form of discrimination we seem to have towards them is not an issue of race, gender, class, or sexual preferences, but rather our perception of them having snobby and condescending attitudes. I hope no one actually takes offense to Portlandia’s style of comedy, because frankly, making fun of hipsters comes across as completely harmless. Besides, hating on hipsters isn’t “cool” anymore.