/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16030237]

What are some decent books on the decline and disappearance of subcultures over the last 20 years and what that means for modern and future culture?

[Anonymous No.16030260]

>>16030237
We have seen an explosion of subcultures and you are literally (read figuratively virtually) standing in one

[Anonymous No.16030285]

>>16030237
Not specifically about subcultures per se but it you might find it interesting. Also like the other anon said, subcultures have moved online and they call themselves fandoms now

[Anonymous No.16030380]

>>16030237
>What are some decent books on the decline and disappearance of subcultures over the last 20 years and what that means for modern and future culture?
>He asked on a site that is a offspring hub for actual subcultures (while not being one itself).
You absolute retard

[Anonymous No.16030411]

>>16030260
>>16030380
He's talking about uniform subcultures obviously.

The closest thing we had last was hipsters of the great recession, but they died when the Grammys started giving 'indie' artists awards.

>>16030237
There isn't anything written yet because you can't write a retrospective while in the midst of a cultural shift.
Give it a few years before anything starts getting put in stone.

You've also seen a rise in youth culture through "punk" over the last few years, Idles and Fontaines being prominent figures in the rearranging tide.

Sea punk and witch house are not subcultures.

[Anonymous No.16030490]

>>16030411
>uniform subcultures
Imagine you have the idea of opposing the uniformity of the dominant culture, so you create an another uniform culture, just smaller. If that's what subcultures really were, I cannot feel sad over their demise in any way.

[Anonymous No.16030789]

Is there still a uniform dominant culture so that subcultures can exist?

[OP No.16030822]

>>16030260
>>16030380
>>16030411
>>16030490
Is perhaps the issue rather that nearly all subcultures have moved for obvious reasons to the internet or only exist on the internet from the start, while the traditional, local subcultures centered around cliques of friends or associates have disappeared, resulting in subcultures that are far more splintered around the globe and drastically more diverse?

[Anonymous No.16031279]

>>16030822
>while the traditional, local subcultures centered around cliques of friends or associates have disappeared
I wouldn't project your own isolation on everyone else. These clliques of friends and associates very well can still exist today, their (if we are gonna go with this term) uniformity has disappeared though.

[Anonymous No.16031689]

bump

[Anonymous No.16032637]

>>16030260
>>16030380
He doesn't mean digital subcultures. These places are a different beast to not even be worthy of being worthy progenitors. The divisions between these places and others seem to erode as time goes on.

[Anonymous No.16032850]

>>16030411
>Idles
>men bad
They're faggots.

[Anonymous No.16033108]

>>16030822
I haven't heard anyone else yet pose the problem like this, but I have been thinking about this deeply myself. Maybe this is the real, mundane problem of the post-2000's?

How can we cope with it, since I think the move to online communities is also partially a strong response to the physical world becoming more alienated/difficult, and at least we have a lot more control in the virtual.

[Anonymous No.16033218]

[Anonymous No.16033223]

>>16030237
wHaT Are SomE BooKs AbOUt ...

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shut the fuck upup

shut thefuck up

SHUT TEH FUCK UP
SHUTE THE FUCK UPPP

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FUCK
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SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT


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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

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[Anonymous No.16033376]

>>16030237
Fuck subcultures. They're always vapid and consumerist nonsense. I've never seen any movement do shit besides argue for another political party.

[Anonymous No.16033575]

>>16030822
It's not that complicated. A lot of it can be understood from the New York of the 1990s and post 9/11 crackdown on any culture. They basically shut down all venues, bars, youth centers, etc. anything that wasn't just liberal functionalism. They took a medical approach to cleaning up the city to prevent crime, terrorism, and to hide the collapsing economy. The result was an aseptic, dead culture.
And this happened everywhere after New York, even small cities and towns started cracking down on teenagers hanging out, skateparks were built to keep them out of the streets.
The punk scene in the 2000s had to resort to house shows, illegal venues, or simply have bar shows and abandon all ages. Then the house shows got shut down because the cops went looking for them.

The creation of aseptic cultures happened at the same time. Pop punk, numetal, etc. You can see a lot of extreme elements of music were picked up by the mainstream and then applied in a dull form, System of a Down, MIA, Die Antwoord etc. The whole goth and emo scenes were part of that same process, in between mass culture and subculture, basically posers on a large scale.

https://youtu.be/puDaoPbJ1xY

A lot of people talk about recuperation, but it's worse than that. It's actually a 'natural' result of how modern technical society organises, large scale subcultures cannot work and the tendency is towards the bare functioning of culture and social relations, as the song above makes clear. None of this shit is planned or sold away, rather it is a force of the society in which we live - it just seems paradoxical because people think everything is about change and diversity. But along with democracy there is really a extreme towards centralisation. Tocqueville describes how 13th century towns were differentiated to a much greater extent than continents today. How could a small group resist such forces? (This would also be why right-wing music has to capitulate and accept much of the cultural style created by left-wing groups, or is at least progressive in form)

Similarly, Camatte discusses the tendency of organisations to harden and revert to maintainence of the organisation as the main organising principle. This is similar to the technical argument I outlined, and explains why countercultures of the 60s so often fell apart and destroyed themselves through infighting.

The internet definitely makes things harder now and no doubt highlights all the worst aspects , but this shit was falling apart well before the internet had any impact. If anything it's more a reflection of dead culture.

https://youtu.be/lsDgIoY2Ji8

That's a very rough outline, and there's a lot to this but it's probably the best you're going to get for now.
You could also compare the way music became overproduced next to the aseptic image of pop culture and hipsters. Also the effort that went into something like tape trading compared to mp3s.
t. spent nearly 20 years in subcultures or listening to the music

[Anonymous No.16033898]

https://youtu.be/u3wGLfEKxNY

[Anonymous No.16034423]

>>16031279
I would do say there's a fair difference between cliques of local friends that hang out with each other and internet friends, just because for example the internet necessitates to be active verbally to really exist within a social group and you can’t just hang around together semi-silently (aka lurking) and still be part of that group.

[Anonymous No.16035175]

>>16033575
good post

[Anonymous No.16035185]

>>16030490
>opposing the uniformity of the dominant culture
Not all subcultures were about that though.

[Anonymous No.16035231]

>>16030237
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991
by Michael Azerrad

[Anonymous No.16035239]

The internet and social media made them completely irrelevant. There is no reason to find a cool way of dressing and create your creative spaces in the real world when you could just change your profile picture and join a different discord channel.

[Anonymous No.16035252]

>>16032850
Never said they were good but nice projections dipshit

>>16030822
>while the traditional, local subcultures centered around cliques of friends or associates have disappeared, resulting in subcultures that are far more splintered around the globe and drastically more diverse?
This is all subcultures have ever been. That's why the Seattle scene is the Seattle scene and CBGB scene was the CBGB scene. These things are always localized. UK punk, Greenwich Village, Madchester/baggy, Laurel Canyon. You have to be where it's happening. Look at the Williamsburg hipsters.

>>16031279
I would beg to differ. These things are still happening, they're just not being reported on by corporate magazines. Conde Nast bought pitchfork (arguably the biggest "counterculture" magazine standing today) back in 2012.
Pic related still stands.

[Anonymous No.16036486]

bump

[Anonymous No.16037694]

bump

[Anonymous No.16037748]

>>16030822
the world no longer revolves around physical activities. all social involvement and hence all 'subcultures' are rooted in the internet now and probably forever will be

[Anonymous No.16037873]

>>16030237
We have seen the previous counter culture generation grow up and they are total fucking retards.
Ever spoken to an adult punk? Not recommendable

[Anonymous No.16038485]

bump

[Anonymous No.16038498]

>>16030237
The Conquest of Cool

[Anonymous No.16038562]

If anything culture has only fragmented further. Subcultures are now frequently so niche that they surround a single piece of media. Broader subcultures still exist, but they themselves have fragmented further into even more niche groups. I have to say, I really do hate subcultures. People say that sub ultra free is from the constraints of the larger culture, but if the larger culture was strong and well-defined then we would find it fulfilling. Subcultures, by destroying mainstream culture, create the conditions for a new generation of even more niche subcultures to arise.

[Anonymous No.16038584]

>>16030237
Industrial society and its future

[Anonymous No.16038980]

>>16033575
There's still bars and venues, you sure it isn't more related to people burrowing further and further into their own domicile of technological creature comforts and physically isolated socialization?

[Anonymous No.16039215]

>>16038980
The point he was making is that this is beyond an individual's control. Even back in the 80's, scene culture was still very much alive in music because you only got to discover certain acts by being in their scene and going to their shows. Now, you can listen to any music you want online, and the physical context is fully stripped away. Can you imagine a world where you have to fit in with the goths if you want to hear their music? Even make friends with them? That's how it used to be. These sorts of things can still happen but the impetus for them to occur is gone, there is no musical mainstream or cultural mainstream to rebel against now so subcultures are dead. Every dominant force changing society is pushing us away from the formation of organic human communities, and toward a more synthetic form of organization whose basis is efficiency. Isn't it amazing we can live so similarly to one another, yet still feel so far apart?

[Anonymous No.16039806]

>>16039215
>there is no musical mainstream or cultural mainstream to rebel against
This is completely untrue

[Anonymous No.16039901]

Why would you engage in a subculture when you have a computer?

[Anonymous No.16039978]

>>16039901
Because there's no comparison between live music and looking at a screen, especially when it involves dancing.

[Anonymous No.16040530]

>>16039806
It's messier than that.
The traditional, kinda oppressive cultural mainstream has disappeared and instead been replaced since the 90s with a mainstream that radically embraces, accepts and swallows any opposition to it, unless it becomes too radical (far-left and far-right politics).
How are supposed to rebel against a mainstream that doesn't crush you, but instead hugs you to death?

[Anonymous No.16040577]

>>16039901
When the internet was first blossoming worldwide, people of many subcultures created their own web-space to engage with similar-minded people.

[Anonymous No.16040861]

>>16030237
Heyman/Carpenter - They Became What They Beheld
>"Who am I" In a a world of electronic all-at-once-ness, everybody begins to include everybody else & many begin to feel the loss of their private identities. They feel deprived. Years ago, a man could say with pride & confidence: "I'm an American. A dentist. I have three children." This was his card of identity. Today such classifications aren't acceptable. Electricity abolishes the world of specialized human beings. The Western private "I" —aloof, dissociated—isn't possible when electricity involves us in the whole of mankind & forces us to incorporate the whole of mankind in us.
>"Inner stability," so greatly admired by our grandparents, isn't possible when we're forced to shift our modes of perception abruptly. Stable experience is of little value when we face the Niagara of information made possible by electric technology. With the slightest shift in the sensory bias of a culture, the stable person is in real trouble. The fixed person for the fixed duties, once a necessity, is now a public menace.

[Anonymous No.16040926]

>>16033108
>I think the move to online communities is also partially a strong response to the physical world becoming more alienated/difficult
How so? I think online communities flourished simply out of convenience.
But I do think that this is a dangerous habit. Our lives are becoming too convenient. This thought worries me and made me start to commit myself to the local much more intensely recently.

[Anonymous No.16040957]

>>16040530
I don't believe this to be the case, but even if it were, the answer is to refuse the hug.

[Anonymous No.16041214]

https://youtu.be/gwv0rVUc9ps

[Anonymous No.16041623]

>>16040957
You can't, that's the entire point.
Just look at the state of schools now, there are hardly any subcultures at all and any sense of rebellion (which is basically just rite of passage) has been lost. Kids have never been so conformist.

[Anonymous No.16042279]

>>16033218
>Zero Books
Instantly discarded, I tried watching one of their videos and it was literal rambling for 20 minutes

[Anonymous No.16042295]

Subcultures still exist. They mainly take the form of niches on social media. Like black twitter or gay tiktok as very obvious examples. They are usually a lot more specific and curated than that though.

[Anonymous No.16042319]

>>16033898
Holy shit that was terrible. Girls are cute tho.

[Anonymous No.16043069]

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[Anonymous No.16043075]

Wasn't the punk subculture started by the CIA?
Or maybe that was just the hippie subculture

[Anonymous No.16043366]

Some of the newer groups of the late 2010s include: Twitter Stans, koreaboos, art hoes, edgelords, niche memers, E-Girls, IG baddies, hypebeasts, soft boys, and thousands of others


hmmmm either im getting really out of touch or none of these subcultures took off.

[Anonymous No.16043369]

>>16043366

An edgelord is someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy


hmmmmm this must be the new punk

[Anonymous No.16043801]

>>16039215
This was true not just about the live scene. You could be genuinely the only person in your town who could listen to an obscure album by an underground band because you were the only person who owned a physical copy.
Sometimes you would go round to someones house to hang out just because you knew they had some cool records.

[Anonymous No.16045090]

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[Anonymous No.16045531]

>>16043075
hippies with LSD

[Anonymous No.16045544]

>>16043366
You forgot fedoras

[Anonymous No.16045600]

>>16041623
I agree and I think an analogy can be explained through war. Drone campaigns have expanded massively. This warrants little to no backlash. In the 60s, you had to invade countries to conduct warfare. In the 60’s, you could protest troops in Vietnam etc. Drones replace the need for humans oversees and take away the more human aspect of war. Hence, concerns are drastically reduced. Who is rebelling against the drone campaigns in Somalia? No-one. This is part of the reason imo. The other part is the mass consumerism propaganda that means people are more obsessed with consuming products than with protesting. This isn’t the case all the time, as the recent George Floyd protests have shown. But by and large, it works.