twee, nostalgia-driven, and...dumbass?

November 3, 2012 1:43 AM

In China, hipsters are called “cultured youth” when they're not being called "dumbassess", that is.

Poetry readings on mass transit. See what communism leads to?

Don't miss the photo collage at the end comparing normal/hipster/dumbass behavior.

posted by telstar (68 comments total)

No, this is the really disturbing one.
posted by quarsan at 2:24 AM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

How a Chinese "cultured youth" might use an iPhone or an iPad

I feel like I'm reading Weekly World News.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:27 AM on November 3, 2012

"Slackers were frustrated youths, stuck in low paid “McJobs” and pessimistic about their futures. They had witnessed the sophistication with which corporate America had so magnificently co-opted the values and alternative lifestyles of the hippies, protest culture and other counter-cultures of the previous three decades."

I've never seen it summarized better. Many of us still live there.
posted by vhsiv at 2:30 AM on November 3, 2012 [18 favorites]

quarsan: "No, this is the really disturbing one."

Not the first time it's happened.

bonus song
posted by Pinback at 2:40 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

According to that collage, the cultured way to use a toilet is to squat with both feet on the rim.

Thanks, China.
posted by mannequito at 2:42 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

In the United States, hipsterism first grew out of the slacker era of the ’90s.

It.... It did?
posted by Mezentian at 2:45 AM on November 3, 2012 [5 favorites]

Yeah remember that scene where the dude goes to the coffee shop in his bathrobe and comes home smoking a cigarette gets back into bed and the kids peeking through the window run off screaming and steal coke from a coke machine?

Those kids grew up to be hipsters.
posted by mannequito at 2:50 AM on November 3, 2012 [6 favorites]

Come on, that typewriter keyboard for ipad would sell like crazypants if it were real.
posted by 1adam12 at 3:04 AM on November 3, 2012 [5 favorites]

Yeah I would say so. Unless we are talking about 30s hepcats or somethings.

The first hipsters I met were in the early 90s. They were always coming to new York for CMJ and when the graduated college they moved to some shithole in a a bumfuck part of Brooklyn and I made fun of them for having to walk like 30 blocks every morning to catch the train to their record company internships. They were like music snobs always going on about krautrock or some shit and trying to make me to see John Zorn.

i knew hipsters before they we cool. I'm a meta-hipster.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:27 AM on November 3, 2012 [24 favorites]

According to that collage, the cultured way to use a toilet is to squat with both feet on the rim.

That's extremely common behavior throughout Asia due to the traditional shape of their toilets. There is even some research to suggest that squatting is a healthier posture for elimination than sitting. I'm not saying I necessarily agree, but the collage also represents the "cultured" way of picking your nose, so use it as a serious how-to guide at your own risk.
posted by Diagonalize at 3:38 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

> Those kids grew up to be hipsters.

Dude, hipster is not the preferred nomenclature. Cultured youth, please.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:52 AM on November 3, 2012 [13 favorites]

foreign cultures interpreted as merely reflections of american culture is a really great thing

man i am just about tired of everything the West does
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 4:31 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

"Cultured youth"? This is obviously some kind of viral marketing thing from Big Kombucha. Sellouts.
posted by PlusDistance at 5:36 AM on November 3, 2012

In the United States, hipsterism first grew out of the slacker era of the ’90s.

It.... It did?

What, did you think hipsterism sprung fully formed from the forehead of Sufjan Stevens? Everything is a remix, people!
posted by the painkiller at 5:36 AM on November 3, 2012 [9 favorites]

What's a Sufjan Stevens?
To me slackers were all no effort and flannel shirts and Nirvana and such, giving up because the machine didn't care.

Hipsters go to effort, hipsters care. Hipsters try. They try so hard.


Where is the Hipster SFW?
posted by Mezentian at 5:53 AM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

People who do stuff are poseurs!
posted by srboisvert at 7:04 AM on November 3, 2012 [10 favorites]

Hipsters go to effort, hipsters care. Hipsters try. They try so hard.

They put birds on things. And then sell them, on the internet.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:06 AM on November 3, 2012 [12 favorites]

"They are twee, nostalgia-driven, and hipster-ish, with a dash of poet. Spiritual at heart, yet living in a very secular, money-driven modern China, wenqing are marked as highly individualistic, romantic, cultural connoisseurs."

"I like poetry, novels, indie music, European cinema, taking pictures, writing blogs, cats, gardening, quilting, making dessert and designing environmentally friendly bags."

Poetry, novels, indie music, European cinema, taking pictures, writing blogs, cats, gardening, quilting, making dessert, and designing environmentally friendly bags all cost money. Don't tell me these guys aren't just a different stripe of materialist and conformist.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:21 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, poetry is fucking expensive, y'all.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:30 AM on November 3, 2012 [12 favorites]

guys, guys, guys. You're all missing the important bit here. The Chinese term for hipsters is apparently 'WANKING."

Come on, that's hilarious.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:30 AM on November 3, 2012 [5 favorites]

Stodgy old people who insist on making fun of youth culture are tiresome and unfun everywhere in the world, I guess.
posted by mhoye at 7:32 AM on November 3, 2012 [9 favorites]

Sometimes the extent to which a large swath of Metafilter seems to hate the young is a little depressing to me.

Seriously. Go outside, old people! Try dressing a bit more colorfully and caring about something not everyone cares about! Have some fun with it, it won't kill you!
posted by mhoye at 7:34 AM on November 3, 2012

The Chinese term for hipsters is apparently 'WANKING."

Sadly, in transliterations from Chinese, q sounds nothing like k. It's more of a ch sound, but not quite. (You know, just like the sound q represents in no Latin alphabet. Don't even get me started!)
posted by Sys Rq at 7:40 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

So being a hipster is about doing it harder than just doing it, just because you can. Got it.
posted by arcticseal at 7:50 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sometimes the extent to which a large swath of Metafilter seems to hate the young is a little depressing to me.

Me, I'm brought up short by how there's always someone on Metafilter who thinks any group conflict is due solely to age, and that the beliefs and actions of their friends define their age group.

But I'm old, so I don't get depressed. I just smile.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:58 AM on November 3, 2012 [7 favorites]

Sokka shot first: "Sometimes the extent to which a large swath of Metafilter seems to hate the young is a little depressing to me.


"What I'm ambitious for.....is not to turn into a bitter angry old person. I'm now 52, and if there's anything in the world that upsets me it's um....that kind of I hate this, I hate that...you know when you see newspapers saying Why This Is Terrible or people saying that something is "crap" or you see those television programs like Grumpy Old Men. It's just...apart from anything else, it's just so easy.

I would hope that as I got older, I got more and more accepting of everything so that if, say in 30 years time there's a modern equivalent of Lady GaGa, I want to think that I will say "tunes are so much better now than they ever were....all things are better than they ever were".

They may not be. But they're almost certainly not worse. But something happens to you as you age that makes you convinced that they're worse. And I hate that something. I think it's deleterious to the human spirit...to believe that your island of youth was somehow privileged and blessed as better, richer, more fulfilling, more artistic, more creative, more innocent.

All of that is really a result of sentimentality of the wrong kind, false memory syndrome, and a lack of historicity...because if you look in history people have always said that.

I think the best ambition anyone can ever have is to get younger as they get older, to get more accepting and less closed."
posted by lazaruslong at 8:07 AM on November 3, 2012 [11 favorites]

Hipsters really hit the mainstream consciousness around 2009 according to Google trends. So did Mac chargers, phone apps and Stackoverflow.
posted by rh at 8:22 AM on November 3, 2012

I generally don't mind the young 'uns doing their thing. I think I would have really enjoyed an Ecstasy rave had I been able to go to one. I worry a bit about all the texting and sexting, but my rational self knows that it will do them no real harm. And though I find gauges nauseating, eh, they'll take them out eventually.

Auto-tuning on the other hand seems to be clearly, objectively, provable-by-science worse than all preceding forms of popular music.
posted by Egg Shen at 8:22 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't know. When I was young (and by typing that, I forthwith give up all rights to ever claiming youth again) the stuff I heard on the radio, the stuff that grabbed me, well, sure, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, even Living Colour and other stuff, it was derivative, but reaching just a bit further back, I could find the stuff they were ripping off, and there was some amazing stuff. A lot of the stuff that would have been on alternative radio (if it still existed) sounds, to me, like sad ripoffs of the worst of 80's commercial rock. It's like the kids growing up listening to Talking Heads and, say, Fishbone didn't get record deals, while the kids who worshipped Mike and the Mechanics and Don Henley are somehow critical darlings.

I know this makes me the enemy of everything, but the increasing popification of everything just makes me sad. I mean, sure, Justin Bieber is the end result of something like the Backstreet Boys, but at least I Want It That Way was kind of stupid fun, whereas Baby Baby Baby makes that shit look like NKOTB were writing Who-esque boy band operas.

it's cold, and there are wolves after me
posted by Ghidorah at 8:24 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

@sokka

hipster culture does not equal youth culture and i as a youth resent that people think that
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 8:37 AM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

Stodgy old people who insist on making fun of youth culture are tiresome and unfun everywhere in the world, I guess.

That's not it at all. We are making fun of a bunch of people who are so afraid of expressing whatever their true self is that they insist on appropriating the cultural identifiers of anyone else but themselves. Rather than creating their own culture, they recycle the signs and symbols of other times and places to manufacture an identity.
posted by gjc at 8:41 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

If you think Talking Heads weren't crazy influential on many current 'critical darlings,' you're not paying attention.
posted by saul wright at 8:41 AM on November 3, 2012

They were like music snobs always going on about krautrock or some shit and trying to make me to see John Zorn.

At least it wasn't the kind of snobbery that only cares about how many people know of the band. There's a lot of good kraut rock and John Zorn is more talented than most.

Poetry, novels, indie music, European cinema, taking pictures, writing blogs, cats, gardening, quilting, making dessert, and designing environmentally friendly bags all cost money. Don't tell me these guys aren't just a different stripe of materialist and conformist.

Well, everything costs money in non-barter societies and, technically, we all live in a society (conformists!) and satisfy our needs with material goods (economic materialists!). Is consumption, often tied to time or knowledge, part of alternative subcultures? Yes. However, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between buying a Mercedes and quilting or between buying an iPad and writing poetry. Writing poetry on an iPad is where things get trickier :)

Part of it is the valuation of your consumption -- as that Mercedes will be more expensive than making desert or watching European cinema and society values wealth -- and part of it is that when it comes to these activities, the result of the activity, the pleasure of seeing a film or using your skill to make dessert, is more important than the cost of the activity. Basically, these activities like taking pictures or taking care of a cat are costly, but most people would pursue them the same or more if the cost were lowered whereas conspicuous consumption is often tied to Veblen goods where customers consider the utility of the good commensurate to its price: the higher the better. A Mercedes might be a pleasure to drive, but were it considered a lower-prestige car, many current owners would buy a more expensive, higher-status car. You could say the equivalent for 'hipsters' is rarity in some cases: the rarer, the better.

it's cold, and there are wolves after me

Winter is coming!
posted by ersatz at 9:06 AM on November 3, 2012 [5 favorites]

"No, this is the really disturbing one."

Gee... sounds like your great grandmother / grandfather. I'll have to share this one with my 20-year-old girlfriend. She'd get a good laugh..! Where were these kinds of opinions amongst the indie crowd when Jonas from Mew did a rather mature romantic duet with a 13-year-old, who he first met online when she was eleven?

At a certain point, you just have to look at human history and say that it's perfectly normal for girls this young to develop serious romantic feelings for someone older in some circumstances, just as they might for someone their own age, and visa-versa... especially when they collaborate together. If they're happy together, love each other, have strong common interests, and are being responsible and waiting to get married / have sex... they're doing absolutely nothing wrong.

There are, in fact, surprisingly mature 12-year-olds out there who date, pursue careers while studying, and manage their finances, just as there are also ones which are incredibly immature who lack the judgement that a twelve-year-old should have. I, for one, am not going to mourn poor Miki's lost childhood and consider her a manipulated victim because she chooses to opt out of dating and awkward fumblings with irresponsible teenaged boys who probably have far less in common with her.

There are many, many young females who are cruelly victimized each and every day in this country... but we seem to forget that the great majority of them are victimized by their peers.
posted by markkraft at 10:12 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

markkraft: "There are, in fact, surprisingly mature 12-year-olds out there who date, pursue careers while studying, and manage their finances, just as there are also ones which are incredibly immature who lack the judgement that a twelve-year-old should have. "

Gross. 12 is a child. You are projecting some magical maturity that isn't true.
posted by lazaruslong at 10:14 AM on November 3, 2012 [6 favorites]

The point is there is no "hipster culture"—there is only the things college-age-ish kids are doing, and whenever we don't like some of those things we call them hipsters, as though the label constitutes some kind of devastating rhetorical blow as opposed to being the weaksauce ad hominem bullshit it is.

Conflating hipsters with college-age-ish kids is creating a strawman. That's not what they are.
posted by gjc at 10:32 AM on November 3, 2012 [3 favorites]

Mod note: This is not the place to have a discussion about whether 12 year olds should date adults; let's skip that please.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:36 AM on November 3, 2012

[This is not the place to talk about hipsters in America and that same old staid bullshit; let's just talk about cool China stuff instead thank you]

[I am not a mod]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:42 AM on November 3, 2012 [6 favorites]

Stodgy old people who insist on making fun of youth culture are tiresome and unfun everywhere in the world, I guess.

There is a fair amount of that, but most of the Wenqing bashing I find online tends to come from (self-identified) Diaosi.
posted by fatehunter at 10:45 AM on November 3, 2012

fatehunter, that dynamic reminds me of the disdain of 4chan, reddit, and the like for the more earnest corners of youth culture.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:52 AM on November 3, 2012

In the United States, hipsterism first grew out of the slacker era of the ’90s.

I thought hipster culture grew out of the 80's: post-punk, no wave, DIY, c86, Minutemen, etc. There's much more in that stuff that resonates than in slackerdom and grunge...
posted by naju at 10:52 AM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm not a hipster, I'm a hepcat. Or a hepcat doofus, if you will.

[Also acceptable: cultured dumbass. Remember kids, don't do drugs, or date twelve year old girls. IANAM]
posted by dgaicun at 11:33 AM on November 3, 2012

foreign cultures interpreted as merely reflections of american culture is a really great thing

man i am just about tired of everything the West does

Obviously different cultures have different rules and whatnot, and since I spent a few years living in one, I understand that better than most. But I can't agree with the conclusion that the West--or any other culture--is special or of its own kind . As I get older, I find it easier to see the similarities between cultures, including those of the past, and I'm increasingly convinced that ignoring those similarities is an ignorance of its own, equally dangerous.
posted by smorange at 11:33 AM on November 3, 2012 [2 favorites]

that dynamic reminds me of the disdain of 4chan, reddit, and the like for the more earnest corners of youth culture.

Yeah, disdain for the earnest is everywhere online. I don't know how it has come to this point.

In the case of Diaosi vs. Wenqing, there is little evidence that the latter are wealthier or more conventionally attractive. Diaosi don't despise Wenqing the way they hate Tall Rich Handsome or White Rich Beautiful; the animosity seems to be for Wenqing's earnest ways.

Side note: The OP article is better than most gawk-at-China stuff in the Western media; it offers a fairly accurate (if shallow... but this is a pre-primer piece) depiction of a phenomenon. My only problem is that the article feels dated: the victims' reclamation of Diaosi happened net-eons ago. In the eons since, droves of 猥琐男 (Creepy Men) joined the army. Some disenfranchised women decided that they hated 白富美 (White Rich Beautiful) more than 猥琐男 and took up the cause alongside unwanted company. This and that happened and these days Diaosi are arguably the Vocal Majority online, crushing (or even "victimizing") other groups all the time.

The only positive imho is that Diaosi have gained much ground from Fenqing (愤青 Angry Youth). I can tolerate Diaosi's passive-aggressive mockery better than Fenqing's frothing-at-the-mouth aggression.
posted by fatehunter at 11:36 AM on November 3, 2012 [7 favorites]

This is the popular video site in China, the one that doesn't show you the "viral" video unless you log in?

I did laugh at some of the excerpted photos at the end. And it's interesting how people will turn all these little things like how you hold a cigarette or how you put your hands in your pockets into group identifiers.
posted by RobotHero at 11:58 AM on November 3, 2012

Me, I'm brought up short by how there's always someone on Metafilter who thinks any group conflict is due solely to age, and that the beliefs and actions of their friends define their age group.

Otherwise known as "you just don’t get it".
posted by bongo_x at 12:10 PM on November 3, 2012

Yeah, disdain for the earnest is everywhere online. I don't know how it has come to this point.

Scared monkeys defending their status. Old against young, high karma against low karma, usenet against bulletin boards, vanity pages against facebook.
posted by smidgen at 12:34 PM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought it was standard MeFi custom that talking about hipsters made you a hipster because hipsters aren't real otherwise so now we're all hipsters.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:07 PM on November 3, 2012

Yeah, there is a really strange recursion built-in to the whole concept.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:12 PM on November 3, 2012

[T]he formula for success in their fast-rising, hard-charging society remains the same: Study assiduously, chase the big bucks, become “mortgage slaves,” quickly get married, and have a kid.

Too true. Only very rarely do you meet true Wenqing. Most would-be slackers, cultured or otherwise, are under the unrelenting thumb of their family elders.

For the sake of creativity alone, China needs more of this kind of people.
posted by flippant at 1:50 PM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

Yeah I would say so. Unless we are talking about 30s hepcats or somethings.

That is because beatniks, hepcats, zooties, etc were the hipsters of their time. It is basically any trend, usually started by the younger generation, that is seen as new and shocking. Heck, the hippies even have it in their name. Hard to say if they existed before the 1900s, due to how youth worked then and how the world became a smaller place, but yeah, far from a new thing at all.
posted by usagizero at 1:56 PM on November 3, 2012

Also acceptable: cultured dumbass.

When modified by ‘cultured’ it is pronounced thusly.
posted by zippy at 2:13 PM on November 3, 2012

I have a number of younger friends who people might call hipsters. They are mostly artists, actors, or musicians (and a couple of chefs and brewers), and tend to fit the visual stereotype of the hipster in his or her element. They also tend to practice a certain detachment from, or even disdain for, mainstream cultural production. This is in some ways a function of the types of art or music they create, but it could also be perceived as snobbery.

Here's the thing, though. They work really hard. Both at their own projects, and at the various day jobs (typically service) they need to support themselves and what they create. I don't begrudge them their thrift-store clothing, and second-hand glasses, and antique bicycles. I do wish they were able to eat better and get decent dental care.

I also know people who have taken on the appearance of hipsters, and adopted a pose of generalized disdain for things, without really doing anything interesting aside from the performance of "hipster". I suspect that many people's negative response to the idea of hipsters has something to do with this.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:08 PM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

No, this is the really disturbing one.

“Where are the relevant departments when you need them?”
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:35 PM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sys Rq: "The Chinese term for hipsters is apparently 'WANKING."

Sadly, in transliterations from Chinese, q sounds nothing like k. It's more of a ch sound, but not quite. (You know, just like the sound q represents in no Latin alphabet. Don't even get me started!)"

Soon you'll be telling me that "I" is pronounced "uh" and that hipster is really "Wan' Chung"
posted by symbioid at 4:22 PM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

hipster is really "Wan' Chung"

Well, now everyone needs to "Wan' Chung" tonight. I hope you are happy.
posted by Mezentian at 5:17 PM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

I thought it was standard MeFi custom that talking about hipsters made you a hipster because hipsters aren't real otherwise so now we're all hipsters.

You've got it mixed up. It's Slenderman that's not real until you start talking about him.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:03 PM on November 3, 2012

also, twitter, hipsters, youth culture: none of these things imply each other
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 6:27 PM on November 3, 2012

Dioasi (屌丝 -is this right right words?) - google translate suggests "cock wire," to to my pinyin Cantonese ears it looks like "dried/fermented black bean" which is a low value essential amino acid source not too unlike the "cheeze" in mac'n'cheeze/Kraft dinner and is a shriveled little black thing that smells faintly.

Could anyone explain the etymology for the haters of the tall-rich-handsome/pale*-rich-beautiful?

*white - I'm guessing it has more to do with pale and unblemished skin as opposed to being Western/Caucasian?
posted by porpoise at 6:31 PM on November 3, 2012

Chinese Web Users Ask: Should Tearing Mao’s Portrait Be Allowed?
posted by homunculus at 7:39 PM on November 3, 2012

Come on, that typewriter keyboard for ipad would sell like crazypants if it were real.

It is.
posted by Dante Riordan at 8:03 PM on November 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dioasi (屌丝 -is this right right words?) - google translate suggests "cock wire,"

A better translation would be "pubic hair."

Could anyone explain the etymology for the haters of the tall-rich-handsome/pale*-rich-beautiful?

The main story of the etymology is this:
There was a footballer named Li Yi (李毅) who became an internet meme. Members of his fan forum call themselves "毅丝不挂," which means "Yi's fans are safe," but is also a play on the phrase "一丝不挂," meaning "naked." Another forum, "Thunder Giants" (referring to Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Jeff Green), made fun of the "Yisi," calling them "diaosi."

Some people also say 屌丝 comes from the Jiangsu Xinghua dialect, where it refers to one who is poor, fat, ugly, short, or dumb.

Or more explicitly, according to Wikipedia: 最初意思为高富帅的屌啪啪黑木耳的时候，屌旁边的丝也就是屌丝只能在旁边眼睁睁的看……所以他们用屌丝自嘲。

It originally referred to how when a tall-rich-handsome's dick is banging a pussy, the hair around the dick, or diaosi, can only stand by and watch helplessly ... so they call themselves diaosi self-deprecatingly.
posted by twisted mister at 9:42 PM on November 3, 2012 [4 favorites]

Egg Shen: "Auto-tuning on the other hand seems to be clearly, objectively, provable-by-science worse than all preceding forms of popular music."

AMEN!
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 11:03 PM on November 3, 2012

*white - I'm guessing it has more to do with pale and unblemished skin as opposed to being Western/Caucasian?

Pale is indeed more accurate. I was lazy and went for the literal translation for 白.
posted by fatehunter at 12:04 AM on November 4, 2012

I, for one, think the hipster horsewhipping should continue.
posted by hellslinger at 12:48 AM on November 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

In the United States, hipsterism first grew out of the slacker era of the ’90s.

Norman Mailer says otherwise.
posted by thelonius at 5:29 PM on November 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Chinese Internet Users Congratulate Obama, Lament Lack of Voting at Home

When Victorious Obama Spoke to “Distant Nations,” China’s Web Users Were Listening
posted by homunculus at 5:29 PM on November 10, 2012

The Children Devour the Revolution: A rare inside look at what one of China's most influential generals really fears most.
posted by homunculus at 5:33 PM on November 10, 2012 [1 favorite]