Is there actually one? https://twitter.com/suzania/status/1360634980095901705

Here is the template for how most major prestige media stories about subcultures work, going back to the 50s (and probably earlier):

1. There is X group of exotic and strange people that you -- the middlebrow reader -- have never heard of

2. X group has strange and exotic practices that shock, confuse, and disgust (and also maybe titillate, at least subconsciously) you, the middlebrow reader

3. Insert expert quotes about how X group is explained by references to Y broad social trend that you -- the middlebrow reader -- find concerning

4. X group is a vaguely construed to threat to you, the middlebrow reader, and your values

There is another kind of subculture story that is less common, the cool-hunting story. The reporter takes you live to a rat-infested basement in New York where the kids are reinventing punk music with xylophones, theremins, and kangaroos drugged up with nootropics

Reporter, pressing mic up to band frontman: "just a few months ago, you were nobodies. now everyone says you're the future of rock and roll. thoughts?"

Frontman: "I'm making music, you know, music important to my generation. They want to hear kangaroos force-fed ritalin!"

Both the subculture scare story and the subculture cool-hunting story are structurally similar. They tend to make the reporter a middleman between some niche group and a mainstream audience that wants to be repulsed, thrilled, etc from a safe distance.

this is why the SSC story, in Geoff's words, felt weirdly retro. Giving off "reefer panic" vibes. https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian/status/1360997565202919426

So what I mean when I ask "is there a story?" I mean that if we think that the NYT piece was bad and we would prefer some kind of more hypothetically nuanced and interesting story, it may not be a story that fits the very narrow templates for subculture stories.

The incentive for the middlebrow reader to go into the minutae of some niche group of people they've never heard of is generally low unless

1) they think the group is going to corrupt The Children

2) they think knowing the group is going to get them laid or make them money

Very little of this is new. The basic text about it was written in 70s https://www.routledge.com/Subculture-The-Meaning-of-Style/Hebdige/p/book/9780415039499

A good case study about the social construction of discourses about Japanese subcultures is https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/cj-2013-0004

One of the core claims here that is relevant, and of course echoes Hebdige, is that the template for subculture stories is always going to be less about the subculture themselves and more about the subculture's implications for the imagined mainstream

The problem, though, is that starting out with this assumption -- prior to any investigation of the subculture itself -- is a big reach. And it's often a recipe for inflating the news value of the subculture.

Is 4chan really the key to the 2016 election? Is that small group of sex weirdos really changing the meaning of American love and marriage? Are Tumblr kids angry at Ross Douthat really a threat to Western civilization?