Self Pimpage - Has It Come To This?

[Queen Firey-Bou]

problem is all these sub cultures have been mainstreamed bought sold & marketed with designer labelling, and come round & round so fast... a ceryain person i know was always desperate to be 'alternative' or different, and that quest to have more peircings, more funny hair, sillyier clothes has put her on a race track where the whole point is lost & theres no context, like kids wearing led zepp badges who havent actually heard the music.... ultimately it all boils up into a melting pot of fashion obbsessed materialism and chavness, never mind wether its different or alternative... is it YOU ?

[Tanky]

Crikey! Right...
I want to get into the Emo Scene
Why on earth would you want to do that?!

What clothes should i wear
See above

and what are the hot bands of the moment?
I try to steer clear of it all tbh! Try My Chemical Romance, Fallout Boy, Funeral for a Friend... you get the idea.

How do i achieve the all important hair style?
Go to Toni and Guy and hand over a small mortgage. or get one of your 'scene' mates to do it (at your own risk!).

Where do you get the skinny black jeans
Got mine in Warehouse. Apparently topman do them too. Best avoided if your waist is over 30"

what are 'girl pants'?
Very skinny jeans, as above

and finally...

Link: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=153419" target="_blank">here be Atreyu

[Tanky]

Oh, and Bou - Damn straight! --:)

Jim, that design is very similar to one Booga's been looking for for ages. I'll get him to have a look when he gets home x

[Slippery PD]

Heh.  There is some form of irony here.  Most of us were in our teens (the exception being Tanky) in the post punk era.  Brought up in small towns and villages were we dared to be different, wore black and grew our hair long (not forgetting the back combing).  

Ill just say this, if there was mass media representation of the music you liked, a computer in every home with a broadband connection allowing you to download exactly what you wanted, would we really be that different from the kids we see every day?  Im not so sure I would?  I listened to music I liked, I listened to music my mates liked, we travelled across three time zones to watch a gig (well OK I travelled an hour by train into dangerous Glasgow where a weird kid with long hair was bound to get a kicking of some tracksuit wearing twat normally in an old firm top).  But Im sure you get the point.

When I was young there was the kids into heavy metal (they dressed in tight bleached jeans and wore basketball boots and t-shirts with scary logos of dragons) or you were a goth (you wore black and had pixie boots and baggie jumpers) or an indie kid (you wore red trainers - or docs, a cardie and a t-shirt and jeans) or you were a pleb (you wore tracksuits and football strips as casual wear)....  of course there were mods and rockers and ska, but they were often in a minority.  

I guess the simple point Im trying to make without being shouted down is that we all dressed to fit in, we listened to this and that. Maybe humans are essentially a group of people trying desperately to be different whilst trying to fit into whichever tribe they feel most comfortable in.  Also I guess, with maturity comes the realisation that actually you don't have to fit in with everyone all the time (most of us have that maturity now being old codgers in our 30's)

Yer Slips

[Peter Wolf]

 I was just being ironic in response to the very funny article you posted .Sort of deliberatly missing the point.

 I am not dispariging whatever kids are into these days.Its their choice.

 Back in the day it was no different.Who remembers those small ads that you got in the back of the music press selling all the spiders web jumpers and punk t shirts.

 There was more tribalism then but i was a misfit who didnt fit into any of it  and it didnt matter either.I used to get clothes from jumble sales.

 I nkow someone who has an original Seditionaries Vivienne Westwood Destroy shirt.Must be worth a lot now.

 Its all good fun.Just do what you like.

[Slippery PD]

I guess Peter I missed the irony, after being on this board for longer than I care to remember, I still forget that irony doesn't translate well.  

An additional thought is this, who created the consumer centric world that the children of today live in?  It certainly wasn't them and we are probably to blame more or less.  

Yer Slips

[TordelBack]

Hang on, there are people with waists less than 30"? Men?  Grown men?  Dear grud, I'm fatter than I even suspected....  

[Peter Wolf]

 That is a question that is more difficult to answer than you think.

 for once i dont have an answer and i need to think about that one as its part of a larger problem that involves so many different things.

 Its exactly the same as when i think where has all the Rebelliousness gone ?


 Everything has become bland and homogenised .Nearly everything>I generally despair of popular culture at this point in time but for some reason comics/gns in particularly seem to have escaped this probably because they are not or havent been absorbed into the mainstream apart from Marvel comics .It seems once something is absorbed or taken up by the mainstream then it is the kiss of death.Once something is mainstream then its accountants ,marketing etc and totally cynical.

 I would not like to be teenager in this day and age at all as they must feel completely bombarded by it all.I was glad to grow up with less of all that.Its all media led and all proliferated by the expansion of the media and TV.

 I do really have to say that if i had kids i would have limits on the amount of TV or exposure to mass media they watch etc as it would be a concern to me amongst other things.I dont think it can be that easy being a parent these days TBH.What bothers me about this more than anything is that i wouldnt want my kids to grow up too early or not have any of the childhood innocence that i had.

 Theres plenty of parents here who would more than likely say this isnt a problem anyway.

 Its just something i would be wary of if i was a parent.

 Are we/ I to blame ?

 ?

 I dont know but i dont think so.I dont participate in it much myself and it happens all around and its all out of my control.

 I have very little interest in it and dont activly support it so thats all you can do TBH>


 I even hate being called a "Consumer" .

 Eeeuuuughh

 Just the implications of what that word or label means.

 I just dont want it all in my life.

[W. R. Logan]

used to wear eyeliner in my scootering days, always thought it looked great as I left the house but always ended up riding for miles and when I got to where i was going looked like a panda

[Wils]

used to wear eyeliner in my scootering days, always thought it looked great as I left the house but always ended up riding for miles and when I got to where i was going looked like a panda

That comes *so* near to earning you the nickname "Gloria", Logan. ;)

[Queen Firey-Bou]

hmm consumer centric ..whos fault is it ? is it indeed the parents ? or of course the grandparents who thought it terrible to see their precious grandchilders dressed second hand "like tinks", heres some new trainers dear with flashing lights so you can keep up with the other 5 year olds... or is it the banks, the credit lenders, or the media, the advertisers, the government, the brainwashing nano-bots they put in our kellogs (tm) crunchie choco pop bix ?   arGhhhhhhhhhhGggg BAAAAAA !  nanny state sheep culture feeding the fatcat bastards seeth seeth POP !    

[Peter Wolf]

 Anyone remember Casuals ?

 Hastings was full of them.

 They always hung around in gangs and had that weird  permed mullet and those vneck jumpers with the diamond design on them.

 Glad they died out anyway.

[Peter Wolf]

 I dont know about anyone else but i am not that interested in Stuff and having things.The one exception being a Mac bought from new and perhaps a 360 console at some point.AS there is a backlog of games i want to play on that they are mostly available pre owned by now.

 Thats the wonderful thing about capitalism.If you dont mind being a little  late in buying something it all goes down in price so you save loads of money.

 Also i dont watch tv much at all and dont bother reading papers so its amazing how much of all the media ,advertising,and consumer culture you can cut out of your life that way.

 Also i truly cannot think of anything that i have bought on the strength of an advertisment.

 It all just goes over my head.