The privileged youth of the postmodern world are a breed of slouching mopers in trucker hats and ironic t-shirts. Actually, that description is probably out-of-date, because this loathsome minority ceaselessly and ravenously consumes pop-culture and counter-culture. They appropriate everything they can as fashion or attitude in a meaningless race to remain current. You can see apathy in their unkempt hair, cowboy chic in their synthetic snake skin iPod holsters, and Geordie couture in their plaid-wrapped purses.

There are as many strains of this human disease as there are sub-genres of mopecore, but the art of detecting a hipster is primordial, drawing on some dark recess of our reptile brains. Identifying a hipster is an innate ability for humans, but people living in rural areas or small towns may have allowed this ability to atrophy from disuse. To assist in the identification of hipsters for those out of practice I have created a rudimentary chart that will aid you in your determination.


There are secondary and tertiary identifying features of the modern-this-second hipster. Do they have those widener plug things in their pierced ears? Do they have a tattoo related to something ironic like a videogame or corporate logo from the 1980s? These are good indications that they might be a hipster, but they can also be misleading. Stick to the basics covered in my identification flowchart and you should be able to determine whether or not someone is a hipster in time to swerve to hit them in the street.

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