Anti-Conformity is Still Conformity

America has to be the one country in the world which can ruin being rebellious. Let us take for example Valentines Day, which was earlier in the week. Many of you out there probably went out and bought your significant others some sort of cheesy "romantic" gift, not necessarily because you love them, but because society tells you to. Now don't get me wrong, if you love someone, feel free to go right ahead and get them something, but you shouldn't have to use an overconformist holiday as the excuse to do so. And then there's those out there who are "anti-valentines." They buy those crappy necco heart candies, but with sayings like "Let's Fuck" or "Suck my Dick" or "Go Jack Off" or "U R A Whore." They wear black rather than red. They ask someone who they don't like to be their "Anti-Valentine." Basically, by being so far against valentines day they have managed to create a clichéd counterculture conformity. It ruins the whole point to go against everyone else when so many other people are going against the same thing.

But that's not it. There are also subtler, much more devastating ways that America has ruined rebellion. Let us take for example Punk Rock. Back in the 70's Punk really said something, it had powerful messages and great bands, like The Clash. But slowly and surely it worked its way into mainstream through an entropic process of selling out and mortgaging of character. Now we have this shit "emo" crap, the pop-ized bastard child of Punk. Even bands that used to have a decent Punk appeal (like Blink182 or Green Day) are now the same overprocessed whiney "pop" shit that Punk was originally invented to be against.

Or how about drugs. Back in the 60's the hippy movement was invented as a protest to a lot of the "popular" ideals at the time. One of the key points of the hippy movement involved freeing your mind by any means possible, transcending the mortal plane into something more sublime. If this involved drugs, well fuck The Man and crack out the weed. But now we have widespread drug use among a majority of teen cliques for no fucking good reason. The "punks" do it to be rebellious. "Gangstas" do it to be like people in the inner city who actually have to make their living involved with drugs somehow. Fuck, even "mainstream" teen types like cheerleaders and jocks do it just because they fucking can. A tool that was once used to free the minds of those who were against the system has now been turned into a weapon to imprison the minds of just about fucking everyone.

In short, if given enough time America will take anything that rebels against the mainstream and slowly but surely sap it of all it stands for and feed it back to the masses as another form of control. Fuck, in twenty years something like what me and my partners are doing on this site will probably mean nothing. They will find a way somehow to make it so it either loses all meaning or becomes so widespread that it is no longer in any form rebellious.

-Vampire_Ninja