Hipster: The Dead End of Civilization

Do you recognize this person? He is a cultural amalgam of sorts, like the resulting face of an FBI identikit. Look again: You may recognize the vacuous expression in the eyes, the carefully cultivated non-chalance of his grooming, the neurotic obsession with vintage and appropriated working class clothing, the slacker posture, the tell-tale white lasso of an iPod...

This month's Adbusters exposes the habitat, mating rituals and stylistic trademarks of The Hipster with a jaundiced eye, and an appropriately scathing and equally depressing cultural critique:

We've reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all our prior countercultures, it's been stripped of its subversion and originality , and is leaving a generation pointlessly obsessing over fashion, faux individuality, cultural capital and the commodities of style...(read more)