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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

It is true, trends are immense social forces but also very much absurd and chaotic. It works until it doesn't and there's another wave.

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Punk is not dead !

unfortunately the antibodies of capitalism are increasingly effective in eliminating punk anywhere it attempts to take root

I think the internet killed punk. It’s much harder to have a cohesive subculture when all information is available to anyone. In the 80s, one had to know the right record/book store to go to, the right college radio shows to tune into, and spend hours a week leafing through issues of Maximum rock and roll to have all the cultural information to glue the subculture together. Now it’s a few clicks. For better or worse, it’s certain,, it’s certainly less gluey.

By contrast, I think what actually killed punk was the type of "in-group" elitist behavior that you describe in your comment.

Punk was, in its beginnings, explicitly ANTI-elitist. Got an old guitar and a cassette recorder? You, too, can produce music!

Very few art forms can describe becoming "trendy", and punk wasn't one of them.

Wow. I’m sure if we were having this discussion face to face my comments wouldn’t have come off as elitist. There surely was an elitist crew in punk culture but what I was trying to describe is how I see that subcultures exist- better or worse. Liking music that wasn’t popular and could only be found in out of the way venues wasn’t elitist, but more of a common interest in spending one’s free time flipping through record racks and watching bands in dank sometimes dangerous venues. The DIY culture you reference was a central part of it. In my circles it was less exclusionary and more ‘neglected’, because the music didn’t sound like Phil Colins or Metallica- it was sloppy and weird in most peoples eyes. I don’t revere ‘punk’ . I have no allegiance to punk, as it’s hypocracy came to equal that of broader society (paraphrasing DH Pelligro IIRC). It didn’t become trendy it spawned trendy ‘offspring’.

Punk is bigger than it ever was, but its just one of 10 thousand genres, each as big as punk is. That's the real effect going on here.

Punk is absolutely dead. Punk is grandma music. Punk is an aesthetic you buy at Hot Topic. Punk isn't even anti-social anymore, much less dangerous.

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