Mainstreaming of aesthetics is an act of subculture appropriation and erasure that results in the dismantling of a subculture from within. On the surface this might seem benign, yet most commonly happens as an act of reinforcing cis heterosexual white affluent male supremacy

Subcultures as a thing have always existed. Sure, they became more visible in the 1950s, but that was mostly because of how the white kids™ were actively partaking in them They're literally just a culture that exists within or parallel to the mainstream culture

I'd like to look at two examples out of many - one that might not seem actively harmful, and one that's become very popular of late. Both of them are very dear to my heart: Goth, and Cyberpunk

If you're not a goth, you only have the mainstream, Hot Topic sanitised aesthetic to work off. It's gloomy people wearing all black, faces whitened, walking through graveyards. The aesthetic exists without any of the reasons why goths have that look, and propogate dangerous myths

Those who know me know I'm extremely goth at heart, yet I don't dress heavily goth according to this mainstream aesthetic. The mainstream is busy trying to erase the wide array of different styles of dress and lifestyle that exist within our subculture - can you guess why?

(The previous tweet's image is hard to source these days thanks to rampant reposting, and only displays a small fraction of the different types of goth you'll meet)

Goths are portrayed as moody or gloomy as a means to reinforce ingroup/outgroup divides, to strip away the fact many goths have been hurt and have reason to be depressed, to erase the fact that mainstream society is messed up when it comes to emotion

By reducing goth down to a stereotyped aesthetic, it strips away all understanding, and in turn supports the dismantling of the subculture. Goths don't police what eachother wear, yet mainstream society has decided it is the arbiter of what is or is not goth

It absolutely goes without saying that the whole "goths must use heavy white makeup" is an insanely colonialist idea - mainstream society does it as a means of reinforcing white supremacy. Many goths don't wear makeup, and some of my favourite goth mates are people of colour

Mainstream society needs to pretend that goth is a visual aesthetic at heart, because the subculture is not one to support mainstream bullshit: We embrace emotion, the unknown, the darkness that is normal & natural, the sublime, that we have been through shit & still have value

The same applies with things like punk. Distressed ripped jeans, leather, pins in clothing, boots - these happened not because they looked cool, but because people couldn't afford fancy clothes and rejected the need to spend more to go out

Mainstream society wants to sell you pre-ripped items of clothing, often they don't even come with the additional stitches you'd need to return some of the structural integrity and make it last. It is an act of turning the signs of poverty into a profit, erasing the subculture

Which leads me on to the one that upsets & annoys me the most: Cyberpunk. What's happened to that subculture should be criminal. Cyberpunk isn't about black, neon, hacking & walking away from explosions - it's about the absolute evil of megacorporations and surviving oppression

I am very worried about the release of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. Even if I trust that the developers treated the subject matter well (CDPR has some great people), ~gamers~ have become an abusive force of mainstream cis het white affluent male supremacy

(CDPR is run by shitheads who, however well meaning they might have been, have embraced the megacorp ideals of abusing their workers. No art, message or activism justifies a lack of compassion)

The above two subcultures are but the tip of an iceberg. I am not qualified to speak about others, but would love to hear about them - especially how subcultures that are distinctly not white have been turned by the mainstream into vapid aesthetics

Note that I also didn't deep dive into how this reduction to pigeon-holing vapid aesthetics reinforces misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, both within mainstream society and attempts to force the subculture into enforcing them