Wednesday, February 21, 2007

indie kid vs. hipster vs. scene

These terms are used in different situations, but I believe them to be very similar. However, a hipster might think he is mightier than an indie kid or that he isn't a scenester, because being scene is too mainstream or blah blah puke.

Here I will dive into urbandictionary.com's definitions for each:

indie kid:
Positive Definition: An Indie Kid is not, as many people seem to believe, a prententious twat who will only listen to obscure bands and cusses anyone who dares to like anything in the top 40. An Indie is, in fact, someone whos heart lies with indie, rock, alternative, music like that. You are all thinking of scenesters. An Indie Kid is, by no mean shape or form, a scenester.

Negative Definition: Elitist, liberal (not Democrats, they're all Libertarians and Green Party and such) people aged 16-28 who listen to independent music. Better than regular people, they're smarter, hotter (they generally try and act like they don't care about how they look, but they do), and better than the general populace. Do not mistake them with emo kids, emo is the ANTI-INDIE. Emo kids and Indie kids have had a long-standing war since emo became the "new thing". Indie kids hate indie yuppies also, indie yuppies are the Starbucks-drinking, Volvo-driving kids who thing that the music they hear on The O.C. is "indie", think that that Shins song is life-changing, and only pretend to read James Joyce.

hipster:
Positive Definition: The modern Bohemians. A mid-twenties person who works at a low paying job, is interested in "Artsy things" Hipsters tend to swarm around the determined "Hipster" part of town, ex. Wicker Park in Chicago. Hipster Ladies should have short hair and wear thrift shop clothes and Male Hipsters should be anemically skinny to let people know that they are poor and cant afford enough food.

Negative Definition: Someone who thinks that they are being "special" and "unique" for liking some underground bullshit no one else cares about. And they pointlessly look down on people who don't know anything about indie culture, because that's the only thing they know anything about. They're quick to call the rest of the world conformists when in reality, they are the ones conforming by partaking in a "too cool for mainstream so i am going to reject it by looking and acting like a grungy asshole" way of life only to seem uber-fashionable. They just end up looking like idiots.

scenester: Phony kids claiming to be apart of a scene. They lack the sincereity and will change when the trend is gone.

Basically, it all boils down to the same thing. Each of these categories are trying to be the obscurest and non-mainstream as they can be. It reminds me of a song by Say Anything, "Admit It"; I'm sorry for pulling out a semi-obscure band for a point.

You spend your time sitting in circles with your friends
Pontificating to each other
Forever competing for that one moment of self-aggrandizing glory
In which you hog the intellectual spotlight
Holding dominion over the entire shallow pointless conversation
Oh, we’re not worthy
When you walk by a group of quote-unquote normal people
You chuckle to yourself patting yourself on the back as you scoff
It's the same superiority complex
Shared by the high school jocks who made your life a living hell
And makes you a slave to the competitive capitalist dogma
You spend every moment of your waking life bitching about

Basically, this just sets these indie/hip/scene persons into their own exclusive group that ignores other people. And that plain old sucks.

Enjoy everything!

13 comments:

danny siu-kyam pha haobam said...

interesting!

Unknown said...

YES!! A very well put analysis.

justin said...

HA lol

Unknown said...

I love the say anything reference because its so true. I am not sure how many times I have listened to "Admit it" simply because the song fascinates me with the vocabulary. I know nothing about the scene culture but I feel the hipster and indie have many similarities but distinct differences that make them what they are.

simplypiper said...

i personnally think if you have 2 self label urself a hipster than ur not a hipster. oh and people have called me an indie kid but i dont think that just cuz i like indie music means that i'm one of them right? i hope not the hipsters at my school are rude. and i am definetly fallowing u cuz of tht say anything reference :P

davidortizplease said...

an indie kid doesn't have a specific style or fashion. there are many types of indie music, and personally i wear high tops jeans and plain shirts. i don't think i'm better than anyone else, and i don't think mainstream culture sucks at all.

davidortizplease said...

an indie kid doesn't have a specific style or fashion. there are many types of indie music, and personally i wear high tops jeans and plain shirts. i don't think i'm better than anyone else, and i don't think mainstream culture sucks at all.

davidortizplease said...

an indie kid doesn't have a specific style or fashion. there are many types of indie music, and personally i wear high tops jeans and plain shirts. i don't think i'm better than anyone else, and i don't think mainstream culture sucks at all.

The Girl Who Loves To Laugh said...

This made for an interesting read! :D

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Nice contrast! I've always wondered about the difference. I even wrote a song questioning this topic (in the Australian context): https://soundcloud.com/michael-walter/indie-kid

Unknown said...

Honestly I like what you wrote. To look the most simple way, indie is very different than hipster. Hipster it's a trend and Indie it's just about the music. Is it simple to define?

the_power_cosmic said...

In the late 90's I was a part of a music scene in El Paso, Texas. There was a sense of unity in our scene even between different groups such as punks, metal kids, hardcore kids, and emos. We all called ourselves scenesters. The term didn't have any baggage and I never felt any sense of competition.