The Death of Subculture

11/12/2025

(this is edited from my college senior thesis)

The late 2000s and early 2010s were the last time that real subcultures existed, or at least mattered. Due to the increasing prevalence of individualism, rapid consumer cycles, and the rise of the internet, we are witnessing a decline in the visibility of subcultures in our day-to-day lives. Through the internet, specifically, people have gained access to a wide range of media, allowing them to adapt and enjoy more content than ever before. While this is a positive development in some sense, as subcultures gain recognition and people can discover things without needing insider knowledge, the internet also enables people to create subcultures online. This diminishes the effectiveness of subcultures altogether. The negative aspect is the isolation that this can create. Subculture is a way to develop community and foster togetherness through shared interests, and when that community goes online, that sense of togetherness doesn’t truly exist anymore. Connection on the internet can exist and has had a positive impact. Movements like Occupy Wall Street, a left-wing populist movement that began in 2011 due to discontent over the bailing out of banks during the recession. It wouldn’t have gained as much prominence without the internet, thanks to blogs like Adbusters posting a call to action and the connection of like-minded individuals seeking to fight a similar cause.

When something as powerful and meaningful as a subculture moves exclusively to a virtual space, it can become isolating for those who participate in it, especially for those who are heavily involved. This is how many people become radicalized to the far right. Through isolation and the consumption of far-right content, one’s worldview becomes entirely filtered through the internet rather than being grounded in reality. That fear of the real world can create even further isolation and, thus, further radicalization.

I heard someone say the other day, although it was not a nuanced opinion (no offense if this was a friend who shared this), that the internet was initially meant to bring people together but has only divided us further, which is true. I have been actively trying, yet unsuccessfully, to reduce my time spent on social media. It has had a negative overall impact on my life and has impaired my social abilities by creating a false perception of connection. Regardless, I wouldn’t have become friends with some of the people I’m close to today without it.

When I was a kid in the early 2010s, I had friends through Xbox Live, the online multiplayer subscription service available on my Xbox 360. I even had some of these people’s numbers, and it became a significant enough issue in my life that my parents called one of my Xbox friends’ parents as a way to ensure that the person I was talking to was who they claimed to be. This behavior continued to evolve. When I was in high school, I had an app called Yubo on my phone, which was essentially a glorified dating app for teenagers.
I would even try to make friends through one-versus-one mobile games as a kid. In my experience, this outreach is driven by the desire for connection in all of us. However, with the advancement of technology, we engage in behaviors that we deem social, but in reality, they are antisocial and isolating. When you become friends with someone through social media that you don’t have any feasible way of meeting, in a sense, your phone becomes your friend, and that’s what happened to me numerous times while I was growing up. I don’t necessarily have any regrets about any of this antisocial behavior I was partaking in, as it molded me into who I’ve become, for better or for worse. Nonetheless, reflecting on it now makes me think that I could have spent this time interacting with people in my real life instead, as I didn’t lack friends but still felt I needed to go online to find people who shared common interests rather than attending an event to meet those kinds of people. However, these types of things don’t make me unique compared to anyone else; interests are something that are meant to be shared, whether with family, friends or with a partner. As the idea of subculture declines, people may feel like they can’t fit in anywhere in their real lives, so they turn to the internet.

The death of subculture is why I think there is so much nostalgia for specifically what is considered “indie sleaze” now, as my generation didn’t experience it but seems to want to recreate that period. Indie sleaze, which was considered then to be hipster culture at the time, lasted from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, is defined aesthetically by British Vogue writer Alex Kessler as “...a messy amalgam of ’90s grunge and ’80s opulence with a slightly erotic undertone, topped off with an almost pretentious take on retro style.” Prominent bands associated with this scene include The Strokes, Interpol, Arctic Monkeys, and MGMT.
I would say that, although it is unknown whether they were grouped with these scenes at the time, Crystal Castles and Steve Aoki are also associated with the perceived indie sleaze aesthetic today, likely due to their inclusion in Mark Hunter, widely known as The Cobrasnake, party photography. There is undoubtedly a romanticization of what that time was like due to the recession coinciding with the duration of indie sleaze.

Living in New York for nearly four years, it’s interesting to see how this has unfolded over the past two years, as that’s around when I first started hearing about it. It has been a joke among my friends and I, but there is an embodiment of this reborn subculture that makes it seem more popular than I assumed. Market Hotel, a nightclub and concert venue in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick, has been hosting “indie sleaze” themed club nights. Even in my hometown of Seattle, I’ve seen Instagram posts for similar events. The only other types of themed events I’ve seen posted by Market Hotel’s Instagram are the probably over ten Brat (Charli xcx) themed events they had this summer, Eurodance-themed events, and more recently, a Bad Bunny-themed event. While the venue hosts other events, such as concerts and club nights, hosting an indie sleaze or Eurodance-themed event, especially an indie sleaze-themed event, feels incredibly dystopian upon examination. Indie sleaze was a thing from only a little over a decade ago. The fact that pop culture has become so unimaginative that we are reminiscing about a subculture that took place during an economic crisis speaks to the desperation for escapism from Americans, particularly young Americans, as we are trying to find ways to escape as a result of the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the rise of fascism in the U.S.

American youth and young adults appear to be craving a form of escapism through the revival of indie sleaze. Yet, they are unable to create a genuine new future due to the inability to form widespread connections and cultural movements that will stand the test of time, primarily as a result of existing within a capitalist realist state.

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