"You guys are like Christians waiting for the Rapture."

That's my favorite comment posted about the Adbusters essay on hipsters. Here's my own comment:

Before embarking on a diatribe against the culturally void, Mr. Haddow would have done well to peruse some of the more enlightened writing done on subcultures in the past few decades. At very least, he should read enough to know his allegation that “Hipsterdom is the first ‘counterculture’ to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope” is downright false. The Hippie and the Hipster, for example, are intertwined not only etymologically but also in relation to historical developments in the culture industry. Commercial bids for the adoption and creation of the counterculture weren’t born when Mr. Haddow graduated college, and the youthful romance with superficiality wasn’t sparked by the publication of Vice magazine. History, Mr. Haddow, history. Aren’t shallow criticism and aesthetics-as-ethics the defining marks of the hipsterdom you so disparage?