Stop-Clap-Hey or "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Heritage Chic or Levi’s "Go Forth" by Ryan McGinley
Diesel Semiotics or premium denim
Indie Sleaze or "The Cult of American Apparel"
Evolution of the Hipster, 2000—2009 or Paste
Media Manipulation or Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying
Outrage Marketing or American Eagle’s "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans"
In 2009, The New York Times wrote:
Generation Y. Generation O (for Obama). Millennials. Echo boomers. Call them what you will, the tens of millions of Americans in their teens and 20s compose a market as hard for advertisers to figure out as it is alluring and lucrative.
In 2019, mission accomplished:
…the millennial is just the hipster with a dose of sunshine. Authentic products, ethical consumption, and digital media can mean desert boots, mason jars, and blogging, or it can mean Allbirds, Whole Foods, and Instagram. What alt commentators missed when they bemoaned marketers’ interest in hipsterdom was that they were not co-opting a subculture, they were mining it for less transgressive values that could be scaled.
If hippies could be kicked off their communes and reintroduced to urban society as yuppies, then hipsters could be de-grimed and reintroduced as pro-social influencers. Leggings got renamed yoga pants, American Apparel’s retro porn aesthetic was repackaged as Lululemon’s athleisure.
This week, posters on X have been revisiting this trajectory. It began when @justinboldaji calling Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s “Home” the “worst song ever made.”
The genre, retroactively termed ‘stomp-clap-hey’ was part of a larger cultural realignment. According to crypto-investor @nic__carter “what happened in 2010-15 man[?] we were seized by some kind of faux frontiersman cult for urbanites. probably the worst cultural era in history”:
stomp clap hey music. lumineers, mumford & sons, imagine dragons etc. awful. no redeeming qualities whatsoever
stipped down exposed brick burger halls with signs saying "eat" on reclaimed barnwood. dim edison bulbs. drinks served out of a mason jar
facial hair and flannel. bears and overdone mustaches popular with the soft urbanite types. lumberjack core
relatedly, "manly" trinkets for dudes. beard oil. shaving kits. axes and leather aprons. "modern gentleman" brands in subscription boxes. packaged masculinity for consoomers. closely linked to reddit culture
apothecarycore. every brand became a twee "Co." all using the same serif typeface
heritage liquor and accoutrements. whisky as a personality trait. elaborate glassware setups
What had been a niche component of New York City hipsterdom—best epitomized by the "clandestine colonial American tavern", Freeman’s off the Bowery—broke containment. It was carried by a combination of:
viral YouTube videos: posted in 2010, "Home" has over 200 million views
mainstream marketing: in 2009 Levi’s hired indie darling M Blash to direct "OPioneers!" an advertisement inspired by the Walt Whitman poem; and hipster photographer Ryan McGinley to create the print component featuring half-naked youth frolicking in the woods and setting off fireworks. The campaign was titled "Go Forth!".
television coverage: the IFC Channel’s Portlandia premiered in 2011, HBO’s Girls in 2012. Both shows satirized and critiqued their hipster characters. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The New Girl featured hipster-themed episodes during the same time period.
Great Recession migration patterns: under- and unemployed millennials famously moved home, bringing with them ideas about artisanal food, third-wave coffee, and heritage chic they had encountered in cities and college towns.
unlike indie sleaze, a predominantly urban phenomenon; heritage chic touched every corner of america
Like most American style cycles, these trends can be mapped through denim:
