It might not be unfair to say that, as with the flâneur, there is no accurate translation for the word
hipster. The hipster is a specific reaction to the world that is driven by an outlook of sociology and
semiotics, and which longs to view the world as a text to be analysed as such. Our idealised hipster,
William Gibson’s fictional Cayce Pollard, gives us a sense of how it is to live in a world where semiotics
is not only a theoretical approach but a physical force with a very real impact, and also shows us how
the hipster wants to live. This worldview is inherently tied to a background that is most likely to be
white, American and middle class, and a longing to find meaning in the history that this background
offers. The hipster remains an evolving concept that refuses to name itself and refuses any attempt at
a practical definition. Still, we can say a lot about the people who engage with it and advance its aims,
and that is what this section was an attempt to do. These definitions are a snapshot in time, and while
they are true at the time of writing, this may be the only time that they are true. Hipster culture detests
stasis above all else. As such, we will now begin to look at the more structural elements of hipster
culture, in the hopes of finding something more permanent.