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Running head: MAINTAINING A SUBCULTURE 1

Lauren M. Alfrey writing sample

Maintaining a Subculture:

Social Networks and the Construction of the Modern Hipster

Lauren M. Alfrey

Georgetown University

Final Paper

CCTP 753: The Networked Economy

Instructor: Linda D. Garcia, Ph.D.

MAINTAINING A SUBCULTURE 2


Maintaining a Subculture:

Social Networks and the Construction of the Modern Hipster

I. Introduction

Hipsters are a contemporary global subculture born out of Brooklyn, New York in

the late 1990s. Today, while still a dominant subculture of New York City, hipsters now

cluster in urban neighborhoods across the United States, from the Mission District in San

Francisco to Mt. Pleasant in Washington, D.C. Some cultural critics (e.g., Haddow,

2008) assert that hipsters are merely a twenty first century revival of the beat movement

with their predilection for left-leaning politics, bohemian taste in art, music, and fashion,

access to disposable income, and a demographic population that is usually late teen or

twenty-something and white. Others (e.g., Lorentzen, 2009) accuse hipsters of fetishizing

former fringe cultures—such as the hippy, punk, and grunge movements—into a new and

utterly vapid recombination. Thus, the term “hipster” has become a stigmatized label

used by those outside the subculture—e.g., writers for publications such as The Atlantic,

The New Yorker, The Independent, and The New York Times—who often lament the

presence of this subculture in their neighborhoods, towns, or cities. While there is no

shortage of pop culture speculation about the style, taste, and attitudes of hipsters, scant

academic literature exists on the subject. This paper seeks to fill the gap, presenting a

theoretical framework for studying the social structures that allow those deemed “hipster”

to maintain a global identity.

For any subculture to persist, particularly at the global level, individual members

must have means by which to represent their in-group status and to signal that status to

other members. These social signals, whether material or behavioral, can serve to



distinguish members of a subculture from the mainstream, allowing hipsters, as one

example, to develop a common set of norms, attitudes, or tastes. In the paper that follows,

I will conduct a theoretical examination of the social structures that facilitate signaling

and communication among individuals thought to be hipsters. The role that online

technologies play in allowing members of this subculture to collaborate despite

geographic limitations will also be discussed. In Part II, an overview of the hipster

aesthetic is presented, including the changing artifacts, materials, and tastes deemed

“hipster.” In Part III, the role of new media technologies in the successful establishment

of a community of practice is discussed, especially as it relates to the conspicuous

consumption habits of hipsters. In Part IV, the social network that support hipster culture

is identified, and the ways in which this structure informs social signaling at the local and

global level is discussed. Finally, Part V reviews how hipsters have developed a thriving

consumer culture and future research is proposed to better understand the social

structures that facilitate the in-group conformity and out-group divergence of

contemporary subcultures.

II. The Hipster Ideal

Hipsters are known for fashion and music taste that is considered alternative to

the mainstream. Their material culture often includes appropriated objects or styles from

past eras, meant to appear ironic or novel in contemporary application. Large plastic

framed “geek” glasses, popularized by Buddy Holly in the 1950s, are one example of this

pattern. Other bygone fads now part of the hipster aesthetic include: 1970s style facial

hair including handlebar mustaches and muttonchops; the Holga camera, popular for its

low fidelity aesthetic in the 1980s and later abandoned by consumers for its cheap



construction; flannel shirts that evoke the grunge movement of the 1990s; leotards

reminiscent of Jane Fonda’s workout videos; cumbersome “portable” turntables used by

hip hop musicians and club kids before the advent of MP3 technology and the age of the

iPod; and skinny jeans, which snugly hug the desired (and often achieved) emaciated

figures of hipsters—a look that harkens the heroine-chic aesthetic of runway models and

rockstars throughout the late-twentieth century. Hipsters also take pride in listening to

independent and unsigned rock bands, hanging out in dive bars, and riding single-gear

track bicycles without brakes known as “fixies” (even in the most unfriendly of urban

environments such as San Francisco, a city famous for steep hills that generally

necessitate riding with multiple gears and brakes). In short, many previously popular and

later discarded trends or styles have become candidates for the cultivated nonconformist

look of hipsters.

While hipsters commonly cluster in the gentrified neighborhoods of major U.S.

metropolises, hipsters can be found in locations throughout the U.S. and the world. Thus

situated on a global stage, hipster norms and codes—the artifacts and objects associated

with being a hipster—must change constantly to remain countercultural. If an artifact

diffuses outside the boundaries of the subculture, hipsters must consider abandonment or

innovation. This pattern makes the delineation between authentic members and mere

posers a blurry line indeed. As hipsters become an increasingly popular subculture—thus

less and less hidden as a population—it is all the more difficult to name what counts as

being hipster. This pattern is illuminated on urbandictionary.com, a user-generated

website dedicated to defining slang words and pop culture phenomena.



By reviewing posts for “hipster” over the last five years one can see how quickly the

embodiment of a hipster has shifted as a result of these cultural complexities. From an

entry dated August 16, 2004:

[Hipsters are] a subculture of kids born in the 80's. It started with mutton chops &

buddy holly glasses, but has now progressed into trucker caps, pointy shoes, and

the god awful rehash of the mullet [sic].

Two years later, from a post on May 28, 2006:

[A hipster] listens to bands that you have never heard of. Has [a]hairstyle that can

only be described as "complicated." (Most likely achieved by a minimum of one

week not washing it.) Probably tattooed. Definitely cooler than you. Reads Black

Book, Nylon, and the Styles section of the New York Times. Drinks Pabst Blue

Ribbon. Often. Complains. Always denies being a hipster [sic].

Then on November 22, 2007, a user writes:

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that

value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation

of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter…Although

"hipsterism" is really a state of mind, it is also often intertwined with distinct

fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of

mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store

inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick

rimmed glasses [sic].



Finally, in a post updated on February 15, 2008, one can see how the aforementioned

hipster has become popularized. With many of their once defining features appropriated

by the masses, former symbols of hipsterdom are no longer viewed as a alternative:

Today's 2008 hipster definition has flipped around. the hipster these days is the

normal average everyday walmart/starbucks shopper... he drives a normal car,

listens to normal mainstream rock and pop, hangs out at the mall and Starbucks,

eats Mcdonalds and Applebees [sic].

The effects of globalization, coupled with the use of online social network

technologies among youth, provide easy access to the changing habits of this subculture.

A trend discovered on the streets of Tokyo and uploaded by users to a photo-sharing

website can become an instant meme. The cultural publications that support the hipster

community—magazines like Vice and Nylon, and email subscriptions managed by a

company called Flavorpill—can transmit these memes through the promotion of

particular fashion, music and art. Retailers such as American Apparel, which has

positioned itself as the official supplier of the hipster uniform, can use these street styles

as inspiration for their next collection. Something worn by a teenager in Japan can

thereby quickly become the must-have fashion accessory among hipsters worldwide.

Unfortunately for a subculture steeped in consumption, as soon as an artifact of a

street culture becomes available to the “out-group” mainstream, members must consider

abandonment. The keffiyeh scarf is one example of this pattern with hipsters. Originally

a symbol of the Palestinian Nationalist movement, the scarf was a popular accessory

among hipsters two years ago, until it started to be sold at places like Urban Outfitters

and Forever 21 (Kibum, 2007). While members who live in hipster enclaves—such as



Williamsburg Brooklyn or the Mission District in San Francisco—can easily signal one

another about these shifting tastes and trends, it is more challenging for geographically

dispersed individuals to learn about these mutable cultural norms. In the section that

follows, I identify the online resources that allow hipsters to generate shared tastes, to

broadcast normative behavior, and to reify their subculture despite challenges presented

by global surveillance and out-group diffusion. I also propose future research methods to

help identify the commercial actors that participate in maintaining the hipster subculture.

III. Hipsters as a Community of Practice

Many people use consumption—the clothes one wears, the music one buys, the

experiences one pays for (and can talk about later)—as a means to communicate identity.

The problem a subculture faces, though, is when individuals outside the group

appropriate the objects or artifacts meant to represent their subcultural identity. For a

subculture to persist on a global stage, a set of mechanisms must exist to develop and

communicate the standards—material, behavioral or aesthetic—that define the group.

In Globalization, Developing Countries, and the Evolution

of International Standard Setting Communities of Practice, Garcia and Burns (2005)

describe communities of practice as akin to standards-setting bodies, which “establish

rules, norms, meaning and identity over time based on ongoing interactions and

negotiations that accompany participation in a shared enterprise” (p. 1). While this article

investigates standards-setting bodies in the technology sector, the arguments apply to any

community in which members participate and negotiate toward shared norms. Like a

non-hierarchical firm, made up of various organizations and actors, hipsters are a

subculture with a global presence. To maintain their countercultural identity, hipsters



must establish standards to identify in-group status. As these standards and norms

evolve, so must the commercial actors supplying artifacts and objects used to reify the

hipster aesthetic. In this way, hipsters can be seen as a community of practice.

The hipster community of practice includes commercial actors such as indie bands,

cultural magazines like Vice, Paper and Nylon, blogs like LOOKBOOK, email

subscription lists like Flavorpill, retail stores like American Apparel, and events like the

South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival that acts as a physical space to bring many of

these network actors together. Naturally, this network also includes consumers, the

people buying the products created and promoted by these organizations, and these

consumers negotiate the boundaries of the community with their dollars.

Vice is a major actor in the hipster movement, credited with inventing the hipster

aesthetic (Haddow, 2008). The magazine boasts over 80,000 monthly readers in twenty-

two countries (Horan, 2006) and features articles covering the independent arts, pop

culture, and current events such as the war in Iraq, written with an air of sarcasm and

irreverence. Like many publications, the online version of Vice increases the breadth of

its audience. Upon entering the Vice website, users will likely encounter a homepage

plastered with American Apparel ads, and a set of content mini-sites featuring

information on fashion, music, news and reviews.

A popular and controversial part of the site is the “Dos and Don’ts” page (Figure

1), where photos of everyday people, captured on the streets, are uploaded and labeled

according to whether they succeed or fail at “looking cool.” Commenting on these

photos is a common practice among readers, showing that users are participants in the

process of establishing norms and rules as well as spectators. This kind of participation



allows users to negotiate the boundaries of the subculture, generating standards that

readers can use to guide their consumption choices. Garcia and Burns (2005) define

standards created by communities of practice in the following way:

[Standards are] the fundamental building blocks of society. For in any given

context, they constitute an agreed upon set of meanings, scripts, and rules that

guide behavior and govern relationships. Embodying critical information in a

highly compressed and abbreviated format, they greatly simplify the environment.

Signaling opportunities and constraining choices, standards allow for cooperation

and coordinated behavior to take place (p. 2).

The Dos and Don’ts section of Vice magazine is a fascinating space for social

theorists as it displays the negotiation of normative behavior in real-time. Posts serve as

highly effective tools for communicating in-group and out-group status to spectators,

essential for individuals who may be geographically isolated from the urban

neighborhoods where many of these photos are captured.

Like Vice, Nylon is another alt-pop cultural and fashion magazine that has taken

its presence online. On its homepage (Figure 2) Nylon promotes hipster-approved

activities such as films (which are always independent films or documentaries) music,

and concerts. Currently the homepage features a Nylon-sponsored music tour of indie

rock bands. There is also a section on the website where users can upload photos of

people with good “street style,” serving as another point of participation for readers to

define conformity within the community. By publishing this kind of content, Nylon

provides readers with the cultural capital necessary to maintain their in-group status as

hipsters.



The examples of Vice and Nylon show how subcultural capital can be evolve:

magazines promote bands through featured stories or by sponsoring concerts, and bands

promote these publications by participating. Paid advertising on these sites by retailers

like American Apparel also serves to support these publications and to bolster the

authority of particular brands. Finally, readers serve to reinforce the cultural capital of all

actors involved by consuming the products sold by these magazines and retailers. As

Garcia and Burns (2005) argue, this kind of coordination will keep communities of

practice current, as they must “change and innovate when negotiating with competitors,

developing coalitions, and/or incorporating new members” (p. 1) Collaboration offers

participants the opportunity to generate and exchange new information and ideas,

creating new norms, rules and standards that combat the threat of mainstream diffusion.

In addition to this online global network of commercial actors, there are ample

local resources—retailers, cafes, and music venues—that provide physical spaces for

signaling and communication among hipsters. Future research could include surveys and

follow-up interviews to engage hipsters in places such as Williamsburg, Brooklyn or the

Mission in San Francisco. These methods would help inform how local versions of the

subculture relate to a global community or practice.

In the next section, I will use social network theory to investigate how the

structure of the hipster network facilitates collaboration and communication, necessary to

stay ahead of and apart from the mainstream. I also consider future research using

computational social network analysis to augment my analysis of signaling in the hipster

subculture.

IV. The Social Network that Supports Hipsters



The aforementioned cultural publications and retailers serve as the links over

geographic structural holes, tying densely clustered local networks of individuals to a

global network structure of hipsters. This allows people who may not live in Brooklyn or

San Francisco to learn about and participate in the construction of hipster norms. Ron

Burt (2003), a sociologist who studies the benefits of structural holes in social networks,

writes of this idea in The Social Structure of Competition:

In a dense network, each relationship puts the player in contact with the same

people reached through the other relationships…because the relations between

people in the network are strong, each person knows what the other people know

and all will discover the same opportunities at the same time. (p. 17)

While this pattern of exchange may represent the hipster network today, the

subculture did not always exist as a small-world network. In order to provide the updated

music and fashion demanded by global actors, commercial retailers had to reach outside

their immediate networks, over structural holes that separated nonredundant contacts.

Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel (AA), is an important weak link in

this now global network. Charney sought to create an “outsider” ethic with the inception

of the AA brand (Walker, 2008). First developed in a Los Angeles warehouse, American

Apparel is currently one of the largest domestic clothing manufacturers in the U.S. and

their ads are a frequent fixture in Vice magazine (Walker, 2008). In her article Building a

Brand By Not Being a Brand, Ruth La Ferla (2004) describes the business model of

American Apparel and the role that Charney plays in cultivating the AA aesthetic:

Mr. Charney cultivates his faintly off-color persona, part garmento, part 1970's

pornographer…preening in a snug polo shirt and white belt, his mustache



scrolling from his upper lip to his mutton-chop whiskers. He is nearly a ringer for

the photographer Terry Richardson, famous downtown for bringing the aesthetics

of soft-core pornography to fashion photography. The image is meant to resonate

with a target market of 20-somethings. Urban hipsters—and some of their elders,

too—are scooping up Mr. Charney's form-fitting T-shirts, underwear, jersey

miniskirts and hooded sweatshirts, sold in white-on-white stores that double as art

galleries. On the walls of the 26 American Apparels…poster-size blowups of

seedy Los Angeles storefronts, surfers, skateboarders and, not incidentally,

scantily outfitted street kids vamping for the lens. The vaguely risqué vibe is

offset by the company's well-promoted social agenda. A manifesto on a wall of

most of the stores tells that the merchandise is ‘sweatshop free,’ made in America

by workers who are paid a living wage ($13 an hour on average) and sold at a

reasonable price (about $15 for a T-shirt). Shoppers also learn that the company

eschews ties ‘with the corporate right and the politically correct left.’ Perhaps

most important to younger consumers who have grown suspicious of corporate

branding, there is not a logo in sight. (p. 6)

Vice embodies this same strange mix of risqué and politically radical with its

articles and a design aesthetic that is salient on each page. As Tim Walker (2008), a

reporter for the Telegraph, explains, the similarities between Vice and AA are no

accident; they are the result of a cultivated countercultural aesthetic developed though

collaboration and imitation: “[It is] no coincidence that American Apparel’s often

controversial advertising campaigns imitate the Vice look, nor that Vice photographer

Terry Richardson is the principal photographer for Uniqio’s in-house magazine,



Paper…his style has countless amateur copycats worldwide, whose photos have found

home on fast-growing photo-sharing websites such as Flickr and MySpace” (p. 3). This

collaboration has allowed Vice and American Apparel to share resources (a fashion

aesthetic) and contacts (photographers). In doing so, both sets of actors benefit from

increasing the reach of a network that inspires and supports a growing youth subculture.

In addition to Vice and American Apparel, many user-generated websites have

sprung up to survey and promote hipster trends. On these sites users upload photos of

fashionable people, and visitors are encouraged to vote and/or comment on each look.

LOOKBOOK(Figures 4, 5, 6), a blog in which users vote and rank images of street

trends, is one example of this phenomenon. With almost instantaneous speed, these sites

can serve to spread local trends globally: “Snapping away at a party in Portland, Oregon

or in Haranjuku, Tokyo, a global scenester can disseminate their local style worldwide

before sunrise” (Walker, 2008, p. 1). These online resources function as weak links

connecting geographically dispersed individuals such that a hipster in Chicago can

observe a hipster in Helsinki.

However, aspirational hipsters are not the only ones using these online resources.

When retailers such as American Apparel discover these sites and pay for advertising

space, they connect LOOKBOOK readers with an extended network that includes Vice,

Nylon and all the other organizations and individuals that coordinate their activities. It is

also a common practice for marketing firms to survey sites like LOOKBOOK for cues

about the latest fashion innovation (Lopiano, 1997). Thus sites like LOOKBOOK serve

as a double-edged sword, allowing members of the subculture to construct

countercultural norms, while simultaneously providing access to retailers who



cannibalize these trends for mainstream promotion. This, in turn, inspires continuous

cycles of innovation with hipsters on the street, who begin to see formerly countercultural

objects, such as the keffiyah scarf, sold to the masses at places like Urban Outfitters and

Forever 21. Blogs like LOOKBOOK, then, provide two kinds of links: one set across

geographic structural holes within the countercultural network, and another set reaching

outside the hipster network.

Mark Buchanan (2002) describes such a network—groupings of nodes connected

by random links—as “small worlds.” In his book, Nexus: Small Worlds and the

Groundbreaking Theory of Networks, Buchanan writes of this structure as one common

in the natural world, as well as the social world:

Social networks [or small worlds] turn out to be nearly identical in their

architecture to the work wide web, the network of web pages connected by

hypertext links. Each of these networks share deep, structural properties with the

food webs of any ecosystem and with the network of business links underlying

any nation’s economic activity (p. 15).

We can think of the structure that supports the hipster subculture in the same way.

Websites and blogs, along with actors like Dov Charney, serve as the “social bridges”

that function to “sew networks together” (Buchanan, 2002). Without bridges, local

communities and individual hipsters would exist as isolated individuals or fragmented

social cliques. But through connections to a global network—one that is highly clustered

in urban neighborhoods and sewn together by weak ties (online resources), hipsters can

organize their activities in a way that makes them a subcultural small world. This

structure offers benefits for individuals outside urban communities who aspire to be



hipsters, but it also lends an ease of surveillance and opportunities for cannibalizing,

which may compromise the integrity of the subculture.

V. Conclusion

Cultural critics and pop culture writers have long disparaged hipsters. Members

of this subculture are accused of being nothing more than conspicuous consumers

attempting to shun white privilege by moving to urban neighborhoods, shopping at thrift

or secondhand stores, listening to non-commercialized music, and appropriating vintage

artifacts to represent their escape. Entire websites, such as lookatthisfuckinghipser.com

(Figure 7), are now dedicated to the practice of outing and reviling the modern hipster.

What is perhaps most interesting, then, are the social practices that have developed in

order to maintain a hipster identity that is constantly under attack.

However one feels about hipsters, the materiality behind their identity should not

be surprising. Representational objects and materials are used by most people to navigate

cultural complexities, creating heuristics for identifying like-minded individuals amidst a

collision of frequently globalized subgroups. When a hipster reads about a band in Vice

and chooses to attend their concert in Washington, D.C., that person uses a global

resource to connect with individuals at a local level. Schouten et. al (2007) describe how

these kinds of cultural resources are essential to establish social relationships among

members of an affinity group:

The building blocks of human social life are not to be found in abstract categories

applied to the analysis of social life, but in the multiplicity of social groupings

that we all participate in, knowingly or not, through the course of our everyday

lives. The consumption of cultural resources circulated through markets (brands,



leisure experiences, and so on) are not the sine qua non of contemporary life,

rather, they facilitate what are meaningful social relationships (p. 5).

Consumption is the fabric that creates a shared social identity for the wide net of

individuals thought of as hipsters. Using resources available through a highly connected

network, organized in large part online, hipsters perpetuate a community of practice that

survives by sharing information, establishing rules and standards, and surveying

individuals outside the subculture to ensure that representational artifacts continue to be

seen as alternative. Key to the global popularity of the hipster ideal is the fact that many

online spaces allow consumers, i.e. the people on the street representing what it means to

be a hipster, to serve as creators and collaborators of subcultural norms.

However, as the hipster network grows and the reach of the subculture expands,

hipsters must grapple with the fine line between conformity and divergence. When a

subculture like hipsters becomes millions strong, the boundaries between the subculture

and the masses can quickly blur. In order to establish a shared understanding of what

constitutes their subculture, hipsters must subscribe to in-house rules, standards, and

norms.

The notion that a group so determined to appear divergent must in many ways

conform presents an interesting paradox. For social scientists interested in how social

networks facilitate the spread of cultural capital, hipsters offer an interesting case study of

a once hidden subculture now accessible via online technologies. This paper presents a

theoretical framework for studying signaling and communication among members of the

hipster subculture, and it is suggested that surveys and interviews with local hipster

populations about their tastes, preferences, and habits of consumption could provide



further empirical data to support these observational data. Using the data gleaned through

these empirical methods, a computational social network analysis using a bi-partite

affiliation and adjacency matrix could illuminate the structure of the hipster network via

shared patterns of consumption. This would provide a snapshot of the hipster network at

the local and global level, to reveal how these network structures relate to one another in

practice, thereby allowing members to maintain a frequently mutable identity.



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Fig. 1. Image taken from Vice magazine’s website, accessed on 8 May 2009:

http://www.viceland.com/index_int_r.php



Fig. 2. Image taken from “Do and Don’t” page of Vice magazine website, accessed on 8

May 2009: http://www.viceland.com/int/dos.php?source=homepageddtitle



Fig. 3. Image taken from Nylon magazine website accessed on 8 May 2009:

http://www.nylonmag.com



Fig. 4. Image taken from LookBook homepage accessed on 7 May 2009:

http://lookbook.nu




http://lookbook.nu




http://lookbook.nu/



Fig. 7. Image taken from lookatthisfuckinghipster.com homepage accessed on 27

November 2009: http://www.latfh.com/

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