Before there were cyberpunks, before there were steampunks, or neko punks, there were the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, as the originators of punk movements that not only emerged to counter mainstream orthodoxy, but who came to define more than a look but a lifestyle, a subculture in itself. According to Hebdige (1979?), subcultures are formed from communal and symbolic engagements with larger societal systems from which they do more than resist, but rather hybridize what is available as material culture and along with anything else that can be used to fragment them from the mainstream. In essence, the intended result is open subversion as antithesis to tradition, hence the alienation and emptiness embodied in punk style. Thus, their primary goal as constantly evolving subcultures was to distance themselves from prescribed societal conventions to the furthest extent possible.
Norms respond to subcultural manifestations by absorbing them and making them commonplace. And what did (and does) conventional wisdom dictate in the face of subcultural threats? Appropriation. And their parade of these subcultural practices to the status of fad. This can occur by way of commodification, by making it into public property and valuable merchandise, or by way of ideology, by its perpetuation as a good (or bad) thing in the public eye: recall Versace safety-pinned couture? Recall seeing multiple hybridizations of the punk style in SL? Being that SL is a virtual simulation of RL, the same manifestations are commonplace on the grid. SL businesses thrive on replicating punk styles, and we as consumers commodify them to exhaustion. Even freebie boxes are replete with the stuff. And we run around with an excess of rips on our virtual jeans, tattoos on our skins, and dried blood on our t-shirts, even when in RL we are computer nerds, are afraid of contracting hepatitis through artists’ needles, and blood nauseates us, wet or dry. That’s the convenience of SL: we can all enact our punkness without apparent repercussions. Perhaps we should thank Sid Vicious for enabling us dorks to feel all bad-ass, even if only in avatar mode. :P
