Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14hr ago
In the olden days, subcultures had real functions, a chief one of which was that they allowed one to explore genres of music efficiently. If you were dissatisfied with mainstream pop and happened to hear, say, gothic rock and liked it, it's not like you had hundreds of curated Spotify playlists (or, earlier, music blogs) to find more stuff quickly; you'd get handmade zines, sections in obscure record shops, small clubs (or club nights) and, especially in non-Anglo countries, the necessity for mail-ordering stuff. To find all that you'd need to get into the local goth scene, and of course there would be other benefits like other media, interesting conversations, drugs, strange ideas and belief systems you wouldn't get elsewhere and so on that would keep you there.
Since all that is not particularly necessary now - due to the said Spotify playlists and music blogs and such - all the subcultures have since started to bleed together to create some sort of a general lowest-common-denominator simulcra of a subcultural look which, for some odd reason, is now being called "goth" despite not particularly resembling the goths of old, expect perhaps for the derided "Hot Topic goths". Earlier the same look was often called "emo" with only marginally more of a connection to the claimed musical genre.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20hr ago
You'd think that the whole Tea App debacle - Tea App not having been usable in its purpose in Europe due to being obviously wildly GDPR incompliant - would have shown that there are in fact reasons for GDPR other than just hobbling the US tech sector.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4d ago
Europe has totally failed to make its own social media (with exceptions for some countries like I think Finland ( @Stefferi ?)
Finland used to have a popular social media called IRC-Galleria, so named since it was originally for IRC users to post their own photos and so on. It still exists and has something of a continuing userbase from what I've understood, but basically they failed to develop their interface and usability and got quickly replaced by Facebook as the social media of choice when it became a thing.
This Instagram page posts old IRC-Galleria photos from the 00s, in case one wants a nostalgic trip to early-millennial Finland.
The sense of community probably dominated once you were in the community, but the exploration of niche interests, chiefly music, was what got people in the first place and the communities formed.
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