I recently saw the following image:
Hipsters is what happens when you tell every child they're special.
I saw many people comment on the fact that it should be "are/happen" and not "is/happens," but I feel like "is/happens" is correct in this case because it's referring to the phenomenon of hipsters, and not necessarily the people. Some people said it should have been "hipsterism" for it to be correct but I wonder if that's actually needed.
Am I wrong in my assessment? Is there a grammatical rule for this?
Best Answer
'Hipsters' semantically denotes a group of people and is plural. According to the rules of grammar, the verb must be plural.
But the word is being used in this sign to denote a phenomenon (hipsterism) related to that group of people. As such, it's an example of deferred interpretation.
Grammatically, it's incorrect. But we are able to glean the intended meaning.