Hip or Faux?

For some reason I've been thinking, and reading, a lot about hipsters lately. I feel like there is a shift afoot that is turning the tide against hipsters. Websites mocking them are leading to book deals, articles are portending their demise, and they even have a new name, "fauxhemians."

Fauxhemians. Something about that word seems so right to me. It never struck me that these hipsters were, in fact, hip. Hipsters tended to remind me of those kids in high school who wore all black to show just how outside the mainstream they were. I never believed it was about outsiderism as much as it was about blending in with their chosen crowd.

I think the same about fauxhemians. I think the tide has turned against the fauxhemian because we are starting to see that they are not glamorous or people who should be idolized, but rather a large group of people who, in the search for authenticity, have become the most inauthentic, faux, people imaginable. Nothing grates on Americans' nerves more than hypocrisy and I see hipsters as incredibly hypocritical at times.

Let's just analyze one hipster in the picture above. Notice the various elements of feigned authenticity - the ironic mustache modeled after the idea of real Americans such as cops; the PBR symbolizing a shared camaraderie with the underclass who want strong, cheap beer after a hard day's work (something a hipster probably has never put in); the simple v neck t shirt hearkening back to a bygone era of simpler fashion and a simpler way of life. Of of these things grate on us on a visceral level because when you have commercialized and gentrified the most simple and previously authentic ideas and styles, what is left to corrupt? So now we no longer lovingly refer to this merry band of misfits as hipsters and look to them to guide our fashion choices, but instead look upon them with disdain as nothing more than underemployed slacker fauxhemians, and perhaps that is a good thing.