What's New, Memecat?

There is always a sign of an impending social disaster to be found in each youth subculture. Adbusters takes aim at the hipsters.

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization - a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" - a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Source: Adbusters

I am a proud connoisseur of bad television. Late-night religious historical dramatizations. Spanish-language soap operas and infomercials. The Tennessee-accented Jewelry Television.

But Dating on Demand sounds like a good reason to upgrade to digital cable. For a small price, you can survey the dark underbelly of permanent singlehood in America. In what can only be called a subculture, this is a community of people who cannot find sexual compatibility among their friends and coworkers and so forms an alternate universe with its own social norms. And a complete dearth of individuals within two standard deviations of "normal".

Thank goodness for the lint-attracting quality of YouTube, for I can now enjoy the lurking without having to pay for the privilege.

Meet Amanda, who likes furry things.

Meet Danny, Gomer Pyle's less fortunate cousin. He ran across the street and never looked.

Meet Katie. She pretended to sleep in the back of some dude's car after he committed a pedestrian hit and run. That she watched unfold. Log in soon, because you could be the one who turns her in to the police:

Obviously, there is a lot of potential for spoofs in this genre of video.

Daniel Hernandez reports that young people - including punks and rockabillies - are ganging up on and attacking emos in streets and public squares across Mexico.

The spark came first in Queretaro on March 7. An estimated 800 young people poured into the city's Centro Historico hunting for emos to beat the crap out of. They found some. The next weekend it spread to Mexico City, where emos faced off against punks and rockabillies at the Glorieta de Insurgents, the epicenter of emo social space in the capital. There's also been reports of anti-emo violence in Durango, Colima, and elsewhere.

Source: Intersections

Depending on where they take hold, subcultures that are offensive to the mores of the established culture are going to run into serious opposition. In this horrible outbreak of violence, I think that the emo subculture has been striking a nerve in the young inheritors of traditional Spanish machismo. Their reaction is to attack people that they see as a threat to their mores. The violent mob literally wants to destroy the proliferators of emo subculture.

And of course the emos and others that are concerned about the attacks are fighting back. It takes a long time for enough people to learn to be tolerant that it becomes woven into the fabric of life.

This video is from a Mexican television station and contains footage of the violence.

Spotter: The Daily Storm.