The year is 2014. You’re wearing ripped stockings, denim cutoffs, and your favorite band tee, scribbling poetry in a notebook and blogging on Tumblr. Your favorites are blasting from a thrift store record player: Arctic Monkeys, Lana del Rey, The 1975, Marina and the Diamonds.
Many members of Generation Z or young millennials might reflect on this period and cringe, considering it an embarrassing phase marked by teenage emotions, bad fashion, and a regrettable digital footprint. However true this may be, 2014 Tumblr may have just been one of the last inklings of what could be considered a distinct subculture—a community united by their shared beliefs, interests, and taste in music (of the indie pop variety). Through the 2010s, subcultures were already beginning to diminish and fragment across online spaces, and this era marked the beginning of the end as the Internet, algorithms, and social media platforms took over.
From psychedelic rock to emo, music has given birth to hundreds and even thousands of niche styles, each characterized by their own unique sound, ideology, and community. Many of these styles have come to bloom vibrant, tight-knit communities, referred to by many as subcultures. Subcultures are tightly intertwined with their associated music style—the hippies of the ’60s and ’70s were strongly tied to psychedelic rock bands like Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead, for example. These bands reflected the subculture’s ideology and values, and the community as a fanbase reinforced the bands’ presence in the overall social, political, and cultural landscape.
However, with the rise of the Internet, especially short-form platforms like TikTok, communities like these have started to fade. Alternative subcultures have especially suffered, with many in the community complaining that the commodification of their visual style and dilution of their ideology through fashion brands, advertising, and social media algorithms has led to an overexposed misrepresentation of the subculture, expanding the community but not nourishing it. Moreover, the lack of third places and increase in the popularity of online communities has led to a decrease in gathering and connecting in physical spaces. But how did this all happen? If the initial goal of social media was to promote connectivity and togetherness, why has their exposure weakened rather than strengthened them?
To fully understand the current standing of subcultures, it is worthwhile to first examine their history and definitions. What makes a subculture? How do we determine what can be included or excluded in a community? And most importantly, how can these structures transfer into a world where society lives almost entirely online?
In the early to mid 1960s, a youth movement began spreading in college campuses around the United States. These were largely young, white, middle-class individuals who felt alienated from the materialism and repression of mainstream society. They were proponents of communal living, vegetarianism, recreational drug use, and sexual liberation; they wore their hair long and dressed in flowing, unconventional clothing. Although some parts of the community came to be associated with the anti-war and civil rights movements, many hippies and flower children, overall maintained a cool distance from politics, preferring instead to embrace philosophical and (Eastern) religious ideals of love and honesty.
One of the most defining aspects of the hippies was their connection to the psychedelic and folk rock styles. Artists who became associated with these styles include The Grateful Dead, Love, The 13th Floor Elevators, Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas & the Papas. While these artists may or may not have been hippies themselves, they created music that fed off their values and cultural atmosphere, and in turn, the hippies found solidarity and community in their music. In 1967, John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas wrote the song, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which was recorded by Scott McKenzie became a massive pop hit and came to be known as one of the defining anthems of the Summer of Love. Although the music did not necessarily make the culture, it was undeniably intertwined with the community’s values and beliefs. Like two organisms that had established a mutual symbiotic relationship, the music and culture of the hippies had become interdependent.
This relationship between music and culture is observable across many different kinds of subcultures. One of the most misrepresented and misunderstood subcultures we know today first originated in the early ’80s. It wasn’t quite punk, and it wasn’t quite metal, but something else entirely. Characterized by melodrama, macabre poeticism, and a foreboding sense of melancholy and gloom, goth rock (or simply goth) was a prevailing influence on alternative music throughout the ’80s and ’90s, but today has largely been diminished and conflated with numerous other alternative subcultures and music styles.
Goth as a culture started to originate as early as the 1970s amongst youths in the UK. They were united by their interests in 18th and 19th century literature and poetry, romanticism, and the occult. They didn’t have much of an explicit political affiliation, but the culture itself emerged under the post-industrial urban landscape and conservative political climate of 1970s England, and nurtured a strong sense of individuality, independence, and rebellion from the mainstream. Goth fashion included leather and velvet, Victorian influences, and an affinity for piercings, dyed hair, and dramatically dark makeup.
At the heart of it all, however, was the music. Goth rock was dark, sorrowful, and theatrical, with minimal guitar lines, chilling synths, distortion, and typically droning or wailing vocals. Its content leaned heavily towards mystic, erotic, religious, and morbid subject matters, with deeply introspective and poetic lyricism. Notable bands included Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Sisters of Mercy. Music was a pillar of the community, and as with many subcultures, there was an element of exclusivity in the sense that the music served as a virtual gatekeeper between those who appropriated the culture and those who participated in it. Although the music and culture were not synonymous, each was integral to the other. Today, the commercialization of goth’s presentation has diluted the sense of unity within the community; the sacred culture once shared through individual interests in literature and mysticism has been reduced to fast fashion and AI generated Spotify labels.
In today’s age, the Internet has created a plethora of what could be considered subcultures—cottage core, coquette, granola girl, coastal grandma, and more. Although these “aesthetics” do have an audience, specific fashion style, and even related music artists, all they are is visual; they are not based on a shared belief system, and the people that participate in them are not unified in a community. If subcultures of the past were forged through music, subcultures of today are based purely on the visual signifiers that Internet users may arbitrarily label as part of that subculture. In the past, culture couldn’t be derived from simply eating blueberry oatmeal or putting bows in your hair; it was founded in a community of individuals who shared values, experiences, and interests. The hippies were united in their distaste for meat and mainstream societal ideals, and goths shared a love of literature and romanticism, but these Internet aesthetics may be nothing more than trends for corporations to brand themselves with, or perhaps, for people to brand a curated version of themselves to others.
Furthermore, the Internet’s ability to skyrocket niche music styles and small artists to the mainstream has resulted in the lack of cultivation of a specific, intentional audience. Under the Internet’s all-seeing eye, boundaries between communities, subcultures, and even music genres have become blurred, conflating distinctions between groups and feeding it all to the giant machine of consumerism. One prominent example of this in recent years has been the label of “indie” music. Indie, short for independent, started as an industry label used to designate DIY music characterized by small or independent production and distribution.
Nowadays, however, it’s become nearly synonymous with a more palatable form of “alternative” in the public consciousness, and has transformed into an overarching genre in of itself, with its own subculture and subgenres (think indie rock, indie folk, and indie pop). While artists can and do use this genre label to foster an audience and gain traction online, it has also diluted its original usage for smaller, local artists wanting to gain coverage. Even bands like Arctic Monkeys, who garner millions of streams on each release and are backed by Warner Records, have now been denoted as indie. For genuine independent artists who rely on music as their sole source of income, the label that once signified their connection to the community and distinction from the commercial music industry is no longer applicable. The ties to a culture marked by mutual support and solidarity have all but dissolved.
Social media has also revolutionized the way independent and smaller artists market themselves. In giving artists the ability to gain an audience and rise to fame from their own home, it has led to a phenomenon dubbed “influencer creep,” or when musicians (and other kinds of artists) are forced to act like content creators in order to promote their art and earn a living. There are some merits to this method; artists can specifically cater to their target audience through tools like hashtags, and the wide reach of social media platforms holds the potential for mass virality. However, in doing so, they are blurring the lines between art and content creation. If there’s no difference between a musician and an influencer whose only goal is to sell a product, we as listeners are much less inclined to connect with these artists and even with each other, erasing the spaces that were once designated for vibrant communities connected through music.
Another aspect of subcultures that the Internet has weakened is the relationship between the artist and the listener; the rapid algorithm of social media platforms like TikTok has diluted our connection to and appreciation for artists. Through the algorithm, bite-sized portions of songs can go extremely viral, and although many users scrolling through their feeds may be fans of these clips, they may not be familiar with the artist’s work as a whole. Infamously, a video showing the audience’s inability to sing the non-viral parts of R&B artist Steve Lacy’s song “Bad Habit” was heavily circulated in 2022.
The audience’s energetic screams in the chorus are juxtaposed with the near radio silence that follows, as Lacy holds out the microphone, asking, “Why’d it stop?” The video, although hilarious, highlights a much larger issue perpetrated by fast-paced algorithms; not only are artists performing for audiences who do not have any substantial connection to their music, but these audiences could also artificially inflate ticket sales and prices. Many concerts sell out just for the venues to be nearly empty upon showtime due to resellers, and listeners who consider themselves genuine fans of the artist may also be disappointed, as tickets may be too expensive or scarce for them to secure one.
Outside of TikTok, the Internet in general has also caused some artists to feel increasingly alienated from their fanbases. Pop darling and singer-songwriter Mitski has critiqued the overwhelming usage of phones at her shows, stating that it has made her and others on stage feel like they are being “consumed as content.” Due to the advance of mobile technology and social media platforms as a whole, many music fans feel the need to cement their experiences at concerts by recording them or posting videos online. Although it may help concertgoers preserve good memories or bond with each other on social media, artists may feel disconnected from their audiences when all they can see is an ocean of phones. Conversely, hip-hop artist Doja Cat received a wave of backlash after stating that she wouldn’t say “I love you” to her fans because she “doesn’t even know [them].”
While the Internet can establish disconnection between fans and artists, it can also cause parasocial relationships in which fans feel overly connected to an artist, and thus, wrongly entitled to their attention, energy, and life outside of their career. From artists’ team-managed social media accounts to sleuths scouring the web for private information, the abundance of information made available by the Internet has facilitated the death of genuine connections both between fans and artists and amongst the fans themselves. The flower children of the ’70s and goths of the ’80s found community through shared interests, beliefs, and music taste, but it seems that little of these foundations are left for the music enjoyers of today.
In the digital age, music’s role as the backbone of subcultures has eroded, leaving behind a landscape where aesthetics and media consumption overshadow ideology and connection. While the Internet has expanded accessibility to niche music and artists, it has also blurred the lines between subcultures, reducing once-vibrant communities to fleeting trends easily commodified by corporations. Without the principles that once bound music communities together, the question remains: can true subcultures still exist? Or have we entered a time where music is merely another product, consumed and discarded at an ever-accelerating pace?
