When I was 13 years old, my friend’s older sister told me she hated some band, the name of which I have since forgotten, because they went “mainstream”. It was a term I didn’t really understand, so I pressed on – did their music get worse? “No, they’re still good.” Did they do something morally reprehensible? “No, they’re not any different. Just, too many people like them now. So I don’t.” Though I could not have known it at the time, it was my first encounter with a hipster. I made the helpless, confused face one makes when he has no idea how to make his still-contested point any clearer, a face I would not make again until several years later when my girlfriend at the time told me that she thought the Lion King was overrated. (She did not survive the week.)

I didn’t realize that hipsters were a thing, members of their own social group, until I reached college. At each debate tournament, for every three or four well-coifed, impeccably suited opponents I met, I encountered a flannel-wearing socialist who railed against the oppression of the social construct that was the debate tournament. He was apparently being oppressed by a system he chose to participate in, and my helpless, confused expression won me precious few rounds that first year.

Of course we cannot define ‘hipster’ with the precision that we can define, say, odd numbers or Homo sapiens; that doesn’t mean it has no meaning. The lack of clear boundaries around a concept hardly renders it incoherent. Classic example: how do we define ‘game’? How is it that we use the same word to describe children cooperatively imagining themselves married, the physically demanding competition between teams crashing into each other to move (or halt) a football, and the mentally exhausting individual sparring that is professional chess? After all, there has to be a finite number of games, and mercifully, there has to be a finite number of hipsters; you’d think we could clearly define a finite concept. Yet each of these ‘games’ radically differs from the next.

Does this render ‘game’ a meaningless word? Hardly; we use it to refer to a wide range of things, but not all things. Some games are competitive; some games are cooperative. Some games have incredibly high stakes, some have none at all. Most importantly, we all have a sense of what ‘game’ refers to, and what it doesn’t. Chess is definitely a game. Maybe NASCAR is a game, maybe not; fringe cases are tricky, and we love to debate them. They live right in the inherent fuzziness of words. Bananas, however, are certainly not games.

So maybe I can’t draw a circle that contains all and only hipsters, but the uncanny family resemblance among hipsters certainly points us in some helpful directions. Hipsters share a particular feeling of isolation from the world around them; they wear vintage clothing rather than spend money to look the same as everyone else; they drink PBR (or microbrews) rather than further an advertising culture which objectifies women and drinking for the sake of being ‘American’; they value obscurity for its own sake, as it reflects a willingness to find value where no one else is looking, a refusal to be told what is and isn’t cool. They love the beat generation, idolizing it as the paradigm of rejecting an oppressive culture. They value irony because it is a re-appropriation of the culture they reject, a self-aware participation, done strictly for the lulz.

These are, of course, gross oversimplifications. Not every hipster in the world drinks PBR, and not every PBR drinker in the world is a hipster. Discussing groups of people is fraught with peril, and we absolutely must treat these single-word groupings as merely convenient heuristic conventions, rather than rigid designators. Still, if you told your inquisitive grandfather that hipsters are, generally speaking, people who hang out together because of the shared feeling of mutual isolation from what they believe is an increasingly hollow and corporatized culture, you’d be off to a damned good start; toss in a couple helpful examples and a caveat that, like any social group, there will be exceptions and degrees, and you’re fucking golden.

It turns out that when non-hipsters (let’s call us ‘conformists’) hate hipsters, they have exactly the same reason as hipsters who hate conformists have: they are the Other, members of a culture which I cannot understand or blend in with, a culture that rejects precisely what I value. Does anyone want to deal with people who disdain what he values? No wonder there is so much hostility going in both directions; hipsters only get a label because there are more of us than them. Stephanie is right about one thing: calling someone a hipster is the ultimate judgmental move. But no less ultimately judgmental is the rejection of conformists by hipsters simply because we have not chosen to reject the culture you have; I happen to love my corporatized culture, thanks very much, and I assure you I’ve thought that all the way through. I see the strings that control the system, and they delight me. The assumption that I am a sheep with no personal identity or capacity for critical thinking is as unfounded as the assumption that you’re an unwashed vagabond with no real skills or useful opinions.

‘Hipster’ seems like an insult because there is nothing more insulting than, “you do not belong.” It can also be used endearingly; I appreciate the quirkiness of my hipster friends. Either way, it has a clear meaning, even if it lacks clear boundaries.

The word ‘hipster’ is alive and well, and it gets used in internet arguments because we often have the sneaking suspicion that someone is rejecting a position simply because he rejects conformists and everything about them, and no one likes to be dismissed out of hand for belonging to a group. However, at a certain point there is not much more to say to each other. If you reject my culture wholesale, then my arguments from within the culture have little weight indeed. How can you convince the man who controls the strings that the strings are bad? How can you convince someone who rejects cultural standards that gauged ears aren’t culturally acceptable? “Hipster,” they spit, the contempt leaping from the keyboard to the screen. Really, they’re just accusing you of being too different to even understand, of having prohibitively different values. However, unlike being Hitler, there’s nothing inherently bad about being a hipster; you just annoy the rest of us. So ‘hipster’ needn’t be the next Godwin word; if you want the word ‘hipster’ to go away, you should re-appropriate it as you have so many other elements of culture. Stop pretending that hipsters aren’t really a group, that it’s an unfair label, that hipsters are a mythical creature that no one actually resembles. When someone accuses you of being a hipster, accept it (if they’re right), and then explain why they too should reject the culture you’ve rejected. Or not; you could just tell them why you’re okay being that guy. Not everyone will see eye to eye with you, obviously. Be okay with that, too. Be insulted with some goddamn dignity.

You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.

I was seated opposite to a friend of a friend of a friend — a stranger really — some sturdy South African national of Chinese ethnicity. I tried focusing on my food, but every time I glanced up, I’d catch her eyes. They were uncomfortably penetrating.

This was to be our first and only time we broke bread together.

As dining gave way to conversation, she suggested that we play a little game. Her mother, she claimed, was a fortune teller; she should have inherited some of her intuition and craft through blood and years of observance. She asked us to think about one question that troubled us, and to write the sequence 1-9 nine times, one row stacked above the other, on a scrap of paper.

“Will I live a happy life?” I wrote.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9…etc

My handwriting was orderly, but lacked the refinement of a typeset.

After collecting and analyzing what we had written, she turned to me and said, “You’re the type of person who speaks first and thinks about it afterwards.” Her eyes kept moving. She redirected her gaze to my date (who has impeccable penmanship) and said, “You’re the type of person who thinks a lot before speaking.” I was crazy about her, my date. I didn’t want to be her opposite in terms of speech, conduct, and thought processing. The fortune teller’s daughter had planted seeds of thought in my mind, and it was unclear when any of it would take root and grow. But that’s probably what psychics and fortune tellers are trained to do. Sometimes, I think of them as practicing a perverse form of psychotherapy.

In any case, things didn’t last. With the woman I was dating, I mean. We discovered over time (more like I found out a little too late) that the fundamental differences in how we communicated and acted would lead to our estrangement. The very things I feared from that night with the fortune teller’s daughter came to pass.

Now, I consider myself to be a fairly straightforward person. I try to embrace new social circumstances without pretense or barriers. I’m a terrible liar, but I’m fairly good at exercising denial. I imagine I give people the impression that I’m optimistic and naïve because I readily give parts of myself to others in a way most people cannot; it’s a fool’s trust and I suspect that it will always be a part of me. I put my emotions on display and ride them up the flagpole. All of this may appear uncouth and perhaps even childish.

A little bit of self-deprecation: “What I lack in finesse, I make up with pure enthusiasm!”

Finesse. It implies refinement and methodology. It is cultivating a certain level of self-awareness that allows one to adjust oneself to his or her liking. Finesse is the result of premeditated action and practice. Finesse is grace, elegance, and tactfulness. It is displaying to the external world a carefully poised version of yourself. It is both a form of self-control and an exercise in caution. Largely, I feel, people are attracted to those who possess and utilize finesse, yet are unable to fully articulate what exactly they find so compelling. To describe what “it” is in its entirety would be a futile enterprise, for there are many ways to be graceful. There’s finesse in body language, in posturing, in the way one raises an arm, scratches an eyebrow, and consumes an ice-cream cone. There’s the lilt of a well-trained voice, there’s the mesmerizing movements of an instrumentalist’s fingers; there’s the aesthetically pleasing particulars of an outfit, and there’s the manner in which one navigates through social function. There’s also the charm injected into speech, words teasing you with sharp wit, titillating innuendo, and endless possibility.

Which brings me to Disney Villains. They’re usually tall, lean and graceful figures that rely on very subtle duplicity to further their ambitions. It always seemed to me that Disney artists put a lot of effort in making the villain’s face extremely plastic and their movements deliberate, especially when compared to the protagonist and secondary characters. This also goes for how the villains sound and how they carefully hide their disdain and disinterest and convey just the opposite. Cruella De Vil? Jafar? Scar? Judge Claude Frolo? Hades? Yzma? All those gaunt and pallid shrews who want to assassinate/ poison/ enslave/ their step-daughter? How about that slim black dude who dabbled in voodoo? Heck, even though Ursula had junk in the truck, she sure knew how to carry her weight gracefully.

I kept wondering why so many of those villains were modeled that way. Why in our subconscious are we attracted or intimidated by, perhaps at the same time, those who act like those villains? We cheer for the villain’s disposal at the end because they went too fucking far. But what of those who still operate within the acceptable parameters of society? Perhaps an appropriate analogy to use here is the game of chess. Sometimes, you just wonder how many moves ahead or behind your opponent is. Although you can’t really read them, it’s intriguing nonetheless. Unfortunately, life is an entirely different game, a game where consequences have weight and absolute trust is among the rarest of commodities.

Of course, the art of finesse, of refinement and premeditation, is usually a secondary, perhaps tertiary concern to most of those among the living. Yet we observe these merits safely and anonymously through the venues of public entertainment. American Idol? America’s Best Dance Crew? Glee? Pick whatever strikes your fancy. Be inspired and try to be like them, if you’ve got the talent (or money).

I personally enjoy dancing. After all, moving to a beat has been hard-wired to us long before most other forms of amusement; I feel it’s the most natural and accessible form of self (or social) enjoyment that does not involve consumption. For those who convince themselves otherwise, I call bullshit – it’s just not possible to NOT enjoy SOME form of dance, unless you happen to be morbidly obese or have chronic joint pain. Being the shameless creature that I am, becoming a public spectacle of flailing limbs and hip gyrations is not offset by social anxiety. I have fun simply because of the sheer spontaneity of it all.

This is obviously a far cry from ballet, which is often considered to be the most elevated form of dance. The dedication and sacrifice that a dancer puts in is mind-boggling and insurmountable for most of us. Even the orchestral accompaniment, the intricate dress and costumes, the architecture of the venues, and the type of patron associated with ballet… they all are representative of our general consensus of what high culture is. Finesse to the max. Natalie Portman’s duality in Black Swan provides us with a stark contrast between a desperate insecurity around unattainable perfection and a deep and primal, almost lustful, urge that demands satisfaction. We see her vacillate between the Black and White swan personas, and as she wobbles further off of her normal equilibrium, she becomes, in her dying breath, complete and actualized. She delivered a performance that was solely for herself, something utterly sublime to those who have never witnessed a perfect display of finesse infused with passion.

Angela Carter writes, “We would rather align ourselves with angels, than the primates we are actually descended from. Those who are most afraid of this side of themselves, who are the most repressed, they are often the most dangerous.”

Honestly, I still don’t fully understand how the fortune teller’s daughter influenced me. But through one chance meeting, she gathered just enough about me to deliver some seemingly innocuous statements that return to haunt me time and again, in my dreams.

I wake up now with longing, with desire.

You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.

Information on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the “circus rock ‘n’ roll drama” whose Broadway premiere has now been pushed back to the fall, is scarce so far. What we know now, though, is that it’s directed by Julie Taymor, of Across the Universe and The Lion King fame; that its songs were written by U2′s Bono and The Edge; that its costume design is by Eiko Ishioka; and that it will involve Spider-Man fighting a host of villains: Electro, the Rhino, the Green Goblin, Carnage, Swarm, the Lizard, and Swiss Miss.

Wait–who was that last one? Swiss Miss is a new addition to the Spider-Man rogues’ gallery. Her Ishioka-designed costume has been described as white dominatrix gear, and apparently involves corkscrews and rotating knives. She’s also a genuine anomaly in the world of Spider-Man, who’s been fighting bad guys for close to half a century now. And they’re almost inevitably bad guys. Spider-Man has no villainesses from comic books interesting enough to put in a musical because, historically, his relationship with costumed villains is all about his alter ego Peter Parker looking for a replacement father and failing to find one. That doesn’t seem to have been an intentional theme–but it’s present anyway, and it’s turned up in the three hit Spider-Man movies, too.

The central canon of Spider-Man stories is the forty-odd comic books about the character by artist Steve Ditko and writer Stan Lee that were published between 1962 and 1966. An endlessly inventive and very odd cartoonist, Ditko gave Amazing Spider-Man a sense of constant motion and trembling tension. He had a remarkable knack for action and grotesquerie and urban landscapes and broad comedy. His spindly, contorted figures inspired the style of every subsequent Spider-Man cartoonist. And he drew almost all of the series’ villains as old men–much older men than Peter Parker, men old enough to be his father.

Peter’s father, in fact, is conspicuous by his absence in those early stories: he wasn’t named or even mentioned directly until 1968. As the first Spider-Man story begins, Peter is a teenage boy, living in Queens with his elderly aunt and uncle. Uncle Ben is murdered within a few pages, and the disaster that drives the rest of Spider-Man’s career is Peter’s realization that he could have saved his second father’s life.

After that, Peter’s blown it. Again and again, Spider-Man finds himself fighting men who represent one model or another of bad fatherhood. The Tinkerer, Electro, Dr. Octopus and the Lizard are all scientists, like Peter, but instead of mentoring him, they turn on him. (Before director Sam Raimi’s plans for Spider-Man 4 were scrapped a few months ago, he had been pushing for the Lizard and Electro to appear in it.) Kraven the Hunter is the bad father as alpha male, bloated with his own machismo and his need to prove his superiority. J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle, where Peter works, is a furious, pompous, unsatisfiable father who parcels out precious crumbs of respect amid torrents of abuse.

And then there’s the Green Goblin, Spider-Man’s chief enemy–but it wasn’t clear what kind of father he was until Ditko left the series. In their first issue together, Lee and new artist John Romita put the crown on the series’ bad-daddy motif. The Goblin, they revealed, is the wealthy, successful Norman Osborn, who seems at first to be a good father to Peter’s friend Harry–but turns out to be the worst kind of father, the kind who passes along his legacy of violence and lies to his son. The Green Goblin went on to murder Peter’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy a few years later. (By that point, Gwen’s own father, police captain George Stacy, had been killed off as well. In Spider-Man stories, bad fathers never stop coming back, but good fathers are doomed.)

Spidey occasionally got to fight women: he tussled with Medusa, a supporting character from Fantastic Four; he had a run-in with the Black Widow, who dropped in from the pages of The Avengers. (“How can I fight her?” he asked on that issue’s cover. “She’s a female copy of MYSELF!”) But he didn’t get an actual recurring villainess to call his own until the Black Cat first appeared in 1979. (In more recent comics, they’ve developed what can only be described as an enemies-with-benefits relationship.)

That brings us back to the curious case of Spidey’s new hot-chocolate-inspired, castrating-weapon-wielding adversary. It’s hard to imagine a Broadway extravaganza like Turn Off the Dark not featuring a woman as one of its central characters; unfortunately, the 48-year history of Spider-Man comic books simply doesn’t offer many options. Taymor and Ishioka have created an option of their own, and it sounds like Swiss Miss will be a visual spectacle in the tradition of Ditko and Romita’s inventions. But it’s the painful undercurrents of masculine identification in Spider-Man’s early battles–the sense that he was fighting the substitute fathers he could never again have–that made them more than just a spectacle.