Mazinger-Z said:
The real clash with hipsters and nerds comes from the fact that yes, hipsters in their attempts to seem niche, will latch onto the surface of nerd culture. The conflict comes from this new audience influencing or changing existing media to suit their own tastes, which kind of flies in the face of the nerd culture that it survived on before becoming mainstream.
This is a weird statement considering all of your following examples have nothing to do with hipsters, the examples you give would only apply to hipsters if you lump the mainstream casual crowd under the label, which is almost the opposite of what we consider to be a hipster. Even your Batman example isn't being pushed by hipsters.
And we've seen that in history. The bright, colorful superhero genre basically murdered the more adult, pulp comics. D&D's seen a lot of changes in response to the rise of MMOs (I haven't played 6e yet, but 5e was an attempt to streamline the game so it was like an MMO).
Comics moving to a more pulpy darker format has shit all to do with hipsters. The direction of comics in the 90's was pushed by comics moving into a sales frenzy pushed by big events, and speculators creating an artificial sales boom. It was a combination of the huge popularity of books like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, and the business men of the time seeing big events and shocking announcements selling more comics as something to push more and more of.
Movie wise, it was the mainstream popularity of Batman that pushed the gritty superhero films until Marvel came along and injected some fun into the mix and made money off of it. This again, has nothing to do with hipsters, it was the mainstream audience driving the change, with corporate suits attempting to follow the money and success of Batman.
Which brings me to your last example, which again, has shit all to do with hipsters unless you think the popularity of MMO's was driven by hipsters which is ridiculous on its face. D&D aped MMO's because the MMO audience is shit tons larger and more profitable than the tabletop market. It was a dumb decision, but again, it was driven by a company trying to chase mainstream sensibilities, pretty much the opposite of what a hipster supposedly is.
So two examples in, and all you've shown is that corporations will change stuff to try and chase larger markets, it can certainly suck, if it's any consolation, I think D&D is stepping back a bit from its streamlining, but again, nothing to do with hipsters, you just sound like your complaining about stuff changing in ways you don't like for any reason.
You see it right now with things like the animation production of The Killing Joke, where people who probably never read the original work (whether because they couldn't be bothered or because 'muh trigger warning') want to remove the part where Barbara is shot and then victimized, which was all meant home both the viciousness of the Joker and how far he was willing to push James Gordon, who was his real target.
Great, this again, is not really driven by hipsters, feminist critics coming in to complain about something does not suddenly make them hipsters just because they are complaining about something that they haven't followed as closely as you deem "acceptable" to then critique it.
Of course, there are Batman, Batgirl, and even Alan Moore fans that thought what the story did to Barbara Gordon was dumb. I read the killing joke about 2 years after its release in 1988, and I've read Batman comics for years, I also like the Killing Joke, and Alan Moore, but you know what? What happened to Barbara Gordon was bullshit, she got fridged, and I agree with gail Simones critique of the situation, she was a superhero that basically got warfed, it was a bullshit way to take out a semi-popular heroine at the time, she was only saved retroactively by a different writer that managed to salvage her character into the well-done Oracle persona.
This complaint just sounds like you trying to rationalize people that don't like a certain aspect of something as not being big enough fans for your taste, so you label them as hipsters or outsiders to make them easier to dismiss.
That the work may be altered to satisfy an audience that doesn't care about the source material is galling to the fans who supported the original work and made it an iconic, memorable piece of the Batman mythos. And yes, that does matter, because otherwise "I'm the Goddamned Batman" All Star Batman & Robin would also be considered iconic, as opposed to just sad.
Welcome to business, it sucks, but it happens, this has nothing to do with hipsters, you seem to just be setting an arbitrary limit for how much someone has to be a fan of something before their allowed to complain about it.
Your examples aren't about hipsters, you seem to be complaining about mainstream and casual fans, with a dose of fear of outsiders coming to change your favorite properties. I'm sure not many hipsters give much of a shit about one of the most iconic comic book stories in the industry, most people I've met that would qualify for the hipster label tend to think DC and Marvel are too corporate or mainstream, usually with a slew of recommendations for obscure third party comics they may or may not have actually read.
Look, I can sympathize to an extent, as someone that enjoys tabletop games, MMO's, and FPS arena shooters, I've experienced more than a few things I love making lame changes trying to chase the WoW or Call of Duty cash cows. These things are not really stoppable though, you and I just have to deal with the fact that the things we like are niche, and businessmen have a tendency to try and chase mainstream trends. Not really a problem with hipsters though, its one of the main things hipsters complain about actually, they tend to hate anything they view as the "mainstream" coming in and attaching itself to the things they like.
