Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids.

Unlike the radical subcultures of yore, which had their own visual schema, language, and aesthetics, these digital scenes aren’t exactly subcultures, at least not in the traditional sense.

What TikTok teens, white collar workers marooned in home offices, and the gatekept super-rich all have in common is the kind of physical isolation, if not the sense of doom, that makes a person desperate just to feel something.

Yes, this is 2024, where life increasingly feels like a huge in-joke that started on the internet. Once upon a time we had subcultures: punks and goths, hippies and emos. Now we have Gen Z’s perceptive trendspotters pinpointing a style or a mood that is sweeping the zeitgeist, coining a label for it — often with the suffix “-core” — and sharing it ... See more