Max Mustermann on Nostr: People there aren’t looking to be arch, edgy or avant-garde. They’re simply ...

People there aren’t looking to be arch, edgy or avant-garde. They’re simply trying to signal difference.

And of course they are. Have you been to the Provinces lately?

I live there. My town boasts no fewer than 9 Dollar Generals or Family Dollars in a town of about 35,000.

It’s as good a place to study the American underclass as any. If you’re extremely lucky you can get a job in the trades or with the city. But you probably just work at the Home Depot or the Safeway.

You’re never going to be a celebrity, you’re probably never going to own a house. So what’s left?

Well, what’s left is dyed hair, Liquid Death and Blackcraft Cult.

“I’m not like the other losers in this town.”

It’s not an act of rebellion. It’s a statement of individuality. And as pathetic as you might view it, it’s all these people have.

The phenomenon isn’t limited to provincial proles adopting the trappings of streetwear and 00s mall metal. MAGAcore and patriotslop are a similar way to try and differentiate oneself from the rest of the crowd. Anyone who has been to a small-town gym has seen the guys decked out in Darc Sport Athletic gear, attempting to signal both their future as a fitness influencer (they don’t have one) and their deeper commitment to being the strongest and most aesthetic guy at the gym (they’re not).

There’s no real social currency for any of these Methistan townies tunneling deeper down the rabbit hole and getting into powerviolence or ragga jungle or fusion jazz. But there is a small sense of pride that, at the very least, they’re “Not Like The Others.”

And when your hometown, that you’ve never left for any significant period of time by the way, has nothing to offer you but 7OH vapes and Dollar Generals, you’ll take it. Because what else is there?

You might not be able to get a seven-figure social media following. But you can be the “goth” girl in town (who listens to rap and has never heard of Christian Death or Bauhaus) or the “operator” LARPer decked out in tactical orthopedic socks (who has never shot anything but paper).

It’s the differentiation of the doomed. As Gay Langland says in The Misfits, “anything’s better’n wages.” The only thing they own is their ability to curate an algorithmic menu of otherness.

And as always, Big Money looms overhead finding a million ways to make a buck off of it. It’s the same logic that makes the local plumbing business a scalable asset, applied to culture and identity.

These people aren’t stupid. They’re rationally acting in a world where culture has been hollowed of all meaning.

No one gets punched in the face anymore. And without anything at stake, nothing sticks.

The 26-year-old junkie who punched me in the mouth in 1995 wasn’t trying to optimize my user journey. He wasn’t a brand ambassador for a venture-backed hydration start-up. He was just a guy in a room, and for one brief, violent second, the distance between us was zero.

Today, you don’t get punched, you get served ads for $40 t-shirts that signal a rebellion that was bought, paid for, and liquidated before you were even born. You perform for an audience that consists entirely of your 700 Instagram followers.

We used to worry about the “death of subculture” as if it were a tragedy of artistic soul. It’s not. It’s real estate. Punk and hardcore were always – always – about selling t-shirts and tchotchkes. Venture capital is just better at it. Distill it all down to its core elements and offer a sense of “otherness” at scale.

The “diner goth” and the MAGAcore bro are just doing what prisoners do: decorating the walls of their cell. They don’t want a movement. They want a distraction.



The final end of financial strip mining