As MC Hammer so eloquently puts it: “I told you homeboy/ You can’t touch this/ Yeah that’s how we livin’ and you know/ You can’t touch this.” But alas, touch they’ll try.
Almost one year has passed since the world’s largest marketing organization by revenue, WPP, teamed up with the Raine Group, a media venture capital firm run by Tom Freston, former CEO of Viacom and the founder of MTV, to invest $50 million into Vice Media, the authoritative guide to all things hipster. Cries of selling out were heard at the time from legions of the fashionably inclined, though the huge investment has drowned them out.
Such a large investment from a reputable market creator is certain to entrench hipster counterculture more into the mainstream. Indeed, the iconic, thick-rimmed glasses that mark the face of many a hipster have been spotted on Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Bradd Pitt and Anne Hathaway. They allegedly made their way into the White House just a few months ago, when President Obama’s Press Secretary Jar Carney’s new eyewear was questioned by a reporter. In his own defense, Jar called his style choice “retro-nerdy” rather than “hipster.".
Despite these popular and influential names endorsing hipster subculture, it remains a defiant subculture. SpaghettiOs and thick-rimmed glasses are the hipster cri de coeur, or a cry from the heart in French.
“You can’t have us,” they scream, as did Chicago art student Natacha Stolz, when she went through the basic human instincts with an expired can of SpaghettiOs in a performance at an art house in Chicago.
The hipster cry for individuality while still being included in a group is genuine. It simply expresses the simultaneous human needs of individuality and acceptance within a social group. And because ostensible individuality makes money, the desired mix is either very tough or very easy to get, depending on the outlook.
Hipster.com is a location-sharing platform inspired by Instagram that is attracting potential employees with a $10,000 sign-on bonus and a one-year supply of hipster favorite Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) beer. Warby Parker, the online glasses boutique, sells “retro-nerdy” frames and lenses for under $100 per pair and sends customers five free pairs just to try on. The company even donates one pair of glasses to charity for every pair purchased. Hip uniqueness is popular and ubiquitous.
And ubiquity is good for business. Hipster, the website, was started with venture capital funding from Google Ventures and Lightbank, the venture capital arm of Groupon. Meanwhile, Warby Parker raised over $13 million from the big names Tiger Capital and Menlo Talent Fund. Even the unique, yet ever-present Instagram started with venture capital funding: $7 million from the famous Benchmark Capital. What makes hipsters “hipsters” actually turns out to be savvy businesses. PBR, Schiltz, Colt 45 and others are all sold by the branding agency Pabst Brewing Company, which, despite its name, brews no beer at all.
Pabst Brewing Company is among the largest venture capital success forays into hipster subculture. The company, which doesn’t actually brew anything and is instead a marketing firm, is owned by the multi billion-dollar private equity firm, Metropoulos & Co., the same investment firm that reinvigorated Chef Boyardee. So much money is being invested into hipster culture, it’s telling.
While the disenfranchised and rebellious are screaming, “You can’t touch this,” the venture capitalists are whispering to each other,“It’s Hammer Time.”
Reach the columnist at whamilt@asu.edu
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