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Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of s

Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of subculture that started in the 80's and really swallowed everything in the 1990's (in the USA at least); Here's the book: https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent One of his examples is that music and clothing companies realized there was a market for things like T-Shirts with Anarchy symbols on them. This stuff didn't exist at scale in the 1970's, you needed to know someone with a silk screen, or live in a city like Chicago or San Fran that had the first wave of non-conformists. But 30 years later you could walk into a mall and come out looking like you had a personality even though you just bought it. What's really funny, watch "Dogtown and Z-boys", a movie about the rise of skateboarding with lots of footage from the 1970's. The first "tricks" they do will make you say, "What? Where's the trick? He just bounced on his board", and then compare it with today's batshit insane achievements. Skateboarding was peak commodified in the late 1980's (Thrasher magazine helped) early 1990's, but in the 1960's it was ... a simpler time and the outcasts looked like normal kids having fun compared to today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown_and_Z-Boys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown_and_Z-Boys You can see how something goes from a "weird kid activity" to "every kid does it". Like green mohawks on toddlers in the early 2000's. Edgy in 1970's, preschool in 2010. Man, I'm showing my age. :|

voldacar 2y ago
Wearing a t-shirt with a prefabricated group identity marker, whether purchased or self-manufactured, makes one a curious sort of "non-conformist".
- roenxi 2y ago
  It is pretty cute. People want desperately to conform, and they know the non-conformists are cool. So they do the logical thing and conform with the non-conformists. Heart in the right spot. Execution has room to improve.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    > Heart in the right spot. In what way? Seriously.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Someone imitating someone else is generally considered and act of something like respect and flattery. They're doing it because they sincerely believe that the target of imitation is doing something right. It is a friendly and supportive act.
      - andrewflnr 2y ago
        I'm not convinced. In particular I think sincerity or any sort of honest judgment is missing when talking about [non-]conformity rather than the merits of individual choices.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    As a wise song once said, "You'd be non-conforming, too, if you looked just like me."
    - cnasc 2y ago
      Memories of YTMND come flooding back
  - arvinsim 2y ago
    It's really sad if you think about it. Nowhere in time has freedom of speech been enshrined and creation been easier. But we just can't seem to take advantage of all the freedom and tools that we have at our disposal.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      It isn't sad at all. Freedom for most people is freedom to conform to the ways of someone they respect as opposed to cronies of some government official. And more philosophically freedom is to give the people worthy of imitation as much room to be great as possible so that people who follow them get the best version to copy. Humans (with rare exceptions) are happiest when operating in groups.
- jancsika 2y ago
  In the context of a bunch of social animals wearing t-shirts, what exactly is curious about it?
  - jamesrcole 2y ago
    seeing it as non-conformity
- TZubiri 2y ago
  My style might be plain shirts, yet I can never find those, they just aren't a stable configuration of atoms.
  - sporkydistance 2y ago
    Hanes 3 packs at Target. $17.99.
sdwr 2y ago
> "What? Where's the trick? He just bounced on his board" That's the natural state of innocence - their reference frame is how the experience feels (I'm going fast and almost falling over!). When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks - the raw experience is overtaken in importance by progress and status and comparison.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  > When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks I accept this valid criticism of "posers" but I'd like to add that there's a strange loop here. It feels alien to me, but lots of people I know like to watch videos of themselves doing things (e.g. choreographed dances). It certainly does help to see how to improve, but also they get satisfaction from seeing themselves do the thing.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    Maybe watching video of self-performance is subconscious confirmation that the work that went into making the video has indeed been done...and successfully posted...and does not stoke embarrassment.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      I mean they were watching them privately, not necessarily as part of social media
      - brudgers 2y ago
        That does not surprise me. When I make things, I often spend time confirming the work is done. And seeing what I actually made. It is part of the psychological experience of making things for me.
  - melagonster 2y ago
    Many people re-read their daily. Maybe there are some similar attributes?
thinkingtoilet 2y ago
It's not just commodification. If you were a punk in the 80s with a green mohawk, you might find it cute to put one on your kid in the 2000s. I have long hair, my son has long hair. This isn't a commodification of a culture, it's me, like every parent ever, using my culture to inform how I raise my kids. What am I going to do? Not dress and present my kid how I want to and how I identify?
- 11101010001100 2y ago
  You are going to let him choose his own hairstyle.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Toddlers don't have that level of agency.
    - robocat 2y ago
      I would say that Toddlers are mostly not given agency. Toddlers want things and they don't want other things. Their parents don't permit much agency, because. I'm probably agreeing with you but I wasn't sure of your implication.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I guess what I'm saying is that a 3 year old can sometimes pick out their clothes (sometimes they will hate the consequences). They can't really commit to long term decisions about what hairstyle they will want to live with for months, or manage the upkeep of the style they pick.
        red_admiral 2y ago
        With apologies for wading into culture war topics - there are three year olds who will absolutely scream their head off at someone trying to get them to wear a dress because "I'm not a girl!!!"
52-6F-62 2y ago
Albini was a real treasure. Leading up to and during the Covid pandemic he recorded a large number of videos on recording craft and techniques for free viewing. Died young, but of course…
kjkjadksj 2y ago
I think that just covers maybe the first dip of the toe into a niche being commodified. For a skateboarder there are signs that kind of show if you really are a hardcore skateboarder or have just bought a board at zumies and don’t really ride it much. Is the board graphic damaged from rails? Are the shoes torn apart? The skaters I see hitting a waxed public cement bench without a shirt on during the work day probably don’t give a shit about thrasher and all that. Kind of like bluejeans. You can buy them predistressed but the wear patterns are different than if you made them yourself. Maybe most people can’t tell but the true in group of the subculture can.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  No offence, but fuck the true in groups and you sound pretentious. True in groups are always just 'cool kids' who happen to micro focus on XYZ. Skaters skate not gatekeep people, and were just hyped to skate with anyone (at least in Santa Cruz). 'Oh you got a Nash board, cool. We should probably check if your trucks need tightening.' is the only normal response, not 'we should probably check how ground your trucks are before we can hang and you can join our club'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ_eBTkB-rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ_eBTkB-rs
  - Enginerrrd 2y ago
    I think a lot of the time there's an implicit clash of classes there. The people that lived it often can't buy the nicest gear and stuff, or if they did it's because it involved real sacrifice and dedication. Historically, they fucking made it themselves because it wasn't something you even COULD buy if you wanted to. So seeing some rich kid duplicate your drip overnight just because they can rubs people the wrong way. And I kind of get it: it's counterfeit. Its the same disdain people have for anything not made by a real artist but passed off like it is. They show up with all the nicest shit duplicating your real effort and struggle, but not having done the work. A lot of those poor kids only have that thing in their life and the crowd dedicated to it because their homelife sucks. Most the skaters I grew up with that were really good were that way because they suffered. They were out skating after-school because there was no family dinner and warm welcome waiting for them at home. We were our own family and support. When a friend of mine handed me down a box of old gear so I could put together a new-to-me board , that saved me months of struggling to come up with the cash to replace a board that got stolen. And honestly the skaters kids were the most welcoming group I ever saw. They took in all the otherwise rejects of society. But no one likes a poser.
lupusreal 2y ago
> in the 1960's it was ... a simpler time and the outcasts looked like normal kids having fun compared to today Seems like some sort of gatekeeping and old-man shaking his fist at youth to me. The overwhelming majority of people skateboarding today are regular kids and young adults who are just in it to have fun. If their techniques are more advanced, its probably because technology has improved and also because they're emulating the things they see professional or otherwise experienced skaters do, but what's the problem with that? They're still having fun, aren't they? That's the point of it all, isn't it? And buying a shirt means you don't have personality? Is personality all about happening to know a guy who does custom T-shirt printing? What makes one more authentic than the other? Seems like nonsense.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  You didn't 'happen to know someone who made t-shirts' if you were around the scene. If you went to the skate park regularly, Bennie was always there, and Bennie hustled struggled by doing things like make t-shirts to support the scene. Bennie always had decks/trucks/stickers/t-shirts for sale out of the back of his car. If people were working on a park or a ramp or something Bennie let everyone know when and where. So you couldn't not know Bennie if you regularly were around. Hence not knowing Bennie meant you weren't regularly around.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Sounds like it was a lot more about where you lived and a lot less "whether you had a personality". I was never a skater kid and never pretended to be one, but I knew plenty and they wore shirts from Kmart because in rural PA kids aren't going to have access to the whole "authentic punk social infrastructure" or whatever it is that supposedly grants kids access to "personality".
    - finnthehuman 2y ago
      >supposedly grants kids access to "personality". You have it backwards. The shirt is neither necessary nor sufficient. sporkydistance was dogging on poseurs. deadfread was explaining why a t-shirt was ever an indicator (and even when there's someone handmaking shirts for your thing they're taking as many sales as possible). The shirt validating the identity is a wrong interpretation of what was written. But it's also a normal perspective these days, one core to social criticism this conversation is getting at.
OddMerlin 2y ago
Also check out The Rebel sell by Joseph Health and Andrew Potter. Another great read in the same vein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell.
harrall 2y ago
Punk and skateboarding may have been commodified but if you still go to shows or go skate, it’s still filled with kids (and now adults) just having fun. And now within subcultures are sub-subcultures. Within skateboarding, everyone hangs with each other but at the same time, your Baker kids aren’t your Creature kids and they aren’t your Andy Anderson/Rodney Mullen kids. Some people may join a subculture to be “non-conformists” but most people pick up things because they like it. Sometimes what you like isn’t something everyone else likes and a subculture is born. There are still millions of these pockets of subcultures that are completely invisible to most people on the outside. Zines and DIY screen printing are still very much alive. If you live in a big city, check out some small local punk venues if you want to re-connect (or connect if you want to check it out). And of course, you can always start skating again (but maybe wear gear the first day).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
TZubiri 2y ago
Cultures evolve and signs change meaning Not much news herw
breppp 2y ago
Anarchy tshirts might have been provocative or even showing some ideological fervor in the early 1970s. Maybe because it was a fashion that suited the economy and psyche of the time. However after all participants are now over fifty, with a different economy situation than the 1970s, global or ideological, what would you expect? Proclaiming "I believe in anarchy" is childish cute nowadays not because of an evil capitalist plot, but because it is out-of-place retro to a different time. Also it was always childish, but back then it was segregated only inside a community of adolescence, so no one noticed
_yb2s 2y ago
I find it hilarious how anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist sentiments are heavily monetized with targeted products. You can buy t-shirts on Amazon that say “stop buying shit you don’t need.” I am embarrassed in hindsight that as a teenager I had a Che Guevara shirt from the Hot Topic store in the mall. The ubiquitous popularity of the “Obey” clothing fad- where people were caving to social pressure to buy clothing with pithy commentary on not caving to social pressure was equally ironic.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  This discussion is making me think of Derek Guy's commentary on clothes as less simply things to cover your nudity and more things of social language: https://www.threads.net/@die_workwear/post/C_j1ZECpOFt?hl=en https://www.threads.net/@die_workwear/post/C_j1ZECpOFt?hl=en > So my only strong belief is that you should think of style first and foremost as social language, not purely as artistic expression. Aesthetics are rooted in culture—punk, skate, prep, workwear, etc. Identify a cultural language that resonates with you. So yes, to borrow the example of the GP, you had to know someone with the proper equipment to silk-screen an anarchist shirt, which necessarily meant the only way you could really get one was that way. Now, you can have dozens of them, in innumerable colors, styles, and designs. And I mean, I think it's fair to say that the old folks back in the day would've happily bought that shirt too rather than going into a buddy's workplace after hours and doing it themselves. I don't think the criticism "you aren't a real X you just bought it" really holds water. I'm sure the wide availability of these things necessarily makes things easier for that no-doubt real slice of owners who have no idea what that A means or why it matters to a community of people, but at the same time, it also makes it tremendously easier for all those in that community to dress how they want to dress, to perform their identity in social spaces, which in turn allows them to find one another more easily. Like I say this as a brain-rotted boy from the suburbs of the cultural wasteland of the early 2,000's: I had no identity in school, and that is a problem people. I have experienced firsthand the broad rejection you feel when you do not fit into any given social group, and don't know how to join one. Would a fashion sense have spared me that? I don't know, I had a myriad of other issues going on. But when I read Derek's writing about how clothes function as a language that we can communicate with one another without words, and form communities based on shared values? I hurt for my former self. I wish someone had helped me back then so I could fit in more. Maybe my loner, extremely contrarian self would've found companionship and not have had such a rough go until I was in my mid-twenties and started actually figuring out who the hell I was.

voldacar 2y ago

Wearing a t-shirt with a prefabricated group identity marker, whether purchased or self-manufactured, makes one a curious sort of "non-conformist".

roenxi 2y ago
It is pretty cute. People want desperately to conform, and they know the non-conformists are cool. So they do the logical thing and conform with the non-conformists. Heart in the right spot. Execution has room to improve.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  > Heart in the right spot. In what way? Seriously.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Someone imitating someone else is generally considered and act of something like respect and flattery. They're doing it because they sincerely believe that the target of imitation is doing something right. It is a friendly and supportive act.
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      I'm not convinced. In particular I think sincerity or any sort of honest judgment is missing when talking about [non-]conformity rather than the merits of individual choices.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  As a wise song once said, "You'd be non-conforming, too, if you looked just like me."
  - cnasc 2y ago
    Memories of YTMND come flooding back
- arvinsim 2y ago
  It's really sad if you think about it. Nowhere in time has freedom of speech been enshrined and creation been easier. But we just can't seem to take advantage of all the freedom and tools that we have at our disposal.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    It isn't sad at all. Freedom for most people is freedom to conform to the ways of someone they respect as opposed to cronies of some government official. And more philosophically freedom is to give the people worthy of imitation as much room to be great as possible so that people who follow them get the best version to copy. Humans (with rare exceptions) are happiest when operating in groups.
jancsika 2y ago
In the context of a bunch of social animals wearing t-shirts, what exactly is curious about it?
- jamesrcole 2y ago
  seeing it as non-conformity
TZubiri 2y ago
My style might be plain shirts, yet I can never find those, they just aren't a stable configuration of atoms.
- sporkydistance 2y ago
  Hanes 3 packs at Target. $17.99.

sdwr 2y ago

> "What? Where's the trick? He just bounced on his board" That's the natural state of innocence - their reference frame is how the experience feels (I'm going fast and almost falling over!). When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks - the raw experience is overtaken in importance by progress and status and comparison.

Y_Y 2y ago
> When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks I accept this valid criticism of "posers" but I'd like to add that there's a strange loop here. It feels alien to me, but lots of people I know like to watch videos of themselves doing things (e.g. choreographed dances). It certainly does help to see how to improve, but also they get satisfaction from seeing themselves do the thing.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Maybe watching video of self-performance is subconscious confirmation that the work that went into making the video has indeed been done...and successfully posted...and does not stoke embarrassment.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    I mean they were watching them privately, not necessarily as part of social media
    - brudgers 2y ago
      That does not surprise me. When I make things, I often spend time confirming the work is done. And seeing what I actually made. It is part of the psychological experience of making things for me.
- melagonster 2y ago
  Many people re-read their daily. Maybe there are some similar attributes?

thinkingtoilet 2y ago

It's not just commodification. If you were a punk in the 80s with a green mohawk, you might find it cute to put one on your kid in the 2000s. I have long hair, my son has long hair. This isn't a commodification of a culture, it's me, like every parent ever, using my culture to inform how I raise my kids. What am I going to do? Not dress and present my kid how I want to and how I identify?

11101010001100 2y ago
You are going to let him choose his own hairstyle.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Toddlers don't have that level of agency.
  - robocat 2y ago
    I would say that Toddlers are mostly not given agency. Toddlers want things and they don't want other things. Their parents don't permit much agency, because. I'm probably agreeing with you but I wasn't sure of your implication.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I guess what I'm saying is that a 3 year old can sometimes pick out their clothes (sometimes they will hate the consequences). They can't really commit to long term decisions about what hairstyle they will want to live with for months, or manage the upkeep of the style they pick.
      - red_admiral 2y ago
        With apologies for wading into culture war topics - there are three year olds who will absolutely scream their head off at someone trying to get them to wear a dress because "I'm not a girl!!!"

52-6F-62 2y ago

Albini was a real treasure. Leading up to and during the Covid pandemic he recorded a large number of videos on recording craft and techniques for free viewing. Died young, but of course…

kjkjadksj 2y ago

I think that just covers maybe the first dip of the toe into a niche being commodified. For a skateboarder there are signs that kind of show if you really are a hardcore skateboarder or have just bought a board at zumies and don’t really ride it much. Is the board graphic damaged from rails? Are the shoes torn apart? The skaters I see hitting a waxed public cement bench without a shirt on during the work day probably don’t give a shit about thrasher and all that. Kind of like bluejeans. You can buy them predistressed but the wear patterns are different than if you made them yourself. Maybe most people can’t tell but the true in group of the subculture can.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
No offence, but fuck the true in groups and you sound pretentious. True in groups are always just 'cool kids' who happen to micro focus on XYZ. Skaters skate not gatekeep people, and were just hyped to skate with anyone (at least in Santa Cruz). 'Oh you got a Nash board, cool. We should probably check if your trucks need tightening.' is the only normal response, not 'we should probably check how ground your trucks are before we can hang and you can join our club'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ_eBTkB-rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ_eBTkB-rs
- Enginerrrd 2y ago
  I think a lot of the time there's an implicit clash of classes there. The people that lived it often can't buy the nicest gear and stuff, or if they did it's because it involved real sacrifice and dedication. Historically, they fucking made it themselves because it wasn't something you even COULD buy if you wanted to. So seeing some rich kid duplicate your drip overnight just because they can rubs people the wrong way. And I kind of get it: it's counterfeit. Its the same disdain people have for anything not made by a real artist but passed off like it is. They show up with all the nicest shit duplicating your real effort and struggle, but not having done the work. A lot of those poor kids only have that thing in their life and the crowd dedicated to it because their homelife sucks. Most the skaters I grew up with that were really good were that way because they suffered. They were out skating after-school because there was no family dinner and warm welcome waiting for them at home. We were our own family and support. When a friend of mine handed me down a box of old gear so I could put together a new-to-me board , that saved me months of struggling to come up with the cash to replace a board that got stolen. And honestly the skaters kids were the most welcoming group I ever saw. They took in all the otherwise rejects of society. But no one likes a poser.

lupusreal 2y ago

> in the 1960's it was ... a simpler time and the outcasts looked like normal kids having fun compared to today Seems like some sort of gatekeeping and old-man shaking his fist at youth to me. The overwhelming majority of people skateboarding today are regular kids and young adults who are just in it to have fun. If their techniques are more advanced, its probably because technology has improved and also because they're emulating the things they see professional or otherwise experienced skaters do, but what's the problem with that? They're still having fun, aren't they? That's the point of it all, isn't it? And buying a shirt means you don't have personality? Is personality all about happening to know a guy who does custom T-shirt printing? What makes one more authentic than the other? Seems like nonsense.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
You didn't 'happen to know someone who made t-shirts' if you were around the scene. If you went to the skate park regularly, Bennie was always there, and Bennie hustled struggled by doing things like make t-shirts to support the scene. Bennie always had decks/trucks/stickers/t-shirts for sale out of the back of his car. If people were working on a park or a ramp or something Bennie let everyone know when and where. So you couldn't not know Bennie if you regularly were around. Hence not knowing Bennie meant you weren't regularly around.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Sounds like it was a lot more about where you lived and a lot less "whether you had a personality". I was never a skater kid and never pretended to be one, but I knew plenty and they wore shirts from Kmart because in rural PA kids aren't going to have access to the whole "authentic punk social infrastructure" or whatever it is that supposedly grants kids access to "personality".
  - finnthehuman 2y ago
    >supposedly grants kids access to "personality". You have it backwards. The shirt is neither necessary nor sufficient. sporkydistance was dogging on poseurs. deadfread was explaining why a t-shirt was ever an indicator (and even when there's someone handmaking shirts for your thing they're taking as many sales as possible). The shirt validating the identity is a wrong interpretation of what was written. But it's also a normal perspective these days, one core to social criticism this conversation is getting at.

OddMerlin 2y ago

Also check out The Rebel sell by Joseph Health and Andrew Potter. Another great read in the same vein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell.

harrall 2y ago

Punk and skateboarding may have been commodified but if you still go to shows or go skate, it’s still filled with kids (and now adults) just having fun. And now within subcultures are sub-subcultures. Within skateboarding, everyone hangs with each other but at the same time, your Baker kids aren’t your Creature kids and they aren’t your Andy Anderson/Rodney Mullen kids. Some people may join a subculture to be “non-conformists” but most people pick up things because they like it. Sometimes what you like isn’t something everyone else likes and a subculture is born. There are still millions of these pockets of subcultures that are completely invisible to most people on the outside. Zines and DIY screen printing are still very much alive. If you live in a big city, check out some small local punk venues if you want to re-connect (or connect if you want to check it out). And of course, you can always start skating again (but maybe wear gear the first day).

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

TZubiri 2y ago

Cultures evolve and signs change meaning Not much news herw

breppp 2y ago

Anarchy tshirts might have been provocative or even showing some ideological fervor in the early 1970s. Maybe because it was a fashion that suited the economy and psyche of the time. However after all participants are now over fifty, with a different economy situation than the 1970s, global or ideological, what would you expect? Proclaiming "I believe in anarchy" is childish cute nowadays not because of an evil capitalist plot, but because it is out-of-place retro to a different time. Also it was always childish, but back then it was segregated only inside a community of adolescence, so no one noticed

_yb2s 2y ago

I find it hilarious how anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist sentiments are heavily monetized with targeted products. You can buy t-shirts on Amazon that say “stop buying shit you don’t need.” I am embarrassed in hindsight that as a teenager I had a Che Guevara shirt from the Hot Topic store in the mall. The ubiquitous popularity of the “Obey” clothing fad- where people were caving to social pressure to buy clothing with pithy commentary on not caving to social pressure was equally ironic.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
This discussion is making me think of Derek Guy's commentary on clothes as less simply things to cover your nudity and more things of social language: https://www.threads.net/@die_workwear/post/C_j1ZECpOFt?hl=en https://www.threads.net/@die_workwear/post/C_j1ZECpOFt?hl=en > So my only strong belief is that you should think of style first and foremost as social language, not purely as artistic expression. Aesthetics are rooted in culture—punk, skate, prep, workwear, etc. Identify a cultural language that resonates with you. So yes, to borrow the example of the GP, you had to know someone with the proper equipment to silk-screen an anarchist shirt, which necessarily meant the only way you could really get one was that way. Now, you can have dozens of them, in innumerable colors, styles, and designs. And I mean, I think it's fair to say that the old folks back in the day would've happily bought that shirt too rather than going into a buddy's workplace after hours and doing it themselves. I don't think the criticism "you aren't a real X you just bought it" really holds water. I'm sure the wide availability of these things necessarily makes things easier for that no-doubt real slice of owners who have no idea what that A means or why it matters to a community of people, but at the same time, it also makes it tremendously easier for all those in that community to dress how they want to dress, to perform their identity in social spaces, which in turn allows them to find one another more easily. Like I say this as a brain-rotted boy from the suburbs of the cultural wasteland of the early 2,000's: I had no identity in school, and that is a problem people. I have experienced firsthand the broad rejection you feel when you do not fit into any given social group, and don't know how to join one. Would a fashion sense have spared me that? I don't know, I had a myriad of other issues going on. But when I read Derek's writing about how clothes function as a language that we can communicate with one another without words, and form communities based on shared values? I hurt for my former self. I wish someone had helped me back then so I could fit in more. Maybe my loner, extremely contrarian self would've found companionship and not have had such a rough go until I was in my mid-twenties and started actually figuring out who the hell I was.