MetaChat - subcultures

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25 April 2011

subcultures do you jump into or resist being pulled into subcultures?→[More:]

I used to be pretty big into reading the OG techie bloggers and political bloggers from like 2003-2006, spending huge amounts of procrastination time doing it and as I seagued more into thiking about tech business and things like that I made a conscious effort to unplug from being the type of person who'd be permanently posted at the (then-nascent) reddit.

I was reading this AskMe thread where someone posted this thing, "the Balloon Juice Lexicon", and it's exactly what I think is the sad space you end up in when you scurry too far down the rabbit hole. These people have been in the political blog scene for so long that they have all sorts of jargon about their enemies and concepts, nasty or defensive in-group stuff that makes sense to people who comment on a political blog 20 times a day.

It's unavoidable to some degree of course, specialization produces jargon both for technical and social reasons. But I think--especially in the commentary sphere--a lot of it is, pardon the vulgarity, 'f---ery and gossip'. You can refresh TechCruch 50 times a day and learn not a thing about building a tech company and you can be immersed in the new york media scene (gawker has something to say about a new yorker writer!) and find not a thing of sustained value in it.

I think I just want to resist being folded into bubbles when the truth is that a lot of it has a NOBODY CARES sign posted over it. That way when a sort of 'idea' or article or concept explodes across that zone of social affinity I'm almost like, I know this is all really exciting but the truth is it doesn't matter to me, I can keep my head straight while y'all fight over this latest drama. It's especially bad when what people have reductive trappings for human behavior and come out with "this is the X syndrome at work!" where the syndrome is just a sort of pop culture trope within a certain community

There's a balance there, you can't be generically not interested or involved in anything, but at the point where you're talking in memes and things in the real world or agonizing about something that is just an abstraction built on an abstraction it's worth unplugging

post by: Firas at: 17:32 | 11 comments

Unless regular checking in on MeCha and MetaFilter (and semi regular looking at Twitter) counts, no, I don't jump into subcultures. And I don't like being involved in anything that regular people can't understand because of the jargon used.

posted by bearwife 25 April | 18:00

hm I'm not sure about metachat, I don't think it is, but it's kinda interesting in that you can almost track how much of a subculture something is by virtue of how many 'exclusive trappings' it has; so something like Mefi's obsession with remixing the William Carlos Williams poem or phrases like 'plate of beans' (with a song to go with it, oh dear) would definitely put in a sort of subculture indicator. But a real subculture would span several sites I think

posted by Firas 25 April | 18:05

I don't know how people want to define subculture, but as someone fairly new to Mefi and MeCha, both look like subcultures to me, though Mefi much more so.

There are the in-jokes, and the things that everyone is assumed to know. There are the topics that dare not speak their name, without risking a firestorm. Most of all there is the sensibility that is common in the community, and the ways it's accepted as being ok to be, and the ways that are not accepted as ok ways to be.

On the other hand, in my understanding of "subculture", well every community of people has its own culture. The way people in one company tend to think is different than the way people in another company tend to think for example.

For that reason I don't see being a subculture as problematic per se.

Btw I have no idea what "the OG techie bloggers and political bloggers from like 2003-2006" means. So clearly I'm not in the subculture where those terms are used.

posted by philipy 25 April | 18:47

OK, so philipy is right, a folklorist or maybe an anthropologist would say there aren't any subcultures really - just cultures. SUbculture is a useful terminology for talking about cultures that fall within a larger dominant culture, but it's getting tricky because with the web especially, subcultures can cross dominant cultures. So in essence they are basically just cultures that intersect with and interact with other cultures, which is a more contemporary way of viewing the whole thing.

Groups of people, by default, form cultures. If you are a member of a group - something you don't completely determine for yourself, but which you can to some degree opt in or out of, especially online - you can be more or less of a participant, but you still have some identity relative to that culture. You can act like more of a skeptic/outsider or more of a tradition bearer/cheerleader, but you still take a stance relative to the culture based on your privileged understanding of that culture, as a participant.

Some cultures are richer than others. Richer = more individuals, more memes, more expressive art forms, more shared knowledge, more coterie speech and occupational language, more customs, more traditions.

MeFi and MeCha have cultures, for sure. They are not particularly rich but they are strong, and I think online cultures actually need more visible, clearly stated memes and shared traditions in order to create a sense of united identity amongst people who live at great distances from one another and share very few other characteristics to define them as a group.

There are a few times I've encountered a "subculture" that had just a ton of richness and made it really easy to interact with and get involved in. For me, swing dancing has been that - old-time music sessions - the local food movement - waitressing - the maritime/sailing community. Online, before I had an account at MetaFilter, I was part of some other online "subcultures."

LT is here and says "wet shaving" as well. Oenology. Community theatre.

posted by Miko 25 April | 21:57

ha philipy this is the second time recently I've unthinkingly used "OG" in a metachat related environment and left someone wondering "what?" that's my hip hop subculture language; OG means like original gangster so it basically means "early"/original. Talk about jargon

posted by Firas 25 April | 22:09

interesting, Miko. That's a good point about any stance relative to a culture being somehow involved with it; it has to be right be because non-involvement would be ignorance rather than just distancing or skepticism

I think a lot of my ... resistance or disdain here ... is for second-order cultures; in other words, swing dancing is one thing but then a swing dancing magazine or forum is another. So what I'm trying to articulate, in terms of a personal totally non-objective stance is that I think "I really like indie rock!" is one thing but "I really like pitchfork or this tumblr" is distinctly different and that's when you start getting into a social/informational bubble.

posted by Firas 25 April | 22:22

I don't mind being in a bubble as long as I'm not only in that one bubble. I have a friend that studies a concept called "centers of calculation" which says that for basically any specialized knowledge, there needs to be a few places - whether they be virtual or physical - where the bulk of that information is brought, sorted, discussed, and re-disseminated. Every type of cultural expression kind of needs its centers of calculation in order to self-sustain. You may not be the person closest to the center really obsessing over all the data, but if you're interested in the topic, you need the center to exist and you need at least some people to care enough about it to organize the information in a way you can access it.

posted by Miko 25 April | 22:38

subcultures are like personalities. They're only problematic when they become defensive, superior, isolating, etc. That is: pathological. There needs to be psychotherapy for subcultures.

posted by Obscure Reference 26 April | 07:00

Firas, from your post I don't take that you use 'subculture' as referring to richness.
After ruminating a bit on this (while I was under the shower) I think that people speak of a 'subculture' when they experience the group culture as exclusionary or feel alienated from it. I.e. when they experience it as lacking in a way.
I can relate to sometimes feeling alienated from online groups, of moments of not finding the group interaction fulfilling.
One of the things you touch on is how online groups can be prone to mistaking the means for the goal; the interaction is not about something external anymore but becomes a feedback loop feeding on itself.
This can be either very involving and intense or conversely alienating.

posted by jouke 26 April | 13:03

hi jouke,

yeah I like ruminating in the shower too :) the only environment that compares in terms of a thinking space is when I take a walk with my earphones on

You're right that it can be very involving.. the ability of someone halfway across the world to make a joke nobody within square miles of you would understand just cause you're both familiar with some topic can be delightful

On the other hand sometimes it can be draining to anchor yourself within a community when it has mores and personalities that might start clashing with yours; and it's like a breath of fresh air to be like, you know, I'm allowed to be me in this other context and not have to continue to argue about my ideas or identity in an emotionally unhealthy way just to be accepted. I can just--leave! wow

Another thing that I'm thinking of here isn't necessarily about social spaces but informational spaces, the way they set an agenda and I guess it rubs me wrong because in terms of my personal constitution I'm bah-humbug about holidays and things too. Just cause Newsweek dropped an article everyone's talking about and splashing on my twitter, facebook, what-have-you I get resentful of this idea that there was something that was irrelevant yesterday that suddenly I have to engage myself with today because it's captured everyone's imagination--it's fluff, it's irrelevant. I'm really resentful of the way the media can set an agenda just by virtue of what's going on NOW and I'm like, man, you can't control my mind, I'm gonna go think about this other thing instead.

posted by Firas 26 April | 13:48

you can't control my mind, I'm gonna go think about this other thing instead
The power of tinfoil!

The media are chasing our collective fickle attention. The worst example of that is that I read recently about is huffingtonpost which writes articles under titles based on the most frequent google searches.
Sometimes the media hit the resonance spot, perhaps unwittingly, and we swarm towards this information in huge numbers. Lemmings, stampeding animals, ...

posted by jouke 26 April | 15:30

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