The Williamsburg Hipster. In Buddhist epistemological terms, it’s an example of a “generally characterized phenomena”—a general concept, in other words. And judging by the reactions it provokes in certain quarters of the blogosphere (and elsewhere), for many people it’s a particularly potent one.
I’ve lived in Williamsburg (and Greenpoint) for eight years, and I’ve always felt at home there. I’ve enjoyed being around a dense concentration of intriguing peers, and I’ve been mostly willing to overlook such excesses as may occasionally be apparent.
But every so often I get a taste of what people are (I surmise) feeling when they go into a tizzy at the mention of the archetype at hand. It happened one recent evening—I decided at the last minute to go to a showing at Summerscreen at the McCarren Park Pool. Unable to corral a companion at that point, I went anyway, by myself.
The movie was “Wet Hot American Summer.” The sound was bad, the view was poor and the concrete beneath me was uncomfortable, but that isn’t why I was ill at ease. It was because I was alone and surrounded by hundreds of young adults in couples and groups, flirting, laughing, displaying themselves, with all sorts of things to prove. At age 32, I’m already something of an outlier on the demographic spectrum that was present that evening. But between the movie and my solitude in the crowd, I felt transported back to the Junior High School cafeteria, age fifteen once more.
As I listened to the boorish camp counselor on screen boast “she totally wants to fuck me” as he leered at a comely adolescent camper, I was reminded of how strongly the young are impelled to see sex as nothing more than a way to validate self-worth by objectifying others. It’s sad how pervasive and persistent that perspective can be, even as we age. And as I listened to the young hipsters around me jeer strangers to get them to move, mock the appearances of passersby, and watched them aggressively impinge upon the just-claimed personal space of their neighbors, I was reminded of how badly we often treat one another under the pressures that large peer groups seem inevitably to generate.
This is all to say that I don’t think it’s really the pretentions of young Williamsburg that inflame people, or the perception that “hipsters” are lording something over everyone else (few hipsters were the cool kids in high school, after all). I don’t even think the hook is that the whole situation is privileged and self-involved, although of course it is. Mostly I think outside observers have strong negative reactions to “Williamsburg hipsters” because they’re horrified that anyone would opt for additional years in the peer-group social cauldron, after the mandatory ones that school impels upon us have passed. And perhaps there’s a little bit of jealousy over the excitement that that situation can generate, in spite of all the liabilities.
When I left the pool, hit the Greenpoint street and was surrounded by people of all ages, in personal attire evincing the full range of the hip-square spectrum, the social cauldron dissipated with little trace, as ephemeral as a city of gandharvas. I’m glad I can still revisit that world sometimes for a potent jolt (for a short while longer, at least). But I’m very thankful that it’s now entirely optional, and viewed from a larger perspective.