I’m sure a few of you have noticed how hipsters, who were trying to be so original, are now all starting to resemble one another at a very rapid rate.

Glasses? Check
Plaid shirt? Check
Hat? Check
Boots/weird shoes from decades ago? Check
Beard? Check

At any given moment, Cape Town could form a small army and conquer Joburg, just by using hipsters.

Jonathan Touboul, a Neuroscientist, explains why they all look similar. He calls it “the hipster loop” or “the hipster effect”.

His research involves neurons that behave like hipsters, in that “they fire when every neuron around them is quiet; or they fall silent when every neuron around them is chattering.” But members of society do not have immediate knowledge of cultural trends. Neither do neurons immediately recognize what other neurons are up to.

Jeff Guo, from the Washington Post, got together with Touboul and they explain it simply:

The hipsters are still recoiling from the mainstream, but each holds an outdated concept of what the mainstream is. Because they are slow to react, they end up all looking alike, and all changing fashions at the same time. (Irony of ironies!)

Basically there needs to be a hipster app that tells them fast enough what not to wear and what they should be wearing, so that they all don’t end up waking up one day looking exactly the same when their next style change comes along.

Check out io9