I was sitting sipping coffee and watching the surf with a besty this arvo and for reasons I can't recall, he broaches the subject of hipsters, I think there was one in the water. We start to ponder the vexing question of " what is the collective noun for a group of hipsters?". After a very short think and the mention of a few we know, (my favourite is, a SMACK of jellyfish) we concluded that there was probably no collective noun for hipster.
His phone then rang, it was his dancing instructor, (she's not really his dancing instructor, more a buddy of a particular genre, it's just that saying " are you going for a dancing lesson?" is far more appropriate in polite conversation when discussing their dalliance in a public place).
This phone call gave me the couple of minutes I needed to come up with an appropriate collective noun and since the most obvious thing about them is their luxuriant beards, and these are invariably filled with dried up weet-bix or Cheerios, remnant milk and bodily secretions, not necessarily their own. Along with this endless and plentiful food supply there will be a vast array of bacteria and micro flora enjoying a bountiful harvest, and that's when my eureka moment came to me!!!!!!
An INFESTATION of hipsters .... Ta da
Prior to me claiming a victory I thought I had better do some quick and dirty research so out comes the old dog and bone and I'm onto google like a shot. You can't imagine my disappointment when one of the first sites that turns up is that doyen of academia, the Urban Dictionary stating that the collective noun is, A SMUG of hipsters,
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Smug+of+hipsters I was gutted.
Just then my friend hung up the phone after arranging his next dancing lesson, nudge nudge, wink wink, and I told him how I had invented my own collective noun while he was on the phone, INFESTATION. He thought it was a good one, then I explained how I also looked it up and found that one had already been invented, SMUG.
I went home to lick my my lexiconic
(sic) wounds but once there, I had one more browse on the big machine and found another site where a plethora of collective nouns for Hipsters can be found.
all-sorts.org/nouns/hipsters Most of them are far more appropriate than mine, but at lest I don't feel so bad now.
I particularly like, A Latte, A Wank & A Knob