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"In a society that emphasized individuality, it is not hard to imagine that they became folk heroes of a kind—and that many of the people who laughed at them fe

• dzzo 5y ago
  Grunge, goth, emo, hipster “fads” still exist and have, to a greater or lesser degree, been absorbed into mainstream style and culture. Maybe there’s more to the argument than simple “codswallop.”
• marnett 5y ago
  That’s an interesting categorization of the sub-cultures/scenes you listed. Are there any sub-cultures you would classify as “other” (in the sense of being other than the status quo of its era) and having introspection and awareness?
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    Furries? I mean, their whole schtick is that they feel like a different animal trapped in a human body. That's pretty introspective and self-aware, I guess.
    • klyrs 5y ago
      The absurdity of the original comment is that goths and emos are characteristically introspective to a fault. Grunge and goths embodied an attempt to flee from self -- the awareness of which was a necessity for that dynamic. Finally, hipsters (not the original hipsters[1], of course) were painfully self-aware, and self-mocking. The funniest part is where it's asserted that these "fads" were "played out" by the time they gained any popularity. Which was only true of emos; they swept aside everything that made grunge and goth culture aesthetically interesting, and adopted normcore instead. Well, true of hipsters, too, but "before it was cool" was their whole thing; the played-out nature of the fad was effectively a joke on everybody who cared enough to be bothered by shat beer and silly facial hair. But, no, I don't think you're right about furries. They aren't "animals trapped in a human's body," that's a mischaracterization used by edgelords who dunk on transgender people. Furries extremely diverse in their internal and external narratives, and I won't attempt to provide an alternative characterization. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(1940s_subculture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(1940s_subculture)
      • sidlls 5y ago
        That’s quite a bit of post facto rationalization for various fads that amounted to little more than “this generation’s angst manifest and given a larger platform thanks to an ever-expanding media footprint.”
        • klyrs 5y ago
          I was a grunge/goth raised by hippies; when I went back to university, I was surrounded by emos and hipsters. It isn't so much "post facto rationalization" as much as a quick summary of decades of observation. You're describing these subcultures that I've been immersed in with a dismissive outsider's perspective. Stay curious
  • Talanes 5y ago
    I'd be willing to guess that the common denominator in those scenes is that the GP encountered them as teenagers. I've met plenty of introspective and self-aware Goths, but self-aware teenagers are rare.
  • feoren 5y ago
    Nerds/geeks. If you want to reduce it down to teen-movie-level stereotypes, then people in both the "popular" and "counterculture" groups are making decisions about what to wear and how to act based on what other people do or don't see as popular or trendy. The nerds and geeks are the ones who ignored all of that: band geeks, computer nerds, anime nerds, whatever. Of course they still try to "fit in" within their respective groups but their groups are centered around a shared interest, rather than solely what is or isn't popular.
• pavel_lishin 5y ago
  I agree with you that it's codswallop, but I wholly disagree with you that people into the grunge, goth, emo, hipster, etc., aesthetic are absurdly lacking introspection and awareness by latching onto a played out trend. Yes, people mocked them, but they were perfectly happy demonstrating that they were a member of some given group - or maybe just happily enjoying some given aesthetic.
• ska 5y ago
  This seems an idiosyncratic characterization to me. Bullying is driven by insecurity, though not necessarily jealousy. This seems quite separable from the general arc of subgroup/subgenre identity which seems to follow a typical arc of from groundbreaking through "cool", to mass adoption, to "played out" as you put it. The article suggests "macaroni" was something beyond the predictable cyclic arc, in at least that it's impact was unusually strong and short lived.
• Talanes 5y ago
  >Nobody was jealous of the supposed freedom that these people had, so much as they were amused (or appalled) at the absurd lack of introspection and awareness they exhibited by latching onto a played out trend. Mocking them was just as much of a played out trend though. We've got evidence of it as far back as 1772 linked right above.