Culture vs Counterculture

Someone told me that a beard makes me look like a wise guru. So it is with this awesome beard picture that I preface my tirade.

BTW, I hate this entry, read on if you want but I want to delete it…if only I didn’t spend all that time writing it.

I had an interesting discussion with Hall about Emo and conformity. It reminded me a lot of high school actually. When I was in High school the “cool thing” to do was to skateboard. All of the sudden the counter-culture (skateboarding) trumped the popular culture (jocks) and all the anti-conformists were SOL.

If you’re anti-conformist and all of the sudden you’re in the popular group you have to leave because you are, after all, anti-conformist right?

Actually, it’s a stupid motivation. Whether you’re worried about doing what is popular or doing what isn’t popular you have the same motivation, you’re letting society decide what is ok and not ok the only difference is which side of the fence you want to be on; culture or counter-culture.

Examples in pop-culture:
One name comes to mind when I think of this whole debate and pop-culture. Avril Lavigne. When that girl got popular she was fairly unique. She wrote her own music, she dressed her own way. I can’t say what her motivation was but it seemed like she was doing her own thing. I never really got into her music but I could at least respect her because whatever the culture was didn’t matter, she was just Avril Lavigne and she existed independent of the scene.

Of course then she got popular and the scene flocked around her. Copycats and scene kids aside, she was still doing her own thing. You can’t knock that.

Then Britney Spears went the way of Madonna and sputtered into irrelevancy. With the pop-queen dead Avril stepped up and became the new pop-clone.

Avril started a style that became so popular that she became a slave to it. She had to be the exemplary example of her own style because she was, after all, Avril Lavigne. Locked in, Avril became a fraud until the jump from punk rock princess to pop-queen was only a change in title.

Sad story.

How do you win?!?:
There is no real way to win when you’re trying not to conform because your very motivation conforms to different sub-cultures. The only way to win is to quit worrying about it. I had this english teacher in High-school who used to stop us at the door when we were leaving class and tell us this:

Do you hate emo kids? Great, you’re totally counter-culture right now, that means you’re on the cool side of the fence! Good for you!

As Steve-O said “who cares, it’s music!”