Kaiser: To decide what’s hip, look beyond hipsters

Let’s talk about hipsters.

Last year, I went to a party called Potterfest. Now, if you’re as clueless about social events as I am, let me straighten something out: It is not a “Harry Potter” party. It’s also not a party dedicated to ceramic enthusiasts planting flowers or marijuana, although all seem like plausible options. No, Potterfest is so called because the apartment at which the shindig takes place is located on Potter Street. Creative, right?

After hearing the name, I thought I would be in for a night of fun — bonding with other people who thought Sirius Black should have been rugged yet sexy in the movies and who had already thought of what objects they would use as Horcruxes if need be. But as soon as I arrived at the apartment and saw motorcycles on the lawn and beer cans strewn about, I knew I had been misled.

Actually, it was a total hipster party. There was not a single wand in sight.

I was a freshman back then, and the only experience I had with hipsters up to that point involved the kid who sat next to me in high school calculus and often walked around barefoot, compiling notes on loose-leaf graph paper because spiral notebooks were way too mainstream and stifled his creativity — apparently, shoes did too.

But these hipsters were different. Where he was just one offbeat kid, this was an entire apartment jam-packed with offbeat kids all wearing chunky sweaters and chunky glasses with cigarettes shoved between their red lips.

If enough people are offbeat at the same measures and with the same rhythms, they pretty much become the beat. The subculture becomes the culture. Hipsters become mainstream. Want to look like a hipster? Buy acid-splattered denim and slouchy plaid shirts at Urban Outfitters — no trip to Goodwill necessary! Want to listen to music like a hipster? Buy the “Breaking Dawn: Part I” soundtrack! You’ll get everything from Theophilus London to The Joy Formidable, and even better, you can get it on vinyl. (If you want to listen to it on your iPod, though, you’ll need to invest in a pair of chunky headphones.) Want to watch TV like a hipster? Forget it. Read Dostoevsky instead.

The ultimate proof that hipsters have become mainstream is the fact that you can dress like one for Halloween: skinny jeans, a shirt that reads “Obscure Band,” Warhol glasses, and you’re good to go. People also dress up as lax bros and the Spice Girls for Halloween. That should say something significant about their cliche status.

So now that the unthinkable has happened and hipsters have become as easy to imitate as Michael Jackson’s dance moves, who do we set as our pinnacle of unobtainable oddity and coolness? Here are a couple of suggestions:

The members of the “Doctor Who” fan club. Mix together time-traveling police boxes, sonic screwdrivers, bowties, sarcasm and British accents, and you’re pretty much brewing a potion of coolness. Simply watching “Doctor Who” is not enough to allow you to clinch the prized title of counterculture, though. You also have to listen to trock, an entire genre of music dedicated to the show, and post five memes daily on Tumblr about the show.

The Honey Boo Boo clan. If you’re unfamiliar with the Georgia family members, all you really need is their nicknames to get a picture of who they are: Honey Boo Boo, Chubs, Pumpkin, Mama, Chickadee and Papa Bear. And yes, these are real people, and no, they don’t wear Teletubby costumes, although their nicknames might deliver that impression. They’re part of a reality show that features exciting events such as Chickadee giving birth to a daughter with three thumbs and then Honey Boo Boo proclaiming that she wants an extra thumb so she can grab more cheese balls. What’s more nouveau-hipster than celebrating extra thumbs and laughing at a society that looks down upon rednecks?

The Pitt Ornithology Club — and ornithology clubs in general. From Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickinson to Katniss Everdeen and Harry Potter, birds have always played an important, yet underrated, role in literature and culture. After all, all of Middle-earth would have burned if that eagle hadn’t rescued Gandalf. Plus, birds are a symbol of freedom that is slightly less cliche than Che Guevara, the current hipster poster boy. I can imagine “¡Viva los pajaros!” being the nouveau-hipsters’ T-shirt slogan of choice.

So, even though the hipster dynasty has collapsed and Potterfest is really just a frat party masked by indie music and big glasses, I have hope for the future. We just need to redefine what “hip” is, and as you can see from my list above, I think we have a lot of good options.