Author Topic: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same  (Read 798 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online Wingnut

  • That is the problem with everything. They try and make it better without realizing the old is fine.
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26,274
  • Gender: Male
WTF?  Kill me for posting this.

Complexity science explains why efforts to reject the mainstream merely result in a new conformity.
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv  February 28, 2019


You’ve probably seen this effect—perhaps you are a victim of it. You feel alienated from mainstream culture and want to make a statement that you are not part of it. You think about wearing different clothes, experimenting with a new hairstyle, or even trying unconventional makeup and grooming products.


And yet when you finally reveal your new look to the world, it turns out you are not alone—millions of others have made exactly the same choices. Indeed, you all look more or less identical, the exact opposite of the countercultural statement you wanted to achieve.

This is the hipster effect—the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same. Similar effects occur among investors and in other areas of the social sciences.

How does this kind of synchronization occur? Is it inevitable in modern society, and are there ways for people to be genuinely different from the masses?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613034/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/
I am just a Technicolor Dream Cat riding this kaleidoscope of life.

Online Wingnut

  • That is the problem with everything. They try and make it better without realizing the old is fine.
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26,274
  • Gender: Male
Hipsters suck..

A man threatened to sue a technology magazine for using his image in a story about why all hipsters look the same, only to find out the picture was of a completely different guy.

The story in the MIT Technology Review detailed a study about the so-called hipster effect — "the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same."

The inclusion of a version of a Getty Images photo of a bearded, flannel-wearing man, tinted with a blue and orange hue, prompted one reader to write to the magazine: "Your lack of basic journalistic ethics in both the manner in which you 'reported' this uncredited nonsense, and the slanderous, unnecessary use of my picture without permission demands a response, and I am, of course, pursuing legal action."

But it wasn't actually him.


https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613034/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/



I am just a Technicolor Dream Cat riding this kaleidoscope of life.

Offline Sanguine

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 35,986
  • Gender: Female
  • Ex-member
That's hilarious!

Offline Smokin Joe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 56,397
  • I was a "conspiracy theorist". Now I'm just right.
QED!
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline Smokin Joe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 56,397
  • I was a "conspiracy theorist". Now I'm just right.
It might have something to do with where they shop, too.
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis

Offline sneakypete

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 52,855
  • Twitter is for Twits
I have to admit to being shocked to discover that I am also a hipster. In cold weather I often wear a watch cap and flannel shirt. I had no idea I was being stylish.
Anyone who isn't paranoid in 2021 just isn't thinking clearly!

Online Cyber Liberty

  • Coffee! Donuts! Kittens!
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 79,867
  • Gender: Male
  • 🌵🌵🌵
WTF?  Kill me for posting this.

OK.   :MiniGun:

It's not technically the "Hipster Effect," it's the "Beatnik Effect."  This crap's been going on for a long time before the first hipster ever grew a neck beard and a man bun.
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. Sloe Joe Biteme 12/16
I will NOT comply.
 
Castillo del Cyber Autonomous Zone ~~~~~>                          :dontfeed:

Offline truth_seeker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 28,386
  • Gender: Male
  • Common Sense Results Oriented Conservative Veteran
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Online mountaineer

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 78,119
It's not technically the "Hipster Effect," it's the "Beatnik Effect."  This crap's been going on for a long time before the first hipster ever grew a neck beard and a man bun.
I remember as a kid laughing at hippies who considered themselves such individualists - yet they all looked alike. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Support Israel's emergency medical service. afmda.org

Online Cyber Liberty

  • Coffee! Donuts! Kittens!
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 79,867
  • Gender: Male
  • 🌵🌵🌵
I remember as a kid laughing at hippies who considered themselves such individualists - yet they all looked alike. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Sorry...I don't know Italian... ****drummer
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — if you’re unvaccinated — for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. Sloe Joe Biteme 12/16
I will NOT comply.
 
Castillo del Cyber Autonomous Zone ~~~~~>                          :dontfeed:

Offline Smokin Joe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 56,397
  • I was a "conspiracy theorist". Now I'm just right.
Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
« Reply #10 on: March 09, 2019, 06:24:40 pm »
I remember as a kid laughing at hippies who considered themselves such individualists - yet they all looked alike. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Yeah, they had to be 'different', just like everyone else they knew....
How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis