The silencing of subcultures: how the era of online irony hurts collective identity

As the trend mill continues to churn out recycled and rebranded aesthetics and push them to teens, it has begun dipping its hands into once distinct subcultures and reshaping them for mainstream consumption. 

 In previous eras, subcultures defined identities, beliefs, and communities; elements which are crucial to the evolution of the teenager. But in the time of fleeting interests and the hollow homogenization of the internet, the struggle for identity amongst teens becomes persistent and even more misguided than before. With so much access to the aesthetics of a subculture, but hardly any access to the tangible communities of such subcultures, it seems that teenagers' ability to form an identity is transient at best. The modern marketability of the self has made it so that subcultures become about a brand, and fail to invite youth to think about the politics which serve as the exigence of such aesthetics.

“People will develop styles based on how they want the internet to perceive them and the kind of attention they want, and they sometimes lose the real meaning of why they want to dress the way they do and behave,” Finn Dawson, a junior at DSA, commented.

A subculture is defined as a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture. They are the facets of our society, in which the most influential art and ideas have formed.

“I think people begin to be authentically part of a subculture when they contribute to it. When you’re in the punk subculture you start making zines, going to shows, and fighting for causes that you believe in, and interacting with other people in that subculture,” Dawson expressed.  

It has been generally acknowledged that social media has caused a change in adolescent development, but what we fail to talk about is the role that it has in creating irony around distinct interest, which would traditionally lead one to finding community, and instead creating a sense of inauthenticity. 

“We're so gullible at this age, and we are molding ourselves as teenagers. I think we're all very open-minded people to so many different things. And I think social media is all of that, but just coming in at once. It's just happening so quickly. You're just seeing everyone at once experiencing and doing different things. And it's mostly influenced by people who already know who they are,” Drew Greenwood, a DSA senior, explained.

Recently, there have been jokes about the “performative male” which is essentially mocking men who read feminist literature, drink matcha lattes, and enjoy evocative female artists. It has served as a good bit amongst the general population, but it also begs the question: what about the people who authentically enjoy the “icons” of the performative male? It seems that when online jokes about certain artists or fashions surface, those who truly resonate with them are reduced to the ironic label generated on TikTok.

“Every single subculture now or every single culture period, there is some sort of connotational joke with it. It's so prevalent and so normal. But when new things start to come in, like this performative man idea, it affects people at first. I think it has an extreme effect on subcultures. I think it actually ends subcultures. It makes people want to stop doing what they're doing, and it becomes so much less populated,” Greenwood remarked.

For some teens, however, it’s apparent that the art of subcultures are not lost, they are just finding them in different ways. One of the most connecting and accessible subcultures is the LGBTQ+ community. 

  “It's about the way that I express myself, the way that I wear my clothes, the way that I listen to my music, what I want to write about, the way I appreciate the world, everything around it, that are connected to the LGBTQ community because of how they have influenced me,” Greenwood shared.

Teenagers have always been quick to follow the current of what everyone is doing, now more than ever, but despite there being a diminishing of certain subcultures, some will always prevail because of their timeless ability to resonate with developing young adults.

“I think it's actually quite upsetting because for a while, there was not a lot of jokes about anybody or anything, really, about how they want to express themselves, but now it's getting back into that era where it's a lot of jokes and it's funny if you're trying so hard to be like this, but that's the point. You're figuring out your identity,” Greenwood concluded.