Is There Even An "Underground" Anymore?

How the mass market potential of the internet accelerates selling out.

a still from the iconic movie Whip It with Elliot Page

Hello my future corporate shills!

It’s Mo AKA DJ Gay Panic and this(!) is The Deviant Dispatch.  I keep a faggoty ear to the ground, delivering you the latest news on NYC’s greatest underground parties, rock shows, and ACTUAL raves- every fuckin’ week. Plus you’ll get it-girl gossip, cultural speculation, snark, typos, and lots of Charli XCX updates. To throw me some much-needed support, become a paying subscriber, share this with someone, or hit the heart button at the top of the post!

Is there even an "underground" anymore? This is a question I ponder every week as I write this newsletter and decide what events to include. In 2022 the lines can be bury. I put the word in quotes on my newsletter intro and bio to suggest the malleability of the concept. We (the people who care about Culture and TrEnDs) have always acknowledged that all things cool eventually become adopted too many people that they cease to be be cool. This is how “underground” ideas become bloated mainstream versions of themselves. This relationship a is a new concept for you, here’s a breakdown from my favorite TikTokker Madeline Pendleton.

But now, with the chaos of the modern cultural climate, it’s hard to tell where the lines are anymore. There are so many micro-subcultures, and at times the post-internet reach of those scenes makes it feel far vaster than before. The definitions of “cool” have become as individualized as our feeds. At the same time, algorithms pushes what other uses have “liked” to our attention.

Coolness, more than being linked to subculture, is more deeply linked to exclusivity. The exclusivity of subcultures was about how they were hard to find (“ask a punk” being listed on a secret show’s flyer) but also that the existed in opposition to something. They challenged mainstream aesthetics and assumptions. It was a shared secret set of values and ideals that offered some relief. But once something is hyperlinked, it’s not exclusive anymore.