The Briefing Room

General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: Wingnut on March 09, 2019, 01:54:20 am

Title: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Wingnut on March 09, 2019, 01:54:20 am
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/ (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613034/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/)
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Wingnut on March 09, 2019, 01:55:11 am
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/ (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613034/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/)



Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Sanguine on March 09, 2019, 02:17:38 am
That's hilarious!
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Smokin Joe on March 09, 2019, 05:51:05 am
QED!
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Smokin Joe on March 09, 2019, 06:57:19 am
It might have something to do with where they shop, too.
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: sneakypete on March 09, 2019, 02:11:46 pm
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.
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Cyber Liberty on March 09, 2019, 04:07:45 pm
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.
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: truth_seeker on March 09, 2019, 05:30:21 pm
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiUPfZof0TU#)
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: mountaineer on March 09, 2019, 05:52:53 pm
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.
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Cyber Liberty on March 09, 2019, 06:07:28 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.

Sorry...I don't know Italian... ****drummer
Title: Re: The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Post by: Smokin Joe 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....