Bad news hipsters: the results are in, and America hates you

Bad news hipsters who’ve time traveled here from somewhere between 2002 and 2005: Public Policy Polling has asked Americans what they think of you and guess what? They don’t like you. But don’t worry! It’s only a plurality and not a majority. 42% of Americans who answered PPP’s not-an-April Fool’s Day phone call said that when it came to hipsters, no sir, they don’t like them.

The poll, which was conducted because apparently America’s stat geeks are just trolling people at this point, asked a random cross-section of 571 people what they thought of hipsters. 42% said they had an unfavorable view of them, 16% had a favorable view, and 43% weren’t sure one way or the other. 77% of those polled said that they did not consider themselves to be hipsters, which means that of course they are, and 23% said that hipsters should be subject to a special tax for being so annoying. Good luck collecting it, jerks, since hipsters are all just living off their trust funds or whatever and don’t even have any income to report.

The poll also asked whether hipsters made a positive social contribution or just soullessly appropriate cultural tropes from the past for their own ironic amusement. 46% of Americans thought that, proving that the poll responders haven’t seen a real hipster in ages, as we all know the modern hipster is too busy tending to his rooftop garden and artisan small-batch whiskey distillery to be ironic about anything.

Strangely enough, at least from the standpoint of stereotyping, black and Hispanic respondents had more favorable overall views of hipsters than whites, and were also more likely to self-identify as hipsters. Clearly this calls for a federal study to find out how long we’ve been terribly wrong about these kinds of stereotypes. The full breakdown of the poll in all its fascinating and WTF detail can be found here, while hipsters, as always, can be found anywhere with cheap rent and wide open industrial loft spaces.