Culture Digitally

For years now, pop culture experts and academics alike have been calling for the end of the hipster, but no one has been able to fully articulate what subculture movement comes next – until now. In an op-ed for Mashable, David Infante coined the term yuccie (Young Urban Creatives) as the successor of hipster. According to Infante, yuccie’s are “In a nutshell, a slice of Generation Y, borne of suburban comfort, indoctrinated with the transcendent power of education, and infected by the conviction that not only do we deserve to pursue our dreams; we should profit from them.”

Does this sound like you or someone you know? More than ever, young professionals are culling cubicles in pursuit of seemingly bemused, impractical ambitions. Money is important to yuccies, but happiness and recognition are even more significant to them. As Infante put it, “Getting rich quick would be great. But getting rich quick and preserving creative autonomy? That’s the yuccie dream.”

In these technologically advanced times when anyone can be an entrepreneur with just a click of a button, having occupational sovereignty is easier than ever. When all the dirty work and sensible jobs are either being outsourced to developing countries or reserved for the working class, youth entitlement has never been higher in America. We are taught to “follow our dreams and the rest will follow,” to “march to the beat of our own drum,” and yuccies are the poster children for such mantras; but what about those who don’t have that luxury?

Pictures of Money/Flickr

When everyone wants to be an artisan hat maker, vegan stylist, or cannabis journalist, who will be the janitors, fast food workers, and plumbers? The poor. As accurate as Infante’s description of yuccie is, it’s still just a euphemism for the bourgeois. Creating glamorous terms like “yuccie,” “hipster,” “yuppie,” and “bohemian” for defining a subculture is just an excuse to mask the underlying cause no one wants to talk about: economics.

You cannot be any of these labels without the financial means to do so. Living in Williamsburg or Montmartre is expensive. Getting a higher education is expensive (especially if you got a liberal arts degree). Pursuing your dreams is expensive unless you have the capital (or parents) to back it up. Only children who are lucky enough to be born in a first world country to upper middle class parents get the opportunity to be a yuccie – everyone else is confined to being “basic.”

There will always be another trendy term for a youth movement that tries to define a generation, but it will always just be code for “entitled.”

Are you a yuccie or not? Tell us why.

Additional images:  Mashable

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