Pursue irrelevance

As a “geriatric millennial,” I came of age in world where everyone was at least a little bit hip—even a hipster. You didn’t have to have a handlebar mustache, drive a fixed-gear bicycle, or use a typewriter to have been affected by the cultural pull of hipsterism in the 2010s. Even if your fashion choices were mainstream, you may have been thoroughly hipster in other ways: music (indie), movies (arthouse), television (prestige), coffee (third-wave), and foodways (local and organic).

Part of the appeal (and burden) of being a hipster circa 2016 was being at least slightly ahead of the curve when it came to what’s happening now. The unstated goal was to have an affirmative answer ready when someone asked, “Have you seen [fill in the blank movie or series]?” or “Have you been to [fill in the blank gastropub or specialty coffee house]?” or “Have you listened to [fill in the blank obscure indie pop record, on vinyl, of course]?”

The television series, Portlandia, which reveled in a kind of self-referential mockery of the whole hipster phenomenon, depicted this dynamic well in a hilarious sketch where the protagonists volley the question “did you read it?” back and forth until they literally self-destruct. The hipster’s biggest fear is ignorance, being unaware, being the last to know.

Part of the irony of the hipster phenomenon was just how mainstream it was. It may have started out as an alternative rebellion against corporate consumerism, but it could never quite escape the same trap. It was vintage but never actually rooted. You may have used a Pentax 35mm camera, but you posted pictures of it on Instagram. You may have had an Underwood typewriter, but you used the latest iPhone to text your friends about it. You may have milled your own flour, but you never missed a new restaurant’s grand opening. You may have supported local farmers and artisans, but you were also beholden to massive Hollywood studios and streaming giants for your nightly entertainment. It’s hard not to see the whole thing as a giant LARP (short for “live action role playing,” a reference to something that is pretend or performative).

Still, there is something to be said for the hipster movement of the last decade. Part of my journey into hipster (or at least hipster-adjacent) mores started by reading the bespectacled, spiky-haired Gen-Xer Rod Dreher and especially his book Crunchy Cons. I don’t endorse everything in that book, nor do I approve of every word Dreher has written since. But one of the lines that stood out to me in his Crunchy Con manifesto captures what was good and right in the hipster ethos: “A good rule of thumb: Small and Local and Old and Particular are to be preferred over Big and Global and New and Abstract.” Hipsters may have been LARPing, but they were at least gesturing toward the recovery of aesthetic and tactile human experiences in the ruins of globalist and technocratic consumerism.

In any event, we are all shaped by peer pressure and cultural forces, no matter how independent and grounded we think we are. There is no view from nowhere. There really are no freethinkers. We are all shaped by cultural expectations and trends. The only real question is which ones are best suited to human flourishing and the preservation of the “permanent things” in a world of atomization and dissolution.

But hipsterism has, in many ways, run its course. Many have discovered that they were just as beholden to consumerism whether they were shopping at Bonobos or Brooks Brothers, Carhart or Chanel, the North Face or Neiman Marcus. A large part of maturity is learning to resist peer pressure. You can’t keep up with everything. In his 1977 novel, Lancelot, Walker Percy had his title character make this observation about a cadre of filmmakers working in his native Louisiana: “The actors, I noticed, took a light passing interest in everything, current events, scientology, politics. They were hardly here at all, in Louisiana that is, but were blown about this way and that, like puffballs, in and out of their roles, ‘into’ Christian Science, back out again.”

The problem with hipsterism, or any other cultural trend, is that it feels pressure to get “into” everything, but with very little commitment to anything. The need of the hour is for men and women of virtue to disconnect, to disengage from viral trends and to rediscover an authentic localism—to be where you are, to plant deep roots in people and place, and to let the trends come and go.

What I am arguing for is the virtue of irrelevance. You don’t have to read that book or article or listen to that podcast everyone is talking about. You don’t have to keep up with the latest critically acclaimed series on every streaming service. You don’t have to adapt your style and lifestyle to match anyone’s expectations, whether mainstream or alternative. Pursue irrelevance. Invest deeply in embodied relationships at work, at church, and in your neighborhood and community. Maybe in the next 20 years the hippest thing you can do is be positively unhip, unfazed by anyone’s agenda or algorithm.