Meaning of hipster effect | Babel Free

Definitions

The tendency for nonconformists to look and act similarly to one another.

Examples

“The researchers posit that something they call the “hipster effect” asserts itself in human populations no matter how individualistic we imagine ourselves to be, because it’s individuality itself that sparks conformity.”

“And his conclusion is that in a vast range of scenarios, the hipster population always undergoes a kind of phase transition in which members become synchronized with each other in opposing the mainstream. In other words, the hipster effect is the inevitable outcome of the behavior of large numbers of people.”

“The "hipster effect," as explained by Brandeis University researchers, goes like this: Those in an anti-conformist population still conform to themselves. […] Case in point, as Lichfield detailed on Twitter last week: Almost as soon as the "hipster effect" article was published, a man furiously emailed the magazine claiming a photo of him was slanderously used alongside it without his permission. He was, it turned out, mistaken.”

CEFR level