“Hipster,” like “douchebag,” has reached a state of overuse that renders it almost entirely meaningless. To some, a hipster is a 17-year old wearing skinny jeans and listening to Arcade Fire. To others, a Mac-toting, would-be screenwriter, lounging in a Polish legion (despite being thoroughly Anglo-Saxon). The result is that “hipster,” stretching to accommodate these extremities, has torn, and all the meaning has oozed out the side.

As a result of this meaning crisis, Gawker.com writers have called for the retirement of the term, and say that accusations of “hipsterism” have become circular and meaningless. What’s to be done?

Accepting a meaning of “hipster” broad enough to encompass both of the above examples leaves us without a specific word for the screenwriter. A similar problem arises if “hipster” is retired altogether.

Yet the class of people for whom the term was coined to describe remains an important social phenomenon and it warrants a name. Suppose, then, that real hipsters, the really cool ones in transvestite Meatloaf cover bands (believe me, this is cool), are given a new name — “tenderbars,” for instance. If we describe tenderbars as we do hipsters — by their tastes — then, when they abandon Trannyloaf and the high school kids pick it up, the referent of our word has changed completely. This is how the high school kid is confused with the hipster. Once upon a time, hipsters liked Arcade Fire. At that time, someone observed a hipster being correctly classified and assumed that the definition of “hipster” was “one who likes Arcade Fire.”

Therefore, I propose the following definition of “hipster” based on more permanent characteristics and on the social role of the hipster. Given a subject suspected of being a hipster, it should be possible to make an informed judgment of their status based on their resemblance (or lack thereof) to this prototype:

Background

Should be between 22 and 35 years old and from a middle- to upper-middle class family. Should live in a major city, but have been raised in the country or a small town.

Taste

Should avoid the mainstream, but not be too highbrow. Should value absurdity and embrace bizarre contrasts, such as spats with retro sneakers (hint).

Employment

Should be neither gainfully employed nor a full-time student, but have a vaguely-defined, somewhat creative business/project. For example, the subject might be photographing an erotic baroque-jazz fashion spread one month, and work as a DJ the next. These endeavours must break even at their most profitable, and ideally lose money. The project will often be a collaborative venture, housed in . . .

The workspace

All the best hipsters have one of these. They might call it an office, a studio or have a special name for it like “The Southeast Milwaukee Neighbourhood Watch Association Central Office,” but its function is the same: to serve as a place to hang out for the 10 friends who share the rent. Just as the project described above must never be profitable, the workspace must never be the site of actual work. It should also reflect the ambiguity of the subject’s employment. For example, an ideal workspace might contain 14 old traffic cones, a Final Cut Pro editing suite, a bounce card (but no lights), a stack of Japanese home renovation magazines, two video cameras and the frame for a large canvas, each just as useless in determining what goes on in the workspace as the next.

These, in my experience, are the hallmarks of the hipster