What is Hipster Kitty?

An advice animal image macro of a kitten in a lavender hoodie and thick-framed glasses, captioned to mock young hipster stereotypes around cheap beer, indie music and vintage clothing.

What does Hipster Kitty mean?

The captions target the tastes of the young urban hipster archetype: cheap beer, obscure bands, Bukowski quotes and self-consciously anti-mainstream choices, the same archetype celebrated on fan blogs like Fuck Yeah, Hipster Kitty.

How do you use Hipster Kitty?

Pair the image with a two-line caption: a mainstream setup on top and a contrarian or too-cool-for-that reply on the bottom, following the format's 800+ variations on Memegenerator.

Is Hipster Kitty still popular?

Hipster Kitty ran heaviest through the 2010 advice animal wave and now sits alongside other classic image macros rather than in active rotation.

Hipster Kitty

Q: Where did Hipster Kitty come from?

It started with Portland artist Craig Wheat's acrylic painting 'Allison,' uploaded to Flickr in early 2009 and first captioned on a Tumblr post on August 24, 2009.

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Published August 28, 2026

Hipster Kitty is an advice animal image macro featuring a kitten in a lavender hoodie and thick-framed glasses, first painted by Portland artist Craig Wheat and uploaded to Flickr in early 20093. Captioned versions took off across Tumblr, Memegenerator and Reddit through 2010, aimed at the vintage-loving, indie-cred-obsessed urban stereotype1. Over 800 caption variations followed on Memegenerator, and single-topic Tumblr fan blogs kept it in circulation as one of the era's better-known cat advice animals4.

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Overview

The format sits inside the wider advice animal template, but its punchline is specific: every caption skewers the tastes of a young hipster archetype. Common two-liners land on cheap beer, obscure bands and Charles Bukowski quotes, with a mainstream premise up top and a self-consciously cooler response below1. The lavender hoodie and heavy black glasses are non-negotiable visual cues, kept intact across every serious variation4.

Wheat's original acrylic, titled 'Allison,' was never designed as a meme. Part of what kept the format circulating was a self-parody edge: users making the images were often close to the same demographic the captions mocked. Memegenerator classified the template as demigod tier after more than 800 variations shipped1.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Flickr / Tumblr (viral spread)

Creator

Craig Wheat

Date

2009

The source is Craig Wheat's acrylic painting 'Allison,' uploaded to Flickr in early 20093. Brittnie's Tumblr posted the first captioned version on August 24, 2009 with the line 'well, it doesn't matter who is better because Hipster Kitty will doubt EVERYONE's indie cred,' framing the mocking tone that later fan blogs picked up4.

How It Spread

The template landed on Memegenerator on November 22, 2009, opening it up to mass captioning1. The domain HipsterKitty.com was registered on February 13, 2010 as a curation blog for hipster-styled cat photos2. Reddit user absolutecero posted the earliest known instance to the site on March 15, 2010, and r/AdviceAnimals eventually collected more than 2,000 Hipster Kitty posts5.

Single-topic Tumblr blog Fuck Yeah, Hipster Kitty launched on June 2, 2010, joined by the copycat F Yeah, Hipster Kitty that October4. The 2010 advice animal wave kept the character in circulation across meme aggregators like Memegenerator for the next couple of years1.

How to Use This Meme

The template usually pairs a mainstream or ordinary observation on the top line with a self-consciously indie or contrarian response below. Cheap beer preferences, thrift store finds, ironic scarves and a general refusal to admit anything mainstream is any good are common notes. Keeping the tone gently mocking rather than mean sits closer to how the community wrote captions1.