Just as the yuppie colonizers took the rough, downtrodden, dangerous, sometimes nihilistic city neighborhoods which—though crushed by neglect—often housed vibrant communities, and “flipped” them for big bucks by making them palatable to middle-class normals, so did indie entrepreneurs take American punk and hardcore—similarly rough, tawdry, and ignored and reviled by capital—with its highly effective framework of distributors, fanzines, concert promoters, and community, and remake it into something which could be sold to mainstream rock fans of a certain class; the very people who had been abandoned when college rock collapsed. The term for this personal, individualist, capitalist, apolitical, entrepreneurial version of punk was “DIY” (“do-it-yourself”). DIY segued neatly with the by-now-paradigmatic yuppie creed and its emphasis on local, quaint, and homemade products. Underground shows, like the “revitalized” neighborhoods of the inner city, were cleansed of their wildness and strangeness, along with their skinheads and endemic bouts of violence.
The absolute success of these two movements is such that at this stage, “indie” and “yuppie” are meaningless designators. The yuppie aesthetic of connoisseurship has infiltrated everywhere and now there is only—for many of us—either luxury gelato or food made of chemical waste. Ikea, Martha Stewart, and Whole Foods make yuppiedom no longer a chic and extravagant choice but an enforced mode. It’s either that or eat at a toxic toilet such as McDonald’s. The indie aesthetic is likewise de rigueur. H&M, Urban Outfitters, and American Apparel sell the floppy “Brit on a holiday” look to all Americans. Radiohead and Arcade Fire music is blasted from speakers at stadiums. For many poor souls, there is no alternative to the alternative.
2087
snowghoul
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
izzy806
prguitarman
