At Mic is an article on research on the statistics behind why all hipsters look the same, reporting on a paper by Jonathan Touboul, a mathematical neuroscientist at the Collège de France in Paris.
Touboul argues that statistical physics explains how the anticonforming unintentionally become the expected. Although we all suspected that any one locally sourced-coffee-sipping hipster is pretty similar to another, Touboul puts it into scientific language.
[...] Aside from applying his findings towards French hipsters, a particularly ironic crowd, Toubol believes his work could also shed light on correlations in other statistical models, such as making financial decisions like trading stocks against the majority trends to make serious profits.
The paper is available on arXiv; The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same [PDF].
Originally spotted via Science news.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 05 2014, @08:25PM
If you define whatever you're doing as the opposite of whatever somebody else is doing, then what you are doing is completely determined by that somebody else. Since hipsters are all revolting against more-or-less the same thing, it stands to reason that they'll all end up more-or-less alike.
To put it in simple mathematical terms: If X is mainstream culture, and you focus on becoming -X, -X is the same for everybody, so the results will be the same.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Cowherd on Wednesday November 05 2014, @08:51PM
It's a little more than that. You rely on your peers to get cues on what mainstream is, not directly. Imagine if you're a hipster, you hang out only with hipster friends, so you're insulated from mainstream society to a large extent.
This paper claims through simplified statistical models that the delay involved in propagating these cues leads to similarity. I admit I don't fully understand how that happens, but it's fascinating and don't believe it can be summarized neatly into a one liner.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday November 07 2014, @03:19AM
And hipsters are merely a bunch of similar people who have the same urge to be different from the "mainstream" and since they are actually similar people to each other they end up being "different" in similar ways. And that's why they are fairly easily identifiable.
Just because you want to be different doesn't make you different from others.
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Friday November 07 2014, @03:23AM
Also humans are social animals - thus people will tend to form groups (and thus start sharing behaviours and culture).
(Score: 4, Funny) by Blackmoore on Wednesday November 05 2014, @09:39PM
I'd reply to this, but you just wouldnt get it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:13PM
...hipsters are all revolting...
QFT
(Score: 4, Funny) by hubie on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:19PM
The paper is disappointing in that, for a paper about hipsters, there's not a single picture of a pair of skinny jeans in it. I bet the author did that to be ironic.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hubie on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:16PM
This was true with goths, emos, nerds, etc. To show you are non-conforming, you had to wear what all the other non-conformists were wearing, act the way they were acting, and specifically not looking or acting a particular way. Never mind you really liked your penny loafers and felt comfortable in them, if you weren't wearing Doc Martens you were sucking up to "the Man." Since I am obviously a free-thinking non-conformist, to be one too you obviously have to look like me.
People naturally aggregate into groups, even if it is to form a group for people who don't aggregate in groups.
(Score: 1) by m2o2r2g2 on Thursday November 06 2014, @12:44AM
^ This. 1000x This.
The most ironic thing about hipsters is that they define themselves as not-conforming by... all doing the same thing (conforming).
I have always been a pure non-conformist (to a degree) as a protest because the conformity creates an environment of us and them meaning anyone who is different gets ridiculed (basically a protest against bullying). Hipsters especially (and to a degree some other alternative movements) have ruined non-conforming by again creating an environment of us and them in their "non-conforming".
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday November 06 2014, @12:53AM
Perhaps there is safety in numbers for the non-conformists to share fashion even if it undermines their individuality.
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:17PM
Yeah well, I was into statistical physics before it became popular.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:42PM
It has never been popular.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday November 05 2014, @11:53PM
I thiught he internet had stopped bitvhing about "hipsters", but obviously I eas wrong. You know I's be a lot more likely to give a shit if someone could actually give me a useful, consistent definition of what a "hipster" actually is. Based on the interminable old-man anti-hipster grumbling that's been the soundtrack of the web for the last couple of years though, the best anyone seems to be able to come up with is "Some whippersnapper who doesn't dress sensibly like I did when I was their age."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @12:38AM
From what I understand, "hipster" is just a derogatory word for "counterculture".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cmn32480 on Thursday November 06 2014, @01:43AM
Hipster Defined: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture) [wikipedia.org] And it gives a reasonable history.
They even have a handbook ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Hipster-Handbook-Robert-Lanham/dp/1400032016/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415237817&sr=8-1&keywords=hipster+handbook [amazon.com] ). Who knew?
I admit, I was surprised at just how many books have been written about Hipsters and how to either be one or how to piss them off.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 1) by Jim Profit on Thursday November 06 2014, @12:56PM
They just adhere to a different confirmism..
Alterconformists would better describe them IMHO.
(Score: 1) by legont on Friday November 07 2014, @07:47PM
Mainstream consists of many different groups. They should have compared hipsters with, say, bikers or soccer moms and find that hipsters are more diverse.
Besides, it is well known that members of an unknown group look similar and I bet authors are not hipsters.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.