Ambient "hipster" lifestyle soundtracks

You just reminded me about this guy, although his purview was hepcats, not hipsters. At one point I gave my dad a copy of The Jives of Dr. Hepcat; hopefully he’s still got it. (Cab Calloway published a dictionary years earlier, though.)

But are you authentically tired of the term ‘hipster’ or is it the affectation of disinterest, a sprezzatura to disguise the fact that you’re really annoyed that some people don’t take dilettantes seriously?

It sounds really white. I can even hear a college male mansplaining (blah blah blah blah) and in a separate conversation, a young woman verbally eyerolling…

I’m actually desperately hoping that nobody knows that I am the biggest hipster there ever was. :wink:

I think I’m going to start a movement of choosing whoever leasts fits the gestalt/amalgam defs of hipster in a given setting, and relentlessly campaign that that person is a hipster.

I’ll call this movement “reverse-hipsterism”.

You mean a certain kind of white?

I’ve been in rural restaurants that don’t sound like that.

I’m a freelancer, and I have freelancer friends who are baffled that I don’t do my work on a laptop at local coffeeshops; they say “having a roomful of people talking is invigorating and keeps me focused”.

Personally, a roomful of chatty people makes it impossible for me to focus. My soundtrack? Wordless ambient new-agey music.

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Yes, admittedly a preppy, young, urban, slightly brittle, white.

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Shitballs! That exactly describes my experience attending an open-space elementary school. (It probably didn’t help matters that I was one of the chatty people.)

I usually don’t listen to anything at work – for me it would be like bringing a book to work, opening it to the page where I left off, then leaving it sitting like that in the background while I work. I like to immerse myself (to the degree possible) in whatever I’m hearing (even if it was something like ambient), so that means I do almost all of my listening either in the car or on walks, or when everyone else is asleep or not home.

(The exception is chores, I can work with music while I do that but it depends on what the music is, usually something with vocals.)

(YMMV)

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Pretty much. Most of my work deals with making words look pretty on posters and things, so having someone talking or singing while I work is like adding up my checkbook while someone says random numbers in my ear. But if I’m doing a large tedious Photoshop project, vocals are awesome.

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Don’t forget overuse of the word “artisanal”, it is an essential part of the identity.

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