Bohemian vs Hipster.

Post Reply New Topic

As there is a thread entitled, Redneck vs Hillbilly, I figured why not ask opinions about the difference between bohemians and hipsters.
My take is:
Bohemians are original if not eccentric, and could care what anyone thinks of them, while hipsters pretend to take this attitude but are actually conscious of fashion and what's popular.
Hipsters make a show of being vegans, while bohemians will eat anything.
Bohemians are often involved in the arts, while hipsters talk up knowing so much about the arts.
In other words, hipsters are posers, bohemians are the really counter culture and iconoclasts.

Well...yeah. That's pretty much it.

Somewhere who is aware of the latest trends would be a hipster.

Bohemians (in the sense you mean) were originally rebels and artists in Paris.

Bohemia, and Moravia, together form the same piece of land that is now called "the Czech Republic" which on the map of Europe looks like the head of a chicken drumstick about to be chomped on by Germany. Bohemia is the German word for what the locals always called "Czeci" (pronounced "Checkee").

Centuries ago the Gypsies/Romani people entered Europe via the Ottoman Empire which ruled the whole southeast of Europe. One point of entry was Bohemia. They fanned out from Bohemia and identified themselves as "Bohemians" (even though they were not ethnic Czechs) as they moved across western Europe in their caravans. Some settled in the poor areas of Paris. And those neighborhoods came to be known as the "Bohemian sections". And then in the 19th Century the artists and iconclasts also settle in those low rent areas and came to be called "Bohemians" . Or that's the version I heard of the origin of the term.

A Bohemian is a person from the western half of the Czech Republic.

A hipster is a person who dresses like a stereotypical nerd in order to cash in on "nerd pride" even though he/she doesn't know about anything except pop culture.

For example, a hipster is someone who writes Star Wars fan fiction, but has never read about actual science and doesn't plan to.

In other words, hipsters are cancer personified.

There was a sort of evolution in the early-to-late 20th Century

From: Bohemian, to Beatnik, to Hippie.

Bohemians were people who were inclined towards a rather decadent lifestyle. The stereotype has them constantly having "wine and cheese" parties. Like someone else said, their origins were the "literary set" of Paris in the 19th century---especially someone like Charles Baudelaire. They might or might not have had gainful employment. They tended to enjoy sitting around all night having philosophical discussions, and at least some of them also engaged in orgies. They tended to dress "exotically," like perhaps in some sort of Indian (east) garb. Or other sorts of clothes. Woody Guthrie was definitely not a "Bohemian." They weren't into folk music; they were more into classical music.

Beatniks were people who attempted to imitate the "Beat Generation" of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etc. Kerouac, at least, couldn't stand the "Beatniks," and thought they "imitated" the Beats poorly. They tended to have a more blatant disregard for society than the Bohemians, who were rebellious, but more quietl so. Stereotypically, they would hang out "coffee houses" and listen to poetry. They would play bongo drums. Unlike the Bohemians, who tended to speak "intellectually," they tended to speak in the "hip slang" of their times. They were seen as being "dirty" by "straight" people. Maynard G. Krebs was a Beatnik character in a show called "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

Like the Bohemians, they experimented with drugs. Like the Bohemians, the had literary pretentions, and also enjoyed sitting up all night talking about philosophy.

I haven't heard the term "Bohemian" in years, by the way.

LOL...I've never disputed your right to make the thread.

Here, in NYC, "hipsters" are seen as people who are derided as being superficially "hip," and for tending to move into previously "bad" areas which have become "gentrified."

In NYC, the residents of these "bad areas," tended to be "minorities."

Bedford-Stuyvesant, in Brooklyn, used to be famous for being a "classic ghetto." Now, it's full of "hipsters."

By the late 1970s, the West Village was populated by relatively affluent gay people, who displaced the Bohemians and such who were living there previously.

But the East Village remained a Hippie Haven. And a rather dangerous area because of the amount of drugs being peddled on the streets there.

I suppose, in the 1990s, that "hipsters," for all intents and purposes, displaced most of the old-time East Village denizens.

A Bohemian is a person from the western half of the Czech Republic/Bohemia.
A Hipster is a person from the small independent city-state of Høpstabørgen located in the mountainous border region between Vinland and Kekistan.

Bohemians and hipsters are the same thing. Bohemian is just an older word for hipster. And no, very few hipsters are actually vegan.

The are the same, not different.

They are very different.

“Hipster” is an ironic/sarcastic term these days. People really don’t think they’re “hip.” They are seen as being phonies.

A Bohemian is usually more the “real deal” as far as artistic pretension is concerned. And they are not seen as “hip,” and don’t even aspire to its “heights.”

Bohemians and hippies are the same to me...I feel like hipsters exclusively live in cities abd have an air of pretention around them. Hippies seem a lot nicer and seem to have genuine respect for people/animals/the Earth.

Obviously these are generalisations.