"Is The Scene Still Alive?": Post-Hipster Affect, Memetic Aesthetics, and the Crisis of Subcultural Authenticity

Abstract: This article offers a preliminary theory of what it terms memetic aesthetics , referring to an ever-expanding multitude of niche stylistic categories that have been circulating across digital media since the early 2010s. It argues that the years following in the wake of the hipster figure in the cultural imaginary have seen a great shift whereby the authenticity-centered aesthetics of subculture have gradually been replaced by the hyperaccelerated ephemerality of memetic aesthetics. The article begins by describing a prevalent sense of nostalgia for the style and attitude of the hipster era in contemporary popular culture, reading this post-hipster affect as a symptom of the shift between subcultural and memetic aesthetics. Examining the close historical parallels between the gradual decline in belief in subcultural authenticity, the birth of postsubcultural studies, and the emergence of the hipster, the article describes how the phenomenon of hipsterism was animated and unified by a frenzied pursuit of subcultural authenticity that is no longer viable in the age of social media. It goes on to provide a theoretical outline of memetic aesthetics, highlighting their distinction from subcultures on the basis of their digital modes of circulation, hyperfragmentary nature, and lack of reliance in a notion of subcultural authenticity. The article concludes by discussing the significance of the scene concept within postsubcultural studies, suggesting that the cultural salience of hipster nostalgia may pertain to a change in the quality of sceneness between subcultural and memetic aesthetics.