Subcultures aren’t dead, they’re just not where you’re looking

Punk is dead, disco is dead, skate is dead, raves are dead—or so they say. But is this really the case? Have subcultures really ceased to exist? For a subculture to exist, it requires three points of purpose: aesthetic, music, and a belief system. Globally, more so than ever, we’re witnessing a rise in various modes of expression, and with the rise of the digital sphere, more and more access to theory that’s helping kids build their own ideology. So, where have all the subcultures gone? Perhaps they’re just not where we’re looking. 

Much of our discourse today is nihilistic in nature, and rightfully so. Capitalism is no longer an invisible spectre that lurks in the shadows; it has become a parasite that sits on our shoulders and consistently strips just about everything of its authenticity and soul. Our existence is repackaged and sold to us as an exclusivity we need to buy into instead of something that we already have. 

Subcultures have existed for decades as sources of cultural innovation by the youth, created from genuine resistance to the dissatisfaction with the infrastructure around them, or to carve out spaces of belonging. But as the spectre does, it reared its ugly head and transformed this authenticity into a modus for profit. In Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool, he argues that this source of cultural innovation was co-opted and neutralised by mainstream consumer culture. These groups were no longer sustaining an ethos to live by; they became niche markets to profit off. 

Suddenly, you had kids who had the look but none of the style, generating the sound but none of the grit. Fashion punks were rubbing shoulders with their alleged comrades in spiked-up denim vests purchased at your local GAP for US$19.99! Why bother tie-dyeing your own tee when you can buy your very own “Hippy-Style T-shirt”, one readymade of 95% cotton and 10% polyester? All of a sudden, the community and the politics of subculture were smothered, unless it could be sloganned onto a garment. Familiarly, decades before the term was coined, we can see commercial slop coming out of what was once an authentic human phenomenon. 

But here’s the catch: even Frank’s framework, sharp as it is, carries a blind spot. His ideology, along with that of many others, places the west at the centre of subcultural production—and once co-opted and killed there, it’s dead. The western-centric lens of subcultures developing in a vacuum in London and New York ignores the reality that these cultures emerged from shared global conditions following the world wars. Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity explains that certain phenomena happening simultaneously are not necessarily due to influence from one source, but rather responses to the same pressures. 

Punk, for example, did not arise in Japan because it copied Britain; it erupted as a result of the same post-war frustrations, the same disillusionment, and hunger for rupture that existed there as well. SS, credited as Japan’s first punk band, formed simultaneously in 1977 alongside the release of God Save the Queen, not as a response to it. Around the world, youth were arriving at similar modes of self-expression and rebellion at the same time, not borrowing them but generating them. Once you look beyond the western lens, the story of subcultures is less about their death and more about their parallel evolutions. 

So, in this conquest of cool, what becomes of subcultures and aesthetics that get co-opted, flattened, and sold back to us? Fear not—they’re still very much here. Arguably, they never left. They have simply learned to move differently. Skaters are reverting back to “no self-promotion”, a standard old rule that became null and void in the age of socials.

Musicians are removing their songs from mainstream streaming services to align with their politics and audiences. These cultures are becoming smaller, more intimate, and more carefully held. They are guarded, not due to elitism, but because to protect something precious, you must keep it out of the spectre’s reach.

You will find them in places that refuse to be commodified. They’re bikers in Jamaica, surfers in Sri Lanka, skaters in Ethiopia, and dune bashers across the Gulf. And they’re the world’s best-kept secrets. Subcultures are still alive and, if you don’t believe it, you’re not looking hard enough.