4 ms·

Subcultures definitely count?

• coldtea 8y ago
  Only in as much as they pollinate the mainstream culture, else its just fragmented niches that don't take part in any wider "conversation".
  • 1_over_n 8y ago
    Things that are happening on the edge become the things that propagate through to the mainstream. It's how cultures change. Predicting which edge behaviour will cross over is the tricky bit.
    • coldtea 8y ago
      >Things that are happening on the edge become the things that propagate through to the mainstream. It's how cultures change. Well, we don't see that these days. With music, for example, we see the same mindless hits dominate the top-20. In past decades (from the 50s up to the 90s or 00s) you'd have those things "happening at the edge" become mainstream.
      • vict00ms 8y ago
        >In past decades (from the 50s up to the 90s or 00s) you'd have those things "happening at the edge" become mainstream. I completely agree and I'm not sure many people would recognize how much this has changed. When "EDM" started infiltrating pop music it was the sound of the fringe creeping into the mainstream but this has since solidified and dominated to the exclusion of pretty much everything for the past decade. In my mind, this is very different from what we used to see from the likes of pop stars like Madonna that would borrow liberally from the "underground" and use it to spice up their own work. Personally, I think this is a byproduct of our hyper-connected culture. I don't think subcultures can thrive in the internet era because they are exposed, consumed, and co-opted at too fast of a pace for them to grow.