What exactly does it mean to be a hipster? Sometimes the best answer is one that asks the question.
Take Hipster Boxing by the “tragically hip” folks at Bueda, a fivesome in the business of optimizing online ad placement in rich media and user-generated content. With a nod to Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute, Bueda seeks to understand the social web through social platforms, hence the open graf on Facebook to understand hipsters.
“It’s a fun way to showcase Bueda,” explains Rebecca Selah, director of marketing. “And it’s a way to use crowd sourcing to let the public define what a hipster is.”
Pittsburgh is becoming a hipster mecca, as are many cities across America, she adds. “I just moved to Bloomfield and we’re swarming with them. The challenge is everyone’s definition of a hipster is different. To me, they’re (hipsters) trying really hard to pretend they’re not trying at all.”
Not everyone will agree, of course. The site is loaded with handpicked profile pictures so you decide. Or add your own and help define the hipster continuum, be it tech hipsters, hippie hipsters, not hipsters.
Does Liam, wearing an 80’s track suit in an open field, have it over Scarlet’s fake granny glasses, fem-mullet, and indifferent countenance (partially obscured by bangs)? How will Axel’s empty over-sized frames, flannel shirt, and acid-wash skinny jeans stack up to recent Williamsburg transplant, Ruby, and her ironic confederate flag tattoo?
It’s highly entertaining, to say the least. Will the scruffy beards, mustaches and cool dispositions uncover some anthropological meaning behind it all? ask Selah.
“We let you make the call.”
Source: Rebecca Selah, Bueda
Writer: Deb Smit
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