Ten Rules of A Perfect Hipster T-Shirt

1. 1. Hipster T-Shirts do not reference mainstream TV. Your Dunder-Mifflin T-Shirt does not make you look cool. It makes you look like a fan. Fans are not cool. Plus if it’s really mainstream it’s not cool. Yes you people wearing Stewart/Colbert ‘12 shirts, this means you too.


2. Your obscure sci-fi TV show reference shirt is also not Hipster. If you have to have watched an obscure show that was on for two seasons to “get” the reference you aren’t cool. You are a geek. (You also lose points if the shirts are used ironically by other TV shows to show how lame it is to get the joke).


3. Star Trek, Star Wars and Lord of The Rings T-Shirts aren’t hipster. They just aren’t dude.


4. Hipster T-Shirt are rare or at least less mass produced than other items. If every jackanape can go into Wal-Mart and buy the same shirt it’s automatically disqualified as “hipster” even if it meets every other qualification. But hipster T-Shirts have to be sold somewhere for hipsters to buy them. So under this scale the less available the t-shirt the more hip it is. A simple rule of thumb: the hipster T-Shirt purchased at Urban Outfitters < tiny boutique < etsy/Threadless/cafepress < Small-club Bands < thrift-store find.
   
5. Hipster t-shirts do not have many words. It’s a shirt not a stand-up routine. If you can’t read the entire shirt in 15 seconds it’s got too many words to be hipster.


6. Hipster shirts are not “cute.” Be wary of the shirt with cutesy-poo cartoon animals or robots. Smiley faced anything, even when used ironically, is not hipster. That Dinosaur in Space shirt concept seems cool, but real hipsters don’t wear cutesy cartoons on them.


7. A real hipster t-shirt is unisex and apolitical. If a woman/man can’t wear the exact same shirt without looking ridiculous or seem like they are trying to make a statement then it’s not hipster. Obama, Tea Party, Anti-Tea Party, shirts aren’t hipster either.


8. Hipster T-Shirts can only be worn by those between the ages of 16-35. There’s some wiggle room, a 15-year-old *may* be able to pull off a Hipster T-Shirt despite not being able to drive. Likewise the upper range is more based on the person. But unless you are a bonafide rock star it’s pretty tough to pull off a hipster T-Shirt past 35.


9. Hipster t-shirts do not reference in any direct way: sex, barfing, farts, shit or piss. Yes that includes the unicorn shitting a rainbow or crapping cupcakes. As for the bodily function stuff, what are you, 15 years old? And if you have to advertise how cool you think sex is you’re probably not getting any.


10. Some t-shirts are hipster only when originals, not long-after-the-fact reproductions. If you picked up an original Nirvana shirt in the 90s and you are under 35, it can be hipster. If you bought a reproduction online (or Wal-Mart) it isn’t. How would anyone know? Oh hipsters know.

I know it seems like this excludes a lot of t-shirts, but that’s why it really takes work to be that fucking cool.