Has The Internet Had A Positive Or Negative Impact On Subcultures?

There are many opinions on the media and the cultures of the world and also the impact it has on them. In my belief it depends on the situation however. Sometimes the media can have a very positive effect on the world and its different cultures and subcultures. In the case with the hippy life as discussed on pages 270-276 in the American Subcultures book, I believe it has had a negative effect on the situation. Many people were together and having fun at festivals and get-togethers in the 1950’s to the early 20th century. But since the media has came into effect this has changed a lot. Before there was propaganda all around trying to grow the hippy culture and that subcultures beliefs, but now there is advertisements for festivals on websites, apps, and in magazines.

The way people go to these festivals have changed so much since before the internet was created. Before the media came into effect many “Hippies”, traveled all over in their iconic Volkswagen vans and traded goods such as Marijuana at these festivals and practiced meditation to become one with their surroundings. Now the types of festivals have changed from being events like “Burning Man”, to events like Coachella. Nowadays people travel from all over like different countries by plane to come to these events. Also nowadays the drugs the festival goers take are far different such as Ecstasy compared to the original Marijuana.

Since these events started in the early 1950’s, the purpose of them have changed significantly in the sense of what they do at the festivals. When these events were first started, the Hippies would ingest or intake Marijuana and meditate while becoming one with their surroundings. Now people go to festivals to meet the singers, be with friends, and to just have a good time. The hippies in the 60’s did what they wanted and just did their own thing at these festivals, and now people are kind of orchestrated to only do certain things such as sit in a chair and listen to the music. At least festivals when they first were created, the point was to get away from the world and society and just be who you want to be in however you felt like doing it.

Everyone did their own thing and was their complete own person. They felt the music they felt and did not go along with what everyone else liked. There was of course the people who liked the same stuff but nobody just followed what was popular because that’s what was “in”. Whereas nowadays everyone follows the trends. On page 274 of the “American Subcultures” book by Eric Rawson, Cody C. Delistraty says “It is entertaining and funny to watch these people caring so much about trends, about what other people think, and about being perceived as cool, but it is also an obvious line in the sand between hipsters and counterculturalists”. As many people nowadays focus on the trends as counterculturalists, the hipsters and hippies remain solo and do their own thing.

Subcultures have been impacted many ways both negatively and positively from the internet. However the musical subculture has since gone away. The net dissolved boundaries, which has many upsides to it: artists attain lovers directly, skip the vintage guard, speak peer-to-peer, access the history of recorded music, etc. But boundary dissolution goes ways. So it also approach mainstream networks now nibble 24/7 on a smorgasbord of little youth rebellions and toss the bones back at you earlier than you even realise what it is. It’s cultural appropriation on steroids, the extension of which, way that subcultures are completely disempowered. Does it matter? Who knows. But what’s weird, is that when many years of post-world war suffering for the space to congregate sub-culturally and thrive, the towel’s simply been surpassed in. Neatly folded, and dry cleaned. For every sob tale about Rihanna stealing from Venus X, or Coldplay from Creaky Boards, there’s a colony of sub-culturalists live streaming their very own culture right at the very human beings they’ve defined themselves as eschewing. Free of charge. Boundary dissolution goes ways.

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Grunge, rave, container culture, no matter you wish to argue was the last real musical social group, couldn't happen during this world. As presently as Nirvana actor 100 individuals to their Olympia shows, the web would be everywhere it, Axl Rose would be sporting Chuck Taylors and Michael Jackson’s label would’ve re-titled 1991’s Dangerous to Contagious. Cobain’s claim to fame would’ve been a Twitter rant. It may be argued that this can be cultural improvement, that the globe is turning into additional egalitarian, more open. I actually have friends that build that case. however is that basically what was meant by equality? associate all-access-granted-everyone’s-in the-audience culture? It’s the foremost information Y factor I’ve ever detected of.

Industry executives once thought that the increase Social Media would mean that fewer music lovers would attend out of doors festivals. They couldn’t are additional wrong. The impact of social media has been tremendous. These days, what music lovers wish higher than anything could be a distinctive expertise that can’t be downloaded off the web. And what’s additional – they’re willing to acquire it. In 2014, the 5 biggest North American country music festivals created a combined $183 million in price tag sales – not together with revenue from sponsorships, merchandise, and food and liquid sales. Coachella created $78 million in 2014, and $84 million in 2015.Why are pageant numbers popping up when decades of slow growth? It’s as a result of an equivalent technology that the music trade feared – Social Media.

Fuelled by the evolution of technology, our obsession with uploading content to social media to make the illusion of the 'perfect' life has undoubtedly had a bearing on the means we have a tendency to expertise music festivals. As opposition living within the moment and fascinating the atmosphere at the pageant in the past, we're turning into a lot of inclined to capture the right Instagram image or Snapchat video, to influence our friends that we're having a bloody blast. we have a tendency to currently read festivals through the eyes of our lens, as opposition the eyes in our head. And music artists understand this: within the past, performers like Mumford & Sons have even planned mobile bans at gigs in favour of a digital hospital ward, though these measures are quite extreme.

As I will in person attest, except dire climatic conditions and uncomfortable sleep settings, most of my friends have complained concerning the dearth of web property at festivals as being the quantity one issue. Seriously guys, is that this what the planet is returning to? Can't we tend to last one day while not being connected to WiFi? Our unhealthy obsession with posting to social media means at festivals, we're perpetually on the explore for free wireless local area network and 4G hotspots. A study by Eventbrite in 2014 showed that 'roughly one out of each four posts concerning music festivals came from individuals taking part remotely via live streams or different sorts of engagement, [while] 17% of [music festival] discussions occured throughout festivals.' just like the time suggests, we're disbursement a great deal of your time live-streaming or Tweeting concerning our pageant expertise whereas we're truly living it.

As you can see, there are many effects that the internet has on both festivals and subcultures in general. In my view I believe that there are more negative impacts it has had such as tearing us away from truly living in the moment. Technology and internet has caused many of our nation’s youth to be glued to their phones and must get everything on social media rather than just truly enjoying the experience. Such as concerts in the 1990’s, many just showed up and had fun with no technology such as phones. I hope that we can get back to this kind of time within my time here at earth. I do see the safety factor of cellular devices such as communicating with friends and family, however at the point to where everyone has to get it on social media is too far. I know personally that whenever there is a concert, people are just bound to post them at it and cannot resist. It can get very annoying at times and I know you think so also. Internet is a love/hate relationship for most but it has had a ruthless effect on festivals and subcultures. Subcultures were originally intended for people to be different and venture out of the main crowd. But now many are sharing the exact same thing which just makes it like the main crowd.