I’m from the USA though I sometimes forget it. There are a ton of subcultures that develop there, some of which are easy to find and some of which are very rare.
I will share the ones I am most familiar with and mention a few others here and there.
High school subcultures
Most high schools have the same subcultures in the USA. In high school we had “the jocks” who were good at sports and “the stoners” who smoked weed. We also had the “preps” or as I called them “the good kids”, kind of boring but decent. “The nerds” were socially awkward and studied a lot and “the outcasts” included punks goths and other music obsessed kids. I was one of those.
My school was strange in that we had a bunch of hybrid groups. We had stoner jocks and stoner preps. The outcasts has a crossover members from the nerds or from the preps. I started out friends with the jocks and preps but got bored easily and ended up friends with the outcasts cause there were lots of music fans.
AsAs I got older I was exposed to other subcultures.
While I have never come into contact with Trekkies or Furries, I did know one or two people who were into Rocky Horror Picture Show fandom. Furries are people who love dressing up like animals, trekkies dress up like Star Trek characters and rocky horror picture fans dress up are kind of like drag culture. They dress up their favorite character (usually dressing as the opposite gender) and go to screenings of that movie where they sing along together. Not very familiar with any of that. Knew a few LGBT people in university and a skater or two. Those two are more common.
Music subcultures
I am most knowledgeable about music subcultures so that is most of what I’ll be sharing. These are the subcultures I’ve had the most contact with in America...
Punk
Punk was at the center of the punk/emo/ska/hardcore scene in my home state. When I was in high school punk was already on its dying breath. For those who don’t know punk started as a rebellious movement of people against rules, mainstream pop culture, government, and consumerism. Ironically these days most punk culture has been eaten up by pop culture. Green hair, spiked hair, face piercings, tattoos, converse sneakers, spiked leather clothing etc and even the sound of the music, it’s all been eaten up by the mainstream.
I never got too into the classic classics like Ramones or Dead Kennedies but I sure did love me some Epitaph records and Fat Wreck Chords. This was when punk started to merge with a more accessible sound but for the most part still was true to its roots of anti consumerism and rebellion against rules.
I started with the Offspring (Who along with Green Day went from punk to pop over the years) but before long I was going to lots of local shows and most of my friends had pink, blue, green or spiked hair, converse shoes and spiked clothing. I kinda thought it was silly how they all looked the same but we related through our love of similar music and not listening to rules. The shows were so warm even though people got really aggressive in the mosh pit. It was the first time I felt community.
I was a huge NOFX and Lagwagon fan, but after all these years, I like Refused (The Shape of Punk to Come) the most.
Hardcore
I never got THAT into hardcore but it was really big in my area and so a lot of punk/ska/hardcore/emo bands played the same lineup. There were a few bands I liked but mostly I Just liked the crowd surfing and moshpits. They aren’t really that hardcore but I still love glassjaw and Dillinger escape plan.
At first it was hard to tell the difference between punk and hardcore. But Lots of hardcore kids were vegan or straight edge (no drugs or alcohol, some had no sex). I didn’t really like alcohol or drugs either so I liked them, but they were way too hardcore lol pun intended.
Ska
These shows were so fun. For those who don’t know ska is somewhere between punk and reggae, upbeat and sometimes with horns. Everyone would “skank”, just a silly fun dance, sometimes you would even have swing dancers. The fashion was retro plaid and funny hats. I didn’t go too deep down this route but it was always fun when ska bands and ska kids showed up to the shows. One of my favorite bands growing up was a ska/pop punk/ prog rock band called RX Bandits. I still love these guys. Not the most pure ska out there but like I said, I didn’t go deep. Reel Big Fish were lots of fun live too.
Emo
Went semi deep with this one. When most people hear emo they think of whiney vocals but that’s already 4th generation. Emo was originally emotional hardcore or bands like pavement or built to spill . I was really into a few second generation Emo bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and At the Drive In. Later it became really whiney stuff nasaly voices and whailing, or “screamo” which moves back to hardcore but was much more pop.
The kids at these shows would dress almost goth and would write diaries. I did too. We kept xanga or livejournal diaries where we wrote embarrassing complaints like “I hate the world” and “if she only knew how much I cared”. We liked to advertise our depression to the world like a badge of honor. 1st world problems lol.
It was good in a way, it helped me to become open with my emotions while a lot of other boys weren’t and I made a lot of friends online because of it which helped me understand people a lot better.
2000s Hipsters
I think hipster has a slightly different meaning today. Now it’s trendsetters, and back then it was too but they were a little different, more ironic and underground.
I moved to Boston after high school and there was so much indie rock local music and it was awesome....and everyone was a hipster. Broken social scene, Blonde Redhead, Xiu Xiu and Neutral Milk Hotel were some favorites. Still like these bands!
The thing about hipster culture at that time was that we were all trying to be cool by being uncool. Irony. Irony. Irony was the name of the game. everything was about irony.
We liked good music but sometimes we’d like bad music but only if it was really really bad, like Wesley Willis. We needed our music to be unpopular. The less popular the better. We were allowed to like something popular but only if none of our friends liked it. We tried to make others feel uncool by showing off how much better our taste was and how much more we knew. That was the essence of hipster culture.
And for the most part our taste was really good! It led to a really high standard of art and music in the independent scene. We liked good stuff, we were just incredibly snobby and arrogant. I thought it was silly but there were so many cool shows and dance parties.
Now mainstream and underground is all mixed together. Pitchfork (a website for music reviews) is popular. I don’t know what’s what anymore but I’m glad because I don’t want to be a snob!
New age
This was less about music and more about beliefs and lifestyle. I never really joined a new age circle but I made some individual friends and joined some groups online.
I actually get weirded out by a lot of new age groups because I just don’t adhere blindly to social norms just to fit in and I feel there is so much of that. But there is one thing I really relate to and like about new age people: spirituality without a specific religion, or the blending of religions.
I think the stereotype of new age includes meditation, yoga, tarot, astrology, channeling, crystals, various kinds of holistic healing, sometimes psy-trance, being foreign in India, Buddhism and Hinduism, maybe Taoism, indigenous beliefs, astral projection, psychedelics, Veganism, sustainability, organic farming, law of attraction, and on and on.
New Age circles are really diverse and I don’t really subscribe to any of them so closely but have some stuff in common with some of them. Mostly I just combine ideas and customs from various cultures in a way that makes sense to me. I love Chinese medicine, but I’ll try to make it my own. I borrow ideas freely from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and lesser known religions or belief systems. I am also open to some ideas that many might consider fantastic because they are unverifiable by science.
But at the end of the day, this is personal for me, I can talk about it with others, but I don’t want to build exclusive groups based on these ideas or turn beliefs into something to market or sell or convince others of.
Some new age vocabulary makes a lot of sense to me to, words like “resonate” and “vibration” and “frequency”. Other words really don’t rub me right, like “twin flames” or “ascension” or “guru”...I also don’t like the “be happy all the time always no matter what” attitude of a lot of the new age” and the spiritual pissing contests. I’m very skeptical of channels but I loooove Abraham Hicks because channeling is so irrelevant to her message. People like Bashar are interesting but also a little silly to me.
Some people would call me new age because I believe in my own version of Taoism, that life has been teaching me through my experiences and that my thoughts have a direct impact on the world. Also I find psychedelics fascinating though I haven’t actually used any. I’ve had some similar experiences through meditation and music though.
I think it’s important to be skeptical, but I also believe that there is no objective truth and that it’s ok to trust our subjective experiences as much as evidence sometimes.
Anyways! 😂
Others
There are so many more. I’ve connected with squatters who live in abandon places, or drifters, people who move around constantly without much income or expenditure. I am not a gamer anymore but I used to be. I am not connected to it at all but I love the music of the footwork community in Chicago. Footwork parties look awesome, search for it!
Some of you probably know exactly what I’m talking about while others may have no idea, so if you have any questions let me know.
This was my contribution to the Hive Bi-weekly Question 🌎🌎🌎 Cross Culture Question: What subcultures exist in your country? 🌎🌎