OVER the weekend I read the rise of the hipster might have been toppled, and I'm not talking about a style of jeans.

Hipsters seem to have become a much maligned and somewhat misunderstood corner of society, most probably due their reputation for being unbearably pretentious.

I'll quickly skim over the speculation that their fall is in part due to the rise of facial hair transplants making their male incumbents' penchant for adorning their faces with some form of beard - though for gender equality, I'm sure their female counterparts As well as being known for hirsute habits, they are broadly associated with indie and alternative music and a non-mainstream fashion sense based on vintage and charity shop buys.

The reason for my ramble on this subject is simply because I have been labelled a hipster for these very reasons - both seriously and as a joke.

I've been called a lot worse in my time but due to the negative conotations that go with this tag, I'm not sure it's something I want to be associated with, especially as I don't do any of these things due to any passing fad.

The word is more often than not delivered with a curled lip or a sneer - hardly the makings of a badge of honour.

I've dressed like a geography teacher for years and my musical habits are more geeky than being acquired for name-dropping purposes, so I'm hardly doing it to jump on any trendy bandwagon.

When I think of the word hipster, my mind always turns to Nathan Barley, the cult Channel 4 comedy from 2005 which poked fun at the subculture before it was really properly acknowledged by society.

It looked at the rise of idiots and people who follow the crowd like sheep, and could easily be considered as being well ahead of its time in predicting the direction popular culture would go.

Give it a watch and you'll recognise a wealth of characters from everyday life.

A quick search on Urban Dictionary reveals some hilarious user-submitted 'definitions'.

My personal favourite being: "Definitions are too mainstream. Hipsters can't be defined because then they'd fit in a category, and thus be too mainstream."

Most of the references are tongue-in-cheek jibes are being too cool, knowingly ironic or having a superiority complex.

Back to the subject of their apparent fall - I'm not sure anyone outside of Shoreditch would be too bothered about their demise but it would give my friends one less thing to mock me about.

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. I'm off to listen to a band you haven't heard of while wearing clothes bought at a vintage shop and stroking my beard in contemplation...