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> Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why? I suspect the author was 25 at some point in tha
by desert_boi 7y ago
> Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why?
I suspect the author was 25 at some point in that range of time. It's hard to keep going when an essay starts out that way.
- vermilingua 7y agoCare to explain why that would impact the essay?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoSubcultures are young people's game, and something you usually grow out of.
- vermilingua 7y agoBut if subcultures are dead, and the author was a young person in their heyday; would they not be perfectly qualified to write a postmortem of sorts?
- Avamander 7y agoBut they're really not dead, they're just different. Writing a postmortem on something that isn't dead is difficult.
- paganel 7y agoFurther down the author acknowledges that subcultures are not in fact really dead, but that they’ve lost the cultural importance they had between 1975-2000 (to use his time interval). Which I think it’s a fair point to make.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThey're not dead. The author just outgrown their own, and doesn't notice current subcultures, which target contemporary youngsters.
- nyolfen 7y agothey're 'dead' in the sense that they have a lifecycle that is predictable and eventually peters out into meaningless consumerism; they still arise but they aren't seen as a potentially liberating or revolutionary social mode in the way that they might have been in eg the 80s, because we see them follow the same course every time.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoAnd I'm sure that when we were living through our own youth subcultures, all the people who remembered greasers and beatniks thought the same way.
- GuB-42 7y agoDefinitely, and I also think that many of the "sociopaths" are simply grownup geeks. Most people outgrow their subculture, they have full time jobs, families, or simply lost interest. What remains is nostalgia. But some of them don't quit, and they too have bills to pay. And the best way to do so is to use their deep knowledge of the subculture for profit. They are exceptions, sometimes the skills of the subculture are highly marketable so there is no need to be a "sociopath". And some people can manage the impressive feat of having a good job leaving them enough free time and money for their hobby.