What was the hipster?

Mark Grief examines the the birth, evolution and future of the hipster.

It would be too limited, however, to understand the contemporary hipster as simply someone concerned with a priori knowledge as a means of social dominance. In larger manifestations, in private as well as on the street, contemporary hipsterism has been defined by an obsessive interest in the conflict between knowingness and naïveté, guilty self-awareness and absolved self-absorption.

The article is interesting and worth the read, but it’s the comments that make it gold — they’re like reading overwrought YouTube comments written by, well, hipsters.