Hipster Food Chain.

Laughing at the expense of a hipster is no more than the vice of the guilty hipster.

Let me explain with my hipster foodchain here.

Now, lets consider a defintion of 'hipster'.

\hip-stur\n. One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat.

-Via The Hipster Handbook, Robert Lanham Typically a Hipster can be identified by vintage or thrift-store bougt clothing, a taste for obscure or underground music, a penchant for irony and an elitist attitude.

At the top of the food chain sit the hipster elite. Think the likes of Mr. Gavin McInnes, creator of the hipster iconic VICE magazine "DOs and DON'TS". The success in his formula is owed to the way he feeds off the hipster masses. Mocking those who think they're cool enough to get away with it, and celebrating those who don't give a fuck. A guy too blazed for a real job, yet blazed enough to create sardonic and ironic commentaries to feed his munchie cravings. The likes of these hipster elite sit at the top. Noone destroys them. The hipster masses only feed them.

So, next in line are the hipster masses. The top of the food chain owe their success to mocking this group. And this group feed the elite by lapping up their work. This is achieved because in order to be a hipster one must have a penchant for irony, and an elitist attitude. Can laugh at their own expense? Check. Think enough of themselves to cop it on the chin? Check. Irony and elitist? Check. They continue to act in the ways that are mocked, because being mocked can only serve to make them more of a hipster. The mocking is seen as a badge of honour, making them feel judged as 'cool by the cool'.  

These masses of hipsters feed on the next in line, the mainstream. These are the people who infiltrate your music festivals, topless or draped in flags. Their backs sweat, and they destroy all that is hip by reducing it to popular mainstream overkill. You may argue that they belong at the top of the food chain, because they clearly have the greatest ability to destroy all that is hip. But you'd be wrong. The hipsters feed off them by rejecting all that they accept. Those bands that today.fm play, no longer hip. Those music festivals? That fashion? No. The hipsters continue to push their boundaries further and further away from what is accepted by pop culture. And, they feed off them further by refusing to give the mainstream any status. How many ironic blogs/zine sections/commentaries do you see dedicated to mainstream bashing? None with iconic hipster status. Instead, any gripe they have with this group is discussed quietly, amongst friends. No status granted. The more they reject this group, the hipper they become.

Oh, the irony. You hipster.