I agree more with the likes of Ted Gioia, for two main reasons: the music is definitely there (yet it's difficult enough to find, to the point that you and others can't seem to find it) and AI isn't economically feasible beyond a not so large scale. But maybe it's just that I don't live in the US. We'll see
I take umbridge with the claim that the 2000s "Hipster" movement was about aesthetics over values when it was a foundationlly anti-consunerist movement. Living in warehouses in "undesireable" neighborhoods, wearing thrift store clothes, using easy-to repair "fixie" bikes for transportation, saving vinyl records from the dumpster, drinking "unpretentious" (lol in 2025) blue-collar beer. It was only later (when the term hipster was coined in an effort to equate anticonsumerist habits as pompus and holier-than-thou) that these things became an aesthetic.
OUTSIDE OF THAT NICKPICK this was a thought provoking piece (as always)!
But an anti-consumerist lifestyle (which is what you seem to be describing) is an oxymoron, because lifestyles are precisely what consumers are sold today. So I’d argue that as soon as a sentiment of “anti-consumerism” became a “movement” it betrayed itself, and I’d wager that the paradoxical aspect of the hipster stemming from this contradiction was with him from the beginning
The thing is, everything you listed is what me and my punk friends were already doing in the '90s. And while it always kind of felt like we were larping— at least relative to those who came before— that's exactly why we thought this all the more so of those who came after.
So while I agree it was only later that these things became about aesthetics, that "later" period— for me— was the '00s indie rock scene.
I wonder about the extent to which these different "scenes" are defined as much by common trends as by conflicts between groups. Like what you say about the AM/FM split: the hippies had to have an establishment (Sinatra crooning) to rebel against, the scenesters had to have normies. Should the frame of analysis stop at the singular cultural group/trend, or should it be the pair -- would you have the Silent Majority people in 68 without the Woodstock people, and vice versa?
In a more specific sense, I think of stuff like the 70s conflict between Language poetry and lyric-confessional poetry. Maybe it's more like each era brings in a different polarity, a different spectrum that people slot themselves into. Idk. Thank you for mentioning my videos! Cool post.
Yes. Which makes the right wing polarization of social, alongside the looming TikTok ban, that much more fertile of a breeding ground for a real counterculture. This insistence that the Internet is run by right wing Gen Z bros is so hilariously off base, it's kind of fun to stand back and watch.
You write as if poor and working class people don't exist. When people refer to "Gen Z" they are always talking about a tiny minority of upper middle class college students, never about the majority of Gen Z kids dealing with adult challenges, like finding a good paying job without going into student loan debt, affording a place to live outside their parents' home, and supporting children that arrived unexpectedly that they didn't have the heart to abort.
Most people have a solid moral compass and understand that we all have a right to defend ourselves from violent terrorists (Hamas) and violent criminals (Jordan Neely). We don't live in our heads because we can't afford to; we need to deal with biology and all of the physical vulnerability that comes with it.
Most of us can't afford to worry about vibes. We worry instead about the price of eggs, and gas, and our vulnerability to crime, and to immigrants that may undercut our wages and mean us and our loved ones harm.
Sorry if that makes us backward non-vibing plebes, but there it is.
We support Israel because we support the right of people to defend themselves from terrorists; we support increased police protection and harsher sentences for criminals because we can't afford to live in low crime neighborhoods; we support stronger borders because we can't compete with undocumented immigrants for blue collar jobs. We oppose males being housed in female prisons because it's our loved ones who end up incarcerated, not yours.
The only "vibe shift" that's occurred is that those of us who typically scream into the wind without being heard got a small bit of recognition in November. But that recognition will be smothered under pompous dismissals of our concerns by Blue urbanites who live in their heads then agonize over the replacement of humans with machines. You've been there for years; it's the rest of us who've been resisting. And we will not lose.
I enjoyed the article and really appreciated the break down and descriptions for the eras. Having listened to Martyr Made podcasts about the 60s and 70s, something I am not picking up here is the level of direct activism, cult of personality, and sheer violence.
My view is today's youth are soft on a personal level that wasnt the case in decades past. Where terrorism and use of acutal brutal violence is predominantly governed by the state against its own people or those of other cultural masses is a given but seemingly in the past individuals were unafraid to get down and dirty using guerilla tactics to physcially push back against the states hegemony of violence.
Of course, there are notable stand outs in today's socio-politicoal landscape, however most of it seems to me to be larger scale mob-based action. Whether peaceable or violent it's collectivist; a lot less ideologically driven inter-personal violence occurs now. The myth or mystique of the one individuals actions changing the world I think has passed, and that in itself may mark and end of an era or define the emergence out of the gap, perhaps?
Again, great peice, thought provoking and engaging, thoroughly enjoyed it.
A dizzying synopsis. Still trying to find my way out of the overwhelming impotence the moment carries. Appreciate the work.
I agree more with the likes of Ted Gioia, for two main reasons: the music is definitely there (yet it's difficult enough to find, to the point that you and others can't seem to find it) and AI isn't economically feasible beyond a not so large scale. But maybe it's just that I don't live in the US. We'll see
I hope they are right
Incredible analysis.
I take umbridge with the claim that the 2000s "Hipster" movement was about aesthetics over values when it was a foundationlly anti-consunerist movement. Living in warehouses in "undesireable" neighborhoods, wearing thrift store clothes, using easy-to repair "fixie" bikes for transportation, saving vinyl records from the dumpster, drinking "unpretentious" (lol in 2025) blue-collar beer. It was only later (when the term hipster was coined in an effort to equate anticonsumerist habits as pompus and holier-than-thou) that these things became an aesthetic.
OUTSIDE OF THAT NICKPICK this was a thought provoking piece (as always)!
But an anti-consumerist lifestyle (which is what you seem to be describing) is an oxymoron, because lifestyles are precisely what consumers are sold today. So I’d argue that as soon as a sentiment of “anti-consumerism” became a “movement” it betrayed itself, and I’d wager that the paradoxical aspect of the hipster stemming from this contradiction was with him from the beginning
nah bro
The thing is, everything you listed is what me and my punk friends were already doing in the '90s. And while it always kind of felt like we were larping— at least relative to those who came before— that's exactly why we thought this all the more so of those who came after.
So while I agree it was only later that these things became about aesthetics, that "later" period— for me— was the '00s indie rock scene.
I wonder about the extent to which these different "scenes" are defined as much by common trends as by conflicts between groups. Like what you say about the AM/FM split: the hippies had to have an establishment (Sinatra crooning) to rebel against, the scenesters had to have normies. Should the frame of analysis stop at the singular cultural group/trend, or should it be the pair -- would you have the Silent Majority people in 68 without the Woodstock people, and vice versa?
In a more specific sense, I think of stuff like the 70s conflict between Language poetry and lyric-confessional poetry. Maybe it's more like each era brings in a different polarity, a different spectrum that people slot themselves into. Idk. Thank you for mentioning my videos! Cool post.
Yes. Which makes the right wing polarization of social, alongside the looming TikTok ban, that much more fertile of a breeding ground for a real counterculture. This insistence that the Internet is run by right wing Gen Z bros is so hilariously off base, it's kind of fun to stand back and watch.
You're welcome.
You write as if poor and working class people don't exist. When people refer to "Gen Z" they are always talking about a tiny minority of upper middle class college students, never about the majority of Gen Z kids dealing with adult challenges, like finding a good paying job without going into student loan debt, affording a place to live outside their parents' home, and supporting children that arrived unexpectedly that they didn't have the heart to abort.
Most people have a solid moral compass and understand that we all have a right to defend ourselves from violent terrorists (Hamas) and violent criminals (Jordan Neely). We don't live in our heads because we can't afford to; we need to deal with biology and all of the physical vulnerability that comes with it.
Most of us can't afford to worry about vibes. We worry instead about the price of eggs, and gas, and our vulnerability to crime, and to immigrants that may undercut our wages and mean us and our loved ones harm.
Sorry if that makes us backward non-vibing plebes, but there it is.
We support Israel because we support the right of people to defend themselves from terrorists; we support increased police protection and harsher sentences for criminals because we can't afford to live in low crime neighborhoods; we support stronger borders because we can't compete with undocumented immigrants for blue collar jobs. We oppose males being housed in female prisons because it's our loved ones who end up incarcerated, not yours.
The only "vibe shift" that's occurred is that those of us who typically scream into the wind without being heard got a small bit of recognition in November. But that recognition will be smothered under pompous dismissals of our concerns by Blue urbanites who live in their heads then agonize over the replacement of humans with machines. You've been there for years; it's the rest of us who've been resisting. And we will not lose.
Surely 2008, the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes, was kind of a VIBE SHIFT.
It rapidly led to a new era: the Obama era. But you can alternately call that era The Great Recession era.
I enjoyed the article and really appreciated the break down and descriptions for the eras. Having listened to Martyr Made podcasts about the 60s and 70s, something I am not picking up here is the level of direct activism, cult of personality, and sheer violence.
My view is today's youth are soft on a personal level that wasnt the case in decades past. Where terrorism and use of acutal brutal violence is predominantly governed by the state against its own people or those of other cultural masses is a given but seemingly in the past individuals were unafraid to get down and dirty using guerilla tactics to physcially push back against the states hegemony of violence.
Of course, there are notable stand outs in today's socio-politicoal landscape, however most of it seems to me to be larger scale mob-based action. Whether peaceable or violent it's collectivist; a lot less ideologically driven inter-personal violence occurs now. The myth or mystique of the one individuals actions changing the world I think has passed, and that in itself may mark and end of an era or define the emergence out of the gap, perhaps?
Again, great peice, thought provoking and engaging, thoroughly enjoyed it.