Er subkulturer i tilbagegang i dag?

Are subcultures on the decline today?By: [NAVN A] 1.d - NAG

Are subcultures on the decline today? That is a question with many answers. One of the answers is yes and it comes from Dr. Kevin White a sociologist at the University of Sussex. He believes that there are multiple reasons for a yes. One of them is that the young people today are satiated with the plethora of entertainment available for them and therefore does not have the need to rebel and stand out from the crowd. Simply explained you could say that the young people in the past were a lot more bored and had plenty of time to come up with new ideas and needs. Today the young people are occupied with longer schooldays, leisure activities, spare time jobs and lastly social media. Social media is a dominant factor in teenagers’ everyday doings and that is maybe why today’s youth are less rebellious. As I said before the question of the declining of subcultures has many answers. If we should look at the other side, the no. I personally believe that the subcultures are not declining but just changing. The subcultures of the past were more based on the streets and other public locations but today they are based on the virtual, invisible and endless internet. The modern subcultures are hidden on for example Facebook groups that are secret to the public, but not for the hundreds maybe thousands of members. It is not a question of if they are declining, but where they are now. A subculture is an abstract term that has various definitions. When you think about it, we are participating in multiple subcultures without second thoughts. The profusion of subcultures is due to the normalization of niches, hobbies and spare time interests in today’s society. Today it is completely normal to participate in for some special and strange activities. Crossfit, patchwork, poetry and home brewing are just a drop in the ocean of the endless subcultures that are completely normal today. Personal hobbies are getting more and more popular and that is why subcultures today are increasing. Dr. Ruth Adams of King’s College London believes that the most prosaic theory of declining subcultures is that teenagers today are more occupied with constructing an identity on the internet than they are in the real world. Here Erving Goffman’s theory of the different stages of a human’s identity can be applied. By teenagers being more occupied with constructing frontstage online and not doing it in the real world, the theory crashes with the internet’s change on society. His theory is that we have two stages, frontstage and backstage where the frontstage is the side you show to the masses and the backstage is the real you deep inside. By the internet being a second world I will argue that a third stage has emerged. Two stages are not enough to describe the identities of today’s youth. To put into perspective with subcultures I will argue that the third stage based online is a completely new platform for subcultures. With this addition to Goffman’s theory, the opportunities for participating in subcultures are endless. I therefore personally believe that subcultures today are not declining - but increasing, not disappearing - but hiding and lastly not strange - but completely normal.