How to be a Hipster: Tips for Your Average (Mainstream) 20-Something Normie

So you’re seeing these guys/girls walking around campus/work/the street/wherever you hang out, with their tousled alternative hairdo’s, their multi-coloured skinny jeans, their thick-framed glasses, and their v-neck tees...and you’re thinking: “damn, I want to BE you”. And who wouldn’t? With those pants, glasses, and sneakers...they look like sexy makeup-less clowns. And clown porn is totally in right now (don't google it, just trust me...)! That’s right, THAT my friends, is the look that will get you all the ladies/fellas/whatever floats your boat. And you know it.

But the sheer elegance of this look, and the apathetic coolness that this group of sexy-ironic clown people has achieved, is something that you feel you can’t possibly attain yourself. You wouldn’t even know where to start...where do they get their hair cut? Where in god’s name do they shop? How do they have the ability to be completely apathetic toward everything? (Not caring is cool, and you want that!) And most importantly: how do they manage to find completely obscure music, books, and other forms of media, that are vastly superior to that which suits the tastes of the majority of the population? (Every time you seen a hipster, you feel ashamed that you’re a gaga fan, and you should! Everyone likes her, that's how we know she sucks.) These are all valid questions, and one that every baby hipster must answer. Here are some tips to get you started:

Hair is very important to the appearance of a hipster, and it can make or break your entry into the fold. There are two important things to remember while picking a hairstyle to reflect your newfound hipster identity:

1. You must look as though you don't give a s**t.

It is very important to look as though you don't give a s**t what your hair looks like. Shave a bunch of it off, make it lopsided, dye it every colour imaginable, mess it up...do whatever you like! As long as you remember that when you leave the house every morning, people should see you and think: 'wow, that person is way to busy contemplating the ironic nature of contemporary art as a recreation of past works/the flawed nature of capitalism/the relationship between gender constructs and the nature of North American pedagogy to care about his/her appearance! That's so cool!" You will look smarter! And the crazy hair will help with the clown sexiness too!

2. You must actually give quite a lot of a s**t.

In reality, your hair will likely take you a considerable amount of time to arrange each morning. If your stylist suggests a style that will take less than 40minutes of preparation, do NOT cut your hair that way. That just isn't hip enough. You should be spending one hour MINIMUM meticulously arranging your hair each morning so that it looks like you were not meticulously arranging your hair. If you are one of those people who wakes up every morning with a flawless flowing mane (poor soul), than this will be particularly challenging. But rest assured, the end result will be worth the effort!

What you wear is so important to the legitimacy of your hipster identity. It holds the key to your acceptance into this group of non-conformers. The way you must go about dressing yourself should be driven by a mindset very similar to that which influences your hairstyle choices: once again, you must appear to not give a s**t, while actually giving quite a lot of a s**t. See? This isn't so hard!

The key to appearing as though you don't give a s**t about your appearance in terms of wardrobe, is to purposely dress in outfits that have zero colour coordination, and look as though you put absolutely no thought into them. This will be challenging, and your instincts will tell you that you look ridiculous, but with perseverance you will overpower those instincts. Start small, maybe by wearing sandals in December, or wearing bright purple sneakers that clash with your pants. In time, you will find yourself wearing combinations you would have never dreamed of. Bright yellow pants with a tie-dye t-shirt! Thick woollen socks inside your Birkenstocks! Ridiculously coloured/shaped scarves, hats, gloves, and other accessories! The crazy possibilities are endless. You may even find yourself wearing mittens in August! YOU WON'T GIVE A S**T! People will see you and think: "wow, that person is way too cool to care about something stupid like a first impression, or not looking like a six year old! Go them!"

A lot of people think that the key to mastering the hipster attitude is complete apathy. But that isn't quite true. See, while the hipster doesn't care about 'mainstream' things - like school, their job, or brushing their hair - they do care deeply about many alternative things. Such as: the nature of the global economy, and it's perverse exploitation of man and mother earth; the oppressive nature of the educational system; local salamander breeds that are endangered; environmentalist political parties; anything to do with gender; and glasses (hipster glasses are the only material thing that hipsters allow themselves to care about, because its ok to like your glasses - they help you read and thus make you smarter). So in order to become a hipster, instead of caring about things that have tangible implications in your life, you need to start caring about abstract things that have global implications or implications for populations that you will likely never meet.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to changing your preferences to suit a hipster lifestyle is: if someone has heard of it, you don't like it. Period. Everything in pop culture sucks. You need to find the obscurest of the obscure forms of media (music, books, magazines, old British TV shows, ect.) that you can to be interested in. Now, these things will likely bore you at first, but it is important to pretend to really be into them. The more obscure your newly selected preferences, the more hipster street cred you will gain. Do you have a cousin in a jazz/techno/europop/celtic fushion band? Is it horrible? It's your new favourite thing! The worse, and more obscure it is, the more you love it.

Here are some themes that might help guide you in your media preferences and consumption choices in the future:

• really old stuff: you now love tv shows, music, books, clothing, accessories ect. that were written/filmed/played/made long before you were born. Stuff that is even too old for your parents to like. You read the classics, buy only used books, and collect records. You frequent thrift stores, and purchase recycled goods and clothing. You do this for two reasons: 1) to prove how eco-friendly you are, and 2) to allude to a sense of nostalgia that you possess for a simpler time, when we weren't destroying the planet with mass consumption and destroying our minds with pointless drivel.
• foreign stuff: foreign films are awesome. You may not understand the context, the language, or what the heck is going on. But it's foreign, so that means it's smarter than what everyone else is watching. Foreign music is also awesome. You have no clue what the heck they are singing, but it is foreign, so clearly it has more depth than English music.
• homemade stuff: you make your own clothes, music, and literature, and also consume clothes, music, and literature made by your hipster friends. This affinity for the 'homemade' should apply to what you eat as well, so grow your own food! Live in the city? That's ok, transform your backyard into a minifarm! Buy some chickens, and plant just enough vegetables/fruit to be able to prepare at least one meal for your friends in order to prove that you are living 'sustainably'.
• apple products: this one is pretty self explanatory. The more Apple Products you own, the more hip you will be.

If you stick to these four categories: old stuff, foreign stuff, homemade stuff, and apple products, you should be able to create a convincing hipster lifestyle!

But having the lifestyle isn't quite enough, you also have to develop a sense of superiority about the way you live, and recognize that non-hipsters are much less cool/informed/intelligent/sustainable than you are. If someone brings up Lady Gaga, McDonalds, The Simpsons, reality TV or John Grisham in conversation, you should sneer and make it clear how you feel about that mass consumed junk. Then, provide an alternative that your conversation partner has likely 'never heard of'! You will be making them a better person, by pointing out the inferiority of their preferences and directing them toward more tasteful alternatives.

As a hipster, you will not have life goals. Having goals is mainstream. You are going to school to 'expand your mind' and do not expect it to lead to a job. Having a goal or a dream (ie. becoming a teacher, or an environmental lawyer) is buying into the 'system'. You don't want to do that. It's not hip. Stick to busking in front of coffee shops, or selling homemade scarfs at the farmer's market.

Now that you have an understanding of the basics required to transform yourself into a hipster, go to it! But do it fast, because giving the burgeoning interest in the hipster lifestyle it will soon become - ironically- too mainstream, and you will have to find another way to conform to non-conformity. And you'll have to learn the nuances of the neo-hipsters...and it'll be a whole 'thing'. So get in on it while you still can!