Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Hipster vs. Nerd!

In case you haven’t noticed, I think of markers and social structures which emerge within and between subcultures a lot. I think of the labels we use to define ourselves and one another with an almost unhealthy fervor, and I think that our approach to these labels, the way we choose to apply them, speaks volumes about who we are.

For example certain genres are notorious for being ill-defined. People without affinity for literature or either genre, for example, have issue discerning between science fiction and fantasy. However, emo is my personal favorite. The term emerged in the mid ninties to refer to DC area punk bands with a unique sound, referring to themselves as “emocore,” shorthand for emotional hardcore. The best known and arguably most definitive of these bands was Sunny Day Real Estate, whom many music fans will describe as an archetype of what emo means as a style.

But step into the present day and the term is applied to a laundry list of bands with sounds that vary from similar-to-Sunny-Day to how-the-fuck-did-you-make-this-connection. This term is now used to describe, depending on who you ask, Coheed and Cambria, The Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, Sage Francis and Rilo Kiley. There are a number of bands which are inarguably emo, but many of the distinctions are feeble at best. Most people I’ve heard define Death Cab as emo, for example, are loathe to lay the same claim at the feet of The Postal Service. While the songwriting is certainly markedly different, the leader singer of Death Cab’s influence remains intractable and it’s hard to draw the line between the contributions of the collaborators of The Postal Service. That’s part of what makes them such a great band to listen to: two creative minds working in concert, making something wonderful.

So is it useful to use a label so ill-defined, a label with such a pejorative tone to it in common usage? Can we apply it to pre-emocore music like The Cure or Nine Inch Nails? Is it even a term that warrants use in conversation in the present day? There are better people than I to field that discussion.

But as a giant nerd I do want to talk about two other terms: nerd and hipster.

Hipster off the bat. Black20.com did a very enlightening piece about hipster almost a year ago, back when they had funding, and the conclusion was something which rang true to my experience: hipster is a term constantly used to define an “other.” It is never a term that one would apply to oneself even if, perhaps, it would have been properly used as such at one time.

At present it is used to apply to people who follow actively seek out trends after they’ve occurred, people who are always one step behind the bleeding edge of culture. It’s a term with regional basis but a broader cultural application (While we all know Hipsters come from Williamsburg, Portland has a holdout of hipsters in Hawthorne. Huzzah, Hipsters!) and it’s never used in a positive light. It’s always used to describe someone you find shallow, inexperienced, pampered and uninteresting who attempts to construct a personality from objects of cultural interest to which they have proximity.

The term poseur would’ve been used a decade past, but that term has also moved into a strange new place and lost much of its cache over time. For now, for better or worse, hipsters are followers of trends, people who receive money through mysterious means and seem to never be at a loss for ways to spend it despite an attempt to appear poor. They’re people who are often defined by the things they hate, rarely the things they like. They’re people who have no idea they’re hipsters.

Let’s step back to the 80’s, before the landmark film Revenge of the Nerds. It’s totally a landmark film, by the by. If you disagree you probably shouldn’t be reading this website. Prior to Revenge of the Nerds no one would call themselves a nerd. In fact the concept of what a nerd was was pretty ill-defined. A jaunt through the OED will toss up a few theories, including an origin story involving an offhand Ted Geisel reference, my personal favorite origin story and the most plausible I've heard.

It was a term used to define losers, people who couldn’t get a date and would never win. They’d never get letterman’s jackets or blonde girlfriends or any of the other things we were supposed to want. They were fags and weirdos, beyond help and far from beyond reproach, people who genuinely enjoyed Star Trek. It was a term you’d never apply to yourself.

But it was certainly a descriptor with a clear line of demarcation, in the form of a pair of glasses and a general asocial tendency. It was a shameful expression, yes, but the cultural markers would never dramatically change depending on who you asked. In that respect, it differed from the term “hipster.” It also offered a counterpoint to hipster in how it evolved. Where hipster has become less inclusive nerd has become much, much more inclusive.

After Nerds came out and achieved its cult success MTV, at the time the purveyor of some of America’s most ground breaking television before it adopted the policy of broadcasting as many asinine reality shows as possible simultaneously, started airing a promo spots called Real American Nerd featuring one of the side players of the American Splendor comics. These unabashed admissions of geekhood were clearly there for the “cool kids” to laugh at. But they offered up a lot more. They offered a beacon to the disenfranchised intellectuals of a culturally bankrupt generation. They gave them a rallying point.

It’s hard to point and say just where it suddenly became okay to be a nerd in the decades that followed by at some point the shift occurred. Blame Devo or the movie Hackers or the internet or Nine-Eleven, but ere long it was not only acceptable to be a nerd but impressive. Nerds were no longer the targets of shame, but instead our culture’s heroes, the people who came up with the ideas and made shift work. By the time the nerdcore movement arrived Gabe from Penny-Arcade had put it best: out there, in the real world, we ran shit.

Nerd has, over time, gone from a belittling term to a badge of honor which you may be able to wear if you prove yourself smart enough and weird enough. It is no longer the “ultimate burn,” and instead refers to a group of young men who rebuilt a tank on a tropical island and beat the shit out of some jocks for trying to keep them down. It has become a term for many people who would’ve felt ostracized by their own generation to unite and form communities which have created their own art, music, literature and film. It’s spawned an industry to rival film in its ability to generate capital and a number of cultural gatherings across the globe where people come to celebrate their genuine enthusiasm for shit that many people couldn’t care less about.

Unlike hipster, nerd has blossomed as a term, perhaps because it began its life as a pejorative. And even though hipster is now in a similar place, culturally, it reflects the opposite of what nerd has always meant. It refers to those who are devotedly dispassionate and obsessed with the perceptions of others, so much so that they’ll attempt to belittle their own culture in order to take attention away from themselves. The hipster, after all, will be the first to cry hipster, the first to criticize another for biting their style. They’re like rappers without the adversity (or admissions of weakness, in the better cases), postured personas we’re meant to find impressive but present themselves as intellectually bankrupt to even the most passive observer.

And that’s sort of a shame, because hipsters could’ve been nerds if they were willing to admit their passion and just give in to being what they are. Their dogged pursuit of what’s cool is incredibly nerdy. It’s unending and intensely unselfconscious, it involves isolating yourself from other elements of society and pursuing knowledge, the defining characteristic of nerdhood for most, to the virtual exclusion of all other leisure activities.

But it lacks the genuine absence of concern which nerds possess, the ability to discuss shameful passions with genuine love in public. Instead it is marked by a desire to cut down the things others love and feel passionate about. And perhaps that’s why hipster is unlikely to gain cultural cache any time soon – it’s all about taking other people down, rather than celebrating the things you love yourself.

It’s a term used to injure others by people to whom it could be applied, a subculture dedicated to never coming together. But it could just as easily be a celebration of youth, if only people would admit their own passions. And that’s sad to this nerd, who’s seen an excoriated culture rise into an adult subculture, something which is decidedly outside of the mainstream and totally cool with it. If only hipsters had stopped caring about their own label they might not have to worry about it.