I'd like to import an idea via Gibson of the "coolhunters": since the beginning of the mass media age, there have been people looking to commoditize "cool" by importing it into the mainstream. This process dissolves it; it ceases to be "counter", but also loses its distinctiveness and meaning. Rebellious music gets used for adverts. Revolutionary slogans used to sell tshirts. That sort of thing.
Technology has made us a lot better at that, and therefore the process of incorporating and destroying counterculture has accelerated. It's like trawlers finding smaller and smaller fish every year - which they take anyway, even if they're not mature, because they want to meet quota. Even if this further destroys the stock.
Over the past couple of years lockdowns must have done damage to offline-only cultural spaces. This is difficult to quantify.
Another observation hinted elsethread is that of "dark" spaces. One way to protect your culture against commoditization is to make it spiky or poisonous, like an animal that doesn't want to be eaten. Culture that contains elements that are both toxic to the mainstream and hard to separate out can exist as a subculture.
It seems to me that there are (at least) two such "left" and "right" subcultures. One left one is too queer-NSFW to be mainstream; another is too tankie-communist to be mainstream. Similarly there's a "right" culture that exists between the "banned from Twitter, had to use Gab" and "arrested on Jan 6" zones.
I'd also add a "gentrification" angle. For subcultures to have a physical presence, it needs to be really cheap. The stock of cheap-central-but-nasty (dilapidated, crime infested) property in cool cities has largely been re-absorbed.
Technology has made us a lot better at that, and therefore the process of incorporating and destroying counterculture has accelerated. It's like trawlers finding smaller and smaller fish every year - which they take anyway, even if they're not mature, because they want to meet quota. Even if this further destroys the stock.
Over the past couple of years lockdowns must have done damage to offline-only cultural spaces. This is difficult to quantify.
Another observation hinted elsethread is that of "dark" spaces. One way to protect your culture against commoditization is to make it spiky or poisonous, like an animal that doesn't want to be eaten. Culture that contains elements that are both toxic to the mainstream and hard to separate out can exist as a subculture.
It seems to me that there are (at least) two such "left" and "right" subcultures. One left one is too queer-NSFW to be mainstream; another is too tankie-communist to be mainstream. Similarly there's a "right" culture that exists between the "banned from Twitter, had to use Gab" and "arrested on Jan 6" zones.
I'd also add a "gentrification" angle. For subcultures to have a physical presence, it needs to be really cheap. The stock of cheap-central-but-nasty (dilapidated, crime infested) property in cool cities has largely been re-absorbed.