“Hipster” is a stupid word. So stupid that even to say it’s a stupid word is stupid. In fact, the Toronto Standard’s house style guide forbids the use of “hipster” altogether. I’m using it anyway, for the same reason everyone uses it: to refer to something there’s no better word for.
That something is one of two things: a person who fits one or more of the many definitions of hipster, or a person who intimidates the speaker. I think the latter is a bastardization of “hipster” and that these speakers should find another word, like “jerk.” But because words mean whatever people intend them to mean, and because I’m not referring to people who intimidate me, and because “hipster” is a stupid word anyway, I’m going to use another one. How about “dumpster”?
“Dumpster” is too often used in the pejorative, but it refers to a culture. Not an ancient and storied culture, like Japanese or Assyrian, but a culture all the same, like WASP or New Age. I say “culture” and not “subculture” because dumpster culture is too broad to be “sub.” It contains its own subcultures. Are you a vegan who attends vegan potlucks? According to popular lore, you are a dumpster. Do you eat meat dishes at those restaurants where everyone has to sit together on a bench, like we’re in daycare and now it’s snack time? Well, you may be a dumpster, too. You may be a dumpster because that’s what people call people like you.
Because dumpster culture is not based on geography or ethnicity, it is difficult to define except by tautology. It’s easy to identify the hallmarks of dumpster culture, but just as not all WASPs starch their collars, not all dumpster wear sneakers. Me, I like secondhand Ferragamos. Dumpsters are so hard to define that people have written entire books about what dumpsters are, as they have about every culture that is actually a culture. I try to avoid these books, because most of the time when people talk about dumpsters they sound like little snarkmeisters and it just makes me angry. I’m talking about dumpsters right now—and one of the hallmarks of dumpster culture is not admitting to things you’re doing, like being a dumpster—but at least I admit to being a dumpster.
Actually, I don’t admit to it. “Admit” makes it sound like a bad thing, when, in my world, being a dumpster is perfectly ordinary and says nothing whatsoever about your character, unlike “fraudster” or “murderer.” I am a dumpster and almost all my friends are dumpsters. Not because I’m narrow-minded and hate people who aren’t like me, but because I grew up in a city and went to school in a city and now work a job in the downtown of that city, where I also live. Most of my friends are people I’ve met doing those things. And a great many people who do those things are dumpsters. I would like to branch out, but it’s hard to do that without resorting to tokenism or paying a lot more to go out.
Furthermore, I find I have lots in common with other dumpsters, the same way WASPs have lots in common with other WASPs and New Agers have lots in common with other New Agers. For example, I like going to bars that are relatively inexpensive and comfortable and filled with people who know how to look good on a shoestring budget. Dumpsters prefer these to bars that are expensive and lofty and filled with people who paid a lot of money to look the way they do. Often the bars we like play music that we enjoy, which is great, because most of us like music. Most importantly, they are filled with people we might want to have a conversation with, without having to cut past all the bullshit and discover that, despite appearances, we’re the same after all. Those conversations are spectacular, but they are difficult to force. They usually happen between coworkers or friends of friends, rather than with strangers outside a bar at 3 am.
If you are reading this observantly, and I doubt you are, you may have noticed that I haven’t exactly answered the question of what a dumpster is. Instead, I have been tautological. But the state of being a dumpster is so wide-ranging and amorphous that most attempts to pin it down just sound silly. I don’t think we’ll have a very good definition until twenty years from now, when we can look back and draw a competent throughline between all the people we currently think of as dumpsters. There is, as Wittgenstein would say, a family resemblance. And throwing down a Wittgenstein reference in a colloquial piece of writing about dumpsters is as dumpster as it gets. This is a culture of people who received liberal arts educations, by college or by other means, but still value colloquial pursuits. Actually, that’s not a bad definition of a dumpster.
Which brings me to my point: being a dumpster—considered as the sum of all definitions of “dumpster”—is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not necessarily a good thing, although it is to me and almost all of my friends. It’s just a culture, like WASP or New Age, except broader, because it is the predominant culture among middle-class young people who live in cities (which is not to say that all dumpsters are middle class, or young, or live in cities). Being middle-class, or young, or urban, are not necessarily bad things either.
Every culture has shitty things about it. On the whole, I think dumpsters are pretty benign. We do tend to be privileged, and critiquing privilege is healthy—I read something recently about the way hipsters appropriate native imagery which made sense to me—but most of the time, people who rag on dumpsters share the same privileges as many dumpsters, because they, too, are dumpsters. Non-dumpsters are often just trying to figure out what a dumpster is. That means dumpster culture is not as exclusive as people consider it to be. If you’re living the life of a dumpster, you are a dumpster. Congratulations.
Now that you know you’re a dumpster, you should feel free to rag on dumpsters as much as you like. WASPs rag on WASPs. New Agers probably rag on New Agers. But know that ragging on your culture doesn’t excuse you from it. I don’t think most dumpsters would want to be excused from the dumpster life. The dumpster life is really broad and pretty good. If you’re a dumpster and you’d rather be a New Ager, there’s something you can do about that which doesn’t involve ragging on dumpster culture.
Ragging on dumpster culture is like ragging on your favourite bar. At the end of the day you still go there, and for good reason, like it’s comfortable and inexpensive and the patrons know how to look good on a shoestring budget. You should acknowledge that. You can still rag on it, the same way you can rag on your family or your close friends, but rag with love. Ragging without loving is just whining.
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Alexandra Molotkow writes Toronto Standard’s Minutiae column and has the uncanny knack of speaking the editor’s mind.
