hickster

The word hickster is a blend of hick, a pejorative term for someone who lives in a rural area, and hipster, “a usually young person who is trendy, stylish, or progressive in an unconventional way.”

Before the 2000s, hickster saw occasional use as another term for a hick (combining hick directly with the suffix –ster) in books and online. In the late 2000s, some people on social media began specifically using hickster as a joking way to refer either to urban hipsters who embrace rural aesthetics or people from the country who adopt urban trends.

"You're a hickster."–@nikhilb, while contemplating my strange love of rodeo-themed modern American classical music.

— Christina Uy (@uyzie) November 6, 2009

In tea shop, just overheard a new word I was trying to hone when describing old west / burning man vashon style. Hick + Hippie = Hickster.

— Garrett Kelly (@boontdustie) February 28, 2009

what do u call a redneck hipster? My guess is a hickster

— LOS IN-GOBBLE-NABLES DE JAPON! (@TheLos) August 28, 2010

Hickster spread in the mainstream in the mid-2010s as a way to refer to young professionals who moved out of (or regularly leave on weekends) cities for more affordable areas in the country, such as people from Brooklyn moving to the Catskills—and subsequently sought to cultivate more rustic, down-home lifestyles that still held onto modern, urban comforts and concerns. An article by Robert Sietsema for Eater (New York) in 2014 memorably quoted an interviewee describing hickster as a “hipster who decides to become a hick, who finally gets driven out of the city by high rents and relocates to the countryside. And then he thinks about starting a restaurant.” Sietsema helped popularized the term hickster.

“One reason these revamped diners have prospered in upstate New York may be the existence of what Robert Sietsema, a food writer for the website Eater, called the ‘hickster’ — that is, ‘hipsters who move upstate’ or visit from the city on weekends.” https://t.co/WHkjcElLkM

— Sapna Maheshwari (@sapna) August 26, 2019

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, suburbs and rural areas surrounding city centers boomed as so-called Zoom towns when many young, wealthier professionals able to work remotely (and seeking to avoid quarantining in cities) took advantage of lower housing prices in the country. This exodus met with some outcry from native residents of rural areas, as some felt the transplants were insensitive to the economic and social needs and priorities of rural communities—and brought big-city problems with them, including driving up housing and cost of living in these places.