Physics does not explain everything especially
why people who are trying to buck the mainstream all end up “looking alike”. 
More likely this is a matter of broader socioeconomic conditions which limit
the options of those who wish to exist outside of the mainstream of society. 
Unless a hipster makes their own clothing from scratch all they can do is
create new combinations of clothing worn by the majority.  The number of
combinations being limited means that those who try to dress differently than
the majority wind up dressing like one of a small number of possible combinations
of clothes manufactured for the majority. 

As a theoretical physicist who studies various “theories of
everything” I should be the last person to point out this obvious flaw in the
logic of the recent paper by  (Touboul, 2019).   After reading it I have no
argument with the physics it is a good application of the same sort of
techniques used to explain phase transitions in matter.   Furthermore, there is
a danger to people like me that such work could be dangerously misapplied.

Clothes Are Produced By And For The Majority To Make Money.

The obvious flaw in the (Touboul, 2019) ‘s analysis is that
they ignore the fact that the majority controls the means of production of
products one can buy.  This is true in any reasonable economic system.  What is
supplied is that for which there is the most demand.

This means that members of minority groups, such as those
who truly choose to make themselves a minority i.e. Hipsters must
craft their material culture from the available products on the market.  In a
single word clothing. 

If one is a hipster, and wishes to dress differently than
the masses, unless one can manufacture cloth, and sew it into garments, one
must choose from what is available in stores.

If one can only choose from the clothes available in stores
in large, inexpensive quantities, then one can either choose the combination of
shirt and pants favored by the majority OR one of a small set of combinations available
but not favored.

Hence in the effort to look different people wind up looking
the same.  Not because of some complicated effect that needs quantum mechanics
to explain it, but because of the economic fact that clothing manufacturers are
in business to make money.   

Dangerous Misuse of Science.

Being LGBT … especially T… is perceived as being just a
countercultural choice by some people.  There is a real danger that certain commentators
who may latch onto a single scientific paper and use it in debates to “prove”
that being transgender is just a social contagion.   A paper like this could be
used by a huckster to argue that it is mathematically proven to be so.

This is not hypothetical as this has happened already. 
Some think they higher prevalence of transgenderism observed now is because of
social contagion.    They are half right.  The higher visibility of
transgender people is because of greater social tolerance of difference.  This
is, hopefully, a part of our evolution from a species that will make war on the
slightly different inhabitants of the next valley because they tie their toga
about the right shoulder instead of the left …. To one which does not wage war
at all at some point.

Indeed, one could misapply this to trivialize and oppress
any group with differences that are not obvious to the casual observer.  (As in
not color based minorities but perhaps even religious groups or atheist or scientist
”nerds”/”geeks” why not?)

If there is a lesson here, it is in the limits of what is
comprehensible with equations alone.    To truly validate this idea with math one
would need a simulation as complex as the real world itself.   Good math does
not automatically mean good science.

Could not find a good video about this subject so here is a Hipster fact checker fact checking themselves

April APS Presentation

I will be presenting my latest theoretical work to the American Physical Society this April. I will write about it here and I am working on a new publication giving simple observations that could validate some aspects of this evolved model. So I too will be checking myself.

References

Touboul,
J. (2019). The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same. ArXiv.
Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8001