The yr is 2014. You are carrying ripped stockings, denim cutoffs, and your favourite band tee, scribbling poetry in a pocket book and running a blog on Tumblr. Your favorites are blasting from a thrift retailer report participant: Arctic Monkeys, Lana del Rey, The 1975, Marina and the Diamonds.
Many members of Era Z or younger millennials may mirror on this era and cringe, contemplating it an embarrassing section marked by teenage feelings, unhealthy style, and a regrettable digital footprint. Nonetheless true this can be, 2014 Tumblr could have simply been one of many final inklings of what may very well be thought of a definite subculture—a neighborhood united by their shared beliefs, pursuits, and style in music (of the indie pop selection). By the 2010s, subcultures have been already starting to decrease and fragment throughout on-line areas, and this period marked the start of the top because the Web, algorithms, and social media platforms took over.
From psychedelic rock to emo, music has given start to a whole lot and even 1000’s of area of interest kinds, every characterised by their very own distinctive sound, ideology, and neighborhood. Many of those kinds have come to bloom vibrant, tight-knit communities, referred to by many as subcultures. Subcultures are tightly intertwined with their related music model—the hippies of the ’60s and ’70s have been strongly tied to psychedelic rock bands like Pink Floyd and Grateful Useless, for instance. These bands mirrored the subculture’s ideology and values, and the neighborhood as a fanbase strengthened the bands’ presence within the total social, political, and cultural panorama.
Nonetheless, with the rise of the Web, particularly short-form platforms like TikTok, communities like these have began to fade. Various subcultures have particularly suffered, with many locally complaining that the commodification of their visible model and dilution of their ideology by style manufacturers, promoting, and social media algorithms has led to an overexposed misrepresentation of the subculture, increasing the neighborhood however not nourishing it. Furthermore, the dearth of third locations and enhance within the recognition of on-line communities has led to a lower in gathering and connecting in bodily areas. However how did this all occur? If the preliminary objective of social media was to advertise connectivity and togetherness, why has their publicity weakened relatively than strengthened them?
To completely perceive the present standing of subcultures, it’s worthwhile to first study their historical past and definitions. What makes a subculture? How can we decide what may be included or excluded in a neighborhood? And most significantly, how can these constructions switch right into a world the place society lives nearly totally on-line?
Within the early to mid Sixties, a youth motion started spreading in faculty campuses round the US. These have been largely younger, white, middle-class people who felt alienated from the materialism and repression of mainstream society. They have been proponents of communal residing, vegetarianism, leisure drug use, and sexual liberation; they wore their hair lengthy and wearing flowing, unconventional clothes. Though some components of the neighborhood got here to be related to the anti-war and civil rights actions, many hippies and flower youngsters, total maintained a cool distance from politics, preferring as an alternative to embrace philosophical and (Jap) non secular beliefs of affection and honesty.
One of the crucial defining facets of the hippies was their connection to the psychedelic and people rock kinds. Artists who grew to become related to these kinds embody The Grateful Useless, Love, The thirteenth Ground Elevators, Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas & the Papas. Whereas these artists could or could not have been hippies themselves, they created music that fed off their values and cultural ambiance, and in flip, the hippies discovered solidarity and neighborhood of their music. In 1967, John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas wrote the track, “San Francisco (Be Positive to Put on Flowers in Your Hair),” which was recorded by Scott McKenzie grew to become an enormous pop hit and got here to be referred to as one of many defining anthems of the Summer season of Love. Though the music didn’t essentially make the tradition, it was undeniably intertwined with the neighborhood’s values and beliefs. Like two organisms that had established a mutual symbiotic relationship, the music and tradition of the hippies had develop into interdependent.
This relationship between music and tradition is observable throughout many various sorts of subcultures. One of the crucial misrepresented and misunderstood subcultures we all know immediately first originated within the early ’80s. It wasn’t fairly punk, and it wasn’t fairly metallic, however one thing else totally. Characterised by melodrama, macabre poeticism, and a foreboding sense of melancholy and gloom, goth rock (or just goth) was a prevailing affect on various music all through the ’80s and ’90s, however immediately has largely been diminished and conflated with quite a few different various subcultures and music kinds.
Goth as a tradition began to originate as early because the Seventies amongst youths within the UK. They have been united by their pursuits in 18th and nineteenth century literature and poetry, romanticism, and the occult. They did not have a lot of an express political affiliation, however the tradition itself emerged beneath the post-industrial city panorama and conservative political local weather of Seventies England, and nurtured a robust sense of individuality, independence, and rebel from the mainstream. Goth style included leather-based and velvet, Victorian influences, and an affinity for piercings, dyed hair, and dramatically darkish make-up.
On the coronary heart of all of it, nevertheless, was the music. Goth rock was darkish, sorrowful, and theatrical, with minimal guitar strains, chilling synths, distortion, and usually droning or wailing vocals. Its content material leaned closely in direction of mystic, erotic, non secular, and morbid topic issues, with deeply introspective and poetic lyricism. Notable bands included Bauhaus, The Treatment, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Sisters of Mercy. Music was a pillar of the neighborhood, and as with many subcultures, there was a component of exclusivity within the sense that the music served as a digital gatekeeper between those that appropriated the tradition and people who participated in it. Though the music and tradition weren’t synonymous, every was integral to the opposite. At the moment, the commercialization of goth’s presentation has diluted the sense of unity inside the neighborhood; the sacred tradition as soon as shared by particular person pursuits in literature and mysticism has been lowered to quick style and AI generated Spotify labels.
In immediately’s age, the Web has created a plethora of what may very well be thought of subcultures—cottage core, coquette, granola woman, coastal grandma, and extra. Though these “aesthetics” do have an viewers, particular style model, and even associated music artists, all they’re is visible; they don’t seem to be based mostly on a shared perception system, and the those that take part in them should not unified in a neighborhood. If subcultures of the previous have been solid by music, subcultures of immediately are based mostly purely on the visible signifiers that Web customers could arbitrarily label as a part of that subculture. Previously, tradition could not be derived from merely consuming blueberry oatmeal or placing bows in your hair; it was based in a neighborhood of people who shared values, experiences, and pursuits. The hippies have been united of their distaste for meat and mainstream societal beliefs, and goths shared a love of literature and romanticism, however these Web aesthetics could also be nothing greater than developments for companies to model themselves with, or maybe, for individuals to model a curated model of themselves to others.
Moreover, the Web’s skill to skyrocket area of interest music kinds and small artists to the mainstream has resulted within the lack of cultivation of a particular, intentional viewers. Below the Web’s all-seeing eye, boundaries between communities, subcultures, and even music genres have develop into blurred, conflating distinctions between teams and feeding all of it to the enormous machine of consumerism. One distinguished instance of this lately has been the label of “indie” music. Indie, brief for impartial, began as an trade label used to designate DIY music characterised by small or impartial manufacturing and distribution.
These days, nevertheless, it is develop into almost synonymous with a extra palatable type of “various” within the public consciousness, and has reworked into an overarching style in of itself, with its personal subculture and subgenres (suppose indie rock, indie people, and indie pop). Whereas artists can and do use this style label to foster an viewers and acquire traction on-line, it has additionally diluted its authentic utilization for smaller, native artists wanting to achieve protection. Even bands like Arctic Monkeys, who garner hundreds of thousands of streams on every launch and are backed by Warner Data, have now been denoted as indie. For real impartial artists who depend on music as their sole supply of earnings, the label that after signified their connection to the neighborhood and distinction from the business music trade is not relevant. The ties to a tradition marked by mutual help and solidarity have all however dissolved.
Social media has additionally revolutionized the best way impartial and smaller artists market themselves. In giving artists the flexibility to achieve an viewers and rise to fame from their very own dwelling, it has led to a phenomenon dubbed “influencer creep,” or when musicians (and different kinds of artists) are compelled to behave like content material creators as a way to promote their artwork and earn a residing. There are some deserves to this technique; artists can particularly cater to their audience by instruments like hashtags, and the extensive attain of social media platforms holds the potential for mass virality. Nonetheless, in doing so, they’re blurring the strains between artwork and content material creation. If there is not any distinction between a musician and an influencer whose solely objective is to promote a product, we as listeners are a lot much less inclined to attach with these artists and even with one another, erasing the areas that have been as soon as designated for vibrant communities related by music.
One other facet of subcultures that the Web has weakened is the connection between the artist and the listener; the fast algorithm of social media platforms like TikTok has diluted our connection to and appreciation for artists. By the algorithm, bite-sized parts of songs can go extraordinarily viral, and though many customers scrolling by their feeds could also be followers of those clips, they might not be acquainted with the artist’s work as a complete. Infamously, a video exhibiting the viewers’s incapacity to sing the non-viral components of R&B artist Steve Lacy’s track “Unhealthy Behavior” was closely circulated in 2022.
The viewers’s energetic screams within the refrain are juxtaposed with the close to radio silence that follows, as Lacy holds out the microphone, asking, “Why’d it cease?” The video, though hilarious, highlights a a lot bigger subject perpetrated by fast-paced algorithms; not solely are artists performing for audiences who do not need any substantial connection to their music, however these audiences may additionally artificially inflate ticket gross sales and costs. Many live shows promote out only for the venues to be almost empty upon showtime because of resellers, and listeners who contemplate themselves real followers of the artist can also be upset, as tickets could also be too costly or scarce for them to safe one.
Outdoors of TikTok, the Web typically has additionally prompted some artists to really feel more and more alienated from their fanbases. Pop darling and singer-songwriter Mitski has critiqued the overwhelming utilization of telephones at her exhibits, stating that it has made her and others on stage really feel like they’re being “consumed as content material.” Because of the advance of cell expertise and social media platforms as a complete, many music followers really feel the necessity to cement their experiences at live shows by recording them or posting movies on-line. Though it could assist concertgoers protect good reminiscences or bond with one another on social media, artists could really feel disconnected from their audiences when all they’ll see is an ocean of telephones. Conversely, hip-hop artist Doja Cat obtained a wave of backlash after stating that she would not say “I really like you” to her followers as a result of she “would not even know [them].”
Whereas the Web can set up disconnection between followers and artists, it will probably additionally trigger parasocial relationships through which followers really feel overly related to an artist, and thus, wrongly entitled to their consideration, vitality, and life outdoors of their profession. From artists’ team-managed social media accounts to sleuths scouring the net for personal info, the abundance of data made out there by the Web has facilitated the demise of real connections each between followers and artists and amongst the followers themselves. The flower youngsters of the ’70s and goths of the ’80s discovered neighborhood by shared pursuits, beliefs, and music style, however plainly little of those foundations are left for the music enjoyers of immediately.
Within the digital age, music’s position because the spine of subcultures has eroded, abandoning a panorama the place aesthetics and media consumption overshadow ideology and connection. Whereas the Web has expanded accessibility to area of interest music and artists, it has additionally blurred the strains between subcultures, decreasing once-vibrant communities to fleeting developments simply commodified by firms. With out the ideas that after certain music communities collectively, the query stays: can true subcultures nonetheless exist? Or have we entered a time the place music is merely one other product, consumed and discarded at an ever-accelerating tempo?
