The Rise and Fall of Scene Subculture
Was it cringeworthy? Sure. But how could you not be while navigating an online world moving at supersonic speeds?
On November 2nd, 2008 the Electric Factory1 – a brick switchgear plant turned concert venue, situated in the heart of Philadelphia – was packed with teenage girls. Backstage was a lineup that truly could have only existed in the year 2008.
Opening the night up was a floppy-haired, zebra-clad trio using the pseudonym Cash Cash. At that time they specialized in what I’ll call bubblegum electronica – back then, synth-pop acts like Owl City and Hellogoodbye worked in the same vein, but finding a comparable 2022 parallel is challenging. Rapper Tyga took the stage a little later on in the night, where he encouraged potential voters to cast ballots for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. At one point, rapper Shwayze made an appearance, at his peak after scoring two singles on the Billboard Hot 1002.
But the main act pulling together the ragtag lineup was a group called Metro Station.
Let me be clear in saying that Metro Station wasn’t really a great band by pretty much any metric. At the core of the act were 19-year-olds Mason Musso and Trace Cyrus. They synced up after their mothers arranged for them to meet on the set of the Disney sitcom Hannah Montana, in which both of their younger siblings enjoyed starring roles. Almost all of Musso and Cyrus’ wardrobe looked like it was purchased one or two sizes too small from a combination Hot Topic/Pacsun. They REALLY leaned into deep V-necks. Both frontmen had long layered locks that required near-constant jerks of the neck just to keep from being blinded by bangs. Their lyrics were consistently questionable at best. One of their most successful singles, titled “Seventeen Forever”, opens with the following:
You are young and so am I / And this is wrong, but who am I to judge
You feel like heaven when we touch / I guess for me this is enoughWe're one mistake from being together / But let's not ask why it's not right
You won't be seventeen forever / And we can get away with this tonight3
I know all of this because I was at the Electric Factory that night in November, just a month shy of my 16th birthday. My friend Brittany had an extra ticket to the concert and invited me to come along. Her good-natured mother drove us into the city and stayed close to the back of the venue, as far from the nonsense happening onstage as humanly possible.
Musical antics aside, the girls at the show were kind of a spectacle all on their own. They donned brightly colored extensions and tight pants with wide studded belts (always worn around the waist, never through the belt loops) and facial piercings that filled me with envy. In my half-baked 15-year-old brain, this was the pinnacle of cool. Propelling each of these manic pixie dream girls was a sort of impenetrable confidence that’s difficult to comprehend, even as a fully realized adult.
Despite a litany of easily pinpointable shortcomings, Metro Station’s performers were treated as minor deities among these strange fluttering creatures. Though the band was destined to break up before the end of 20104, they found success within weeks of sharing their first demos online in 2007. After soaring to the top of Myspace Music’s Unsigned artist chart, they snagged a deal with Columbia Records. One of their singles,“Shake It”, managed to get extensive radio play for quite some time.
How did Musso and Cyrus manage to headline a national tour as a couple of goofy, inexperienced teenagers? The answer is actually pretty straightforward. Everything from Metro Station’s aesthetic to their lyrical content was engineered to appeal to an unusual emerging online subculture, simply referred to as ‘scene’.
If you’re seeking out a concrete definition concerning what (or where) the ‘scene’ is, you’ll never find a satisfactory answer. Oral history suggests that the title originally referred to the hardcore music scene, with “scene queen” becoming a disparaging term for women and girls perceived as posers by veteran fans and musicians. That said, there was never an identifiable music genre that scenesters could call their own. Instead, they gorged on an omnivorous diet of electronica, emo, metal, punk, and all else fringe. Likewise, the fashion trends that they embraced were derived from a number of disparate sources, tenuously tied together by a disdain for conventional style. Scene subculture did not develop in lively city streets or dank dark bars – instead, it materialized from the limitless, incorporeal realm of the online.
Defining this unique subset of rebellious youngsters is no easy task. Partially, this is by design. But wound within the questions of how scene came about and why it appealed to those coming-of-age in the early years of a new millennium is a curious tale of invention, innovation, and teenage ingenuity. It was far more than a collection of flashy fads, cast aside just as quickly as they were adopted. Rather, their tribe was one acutely aware of the shifting digital landscape – and just belligerent enough to use it to shatter cultural barriers of the past.
Setting the Stage for Social Networking
To understand how scene came to be, you first need to understand the circumstances that allowed it to thrive. In order to do that, you need to understand just how monumental a force Myspace once was.
There was never any doubt that there would be an audience for Myspace. Friendster (from which Myspace derived a lot of its early user interface) proved that much.
Friendster did a lot of the early legwork involved in attracting the first few million adopters of social media. Ironically, Friendster’s initial popularity played a significant role in inevitably killing it. The site’s servers could not support its rapidly growing population, which resulted in painfully slow load times and frequent outages. When Friendster failed to scale up operations to accommodate users, Myspace emerged as a polished alternative.
When the earliest iteration of Myspace launched in 2003, the number of households with personal computers was steadily rising. In addition, high-speed broadband internet was becoming increasingly accessible. These developments among others suddenly made it possible for web denizens to explore the internet for hours at a time in a relatively efficient manner. But technical convenience was only part of what made the site so popular. Perhaps the largest factor in Myspace’s rise was its appeal to a new generation of internet users.
As computers became viewed as increasingly essential tools in the workforce, many schools with the means necessary began implementing computer classes as early as elementary school. As a result, kids coming of age during the Myspace years were largely more computer literate than their elders. This widespread proficiency allowed teenagers to navigate and breathe life into the earliest social networks. At one point, over 70% of Myspace profiles belonged to users under 35 years of age. Just as the shopping malls of the 1990s appealed to teens looking to congregate and socialize far from the watchful eyes of adults, so too did Myspace.
The rules of online conduct were still in development. Any censorship happening at this point (barring the most gruesome snippets of media from the internet's darkest reaches) was entirely self-imposed. This scared some parents into banning their kids from having Myspace accounts, which only further increased the website’s magnetism5. A far greater number of parents had little to no idea what was happening on the site at all, allowing their children to create and explore with reckless abandon.
The arrival of Web 2.0 created a perfect storm of circumstances. Younger people saw potential in the corners of the internet that their elders, up until this point, had largely neglected. And with internet accessibility increasing faster than online rules and regulations could be written, even teens with the most limited of resources could take advantage of that potential.
But staking claim to territory isn’t enough on its own for a community to grow. In order to subscribe to a certain identity, there needs to be an initial hook that draws you in. An organized manifesto and an intoxicating dance can both accomplish the same end goal of inspiring a person to adopt a certain way of life. But Myspace didn’t just provide the necessary real estate for users to convene. Through the power of song, the platform gifted millions of scenesters in search of themselves something to rally around.
The Rise of Myspace Music
Before teenagers joined in droves, musicians found a home in Myspace. This may not come as much of a surprise to the former users who fondly remember spending hours carefully selecting the perfect song to feature on their profile page. Even the most casual browsers of the site would readily agree that music was always an integral part of Myspace’s DNA. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to understate the massive impact Myspace had on the music industry.
Imagine for a moment that your favorite underground artist just released a new album that you were hellbent on hearing. Nowadays, you’d probably be able to search for it on [insert your streaming service of choice] and start listening in a matter of seconds. But at the start of the 00s, the task was significantly more complicated.
If the artist was popular enough, you’d likely be able to hear one or two of their singles on the radio. Alternatively, you could head to your local record store or big box electronic retailer and hunt down the physical album. However, both of these options required that the artist in question already had some degree of mainstream popularity and be in demand among the average consumer. If your artist didn’t fit those criteria, you might have some luck catching them in concert. But actually finding out where and when they’d be playing in your town could sometimes be a challenge. Unless your band had an up-to-date website or newsletter, getting people to come to shows for emerging, unusual, or local acts relied heavily on word of mouth and flyers posted in shops, venues, and community bulletin boards. What’s more, physically going out to a concert wasn’t always a financial or physical possibility for fans and artists alike.
In 1999, Napster launched, which was quickly followed by other peer-to-peer file-sharing services like Limewire. This software would allow you to download mp3 files directly to your computer at no cost. However, Napster and its progeny had little to no regard for copyright infringement, did not pay the artists they profited from, and could transmit malware and viruses to your computer if you weren’t careful.
The emergence of iTunes in 2001 provided a legal, safer way to download mp3 files. This was great for established artists, names that people already knew to look for. However, establishing an audience and gaining the initial recognition necessary to succeed remained a challenge for countless smaller musical acts.
While Myspace didn’t completely eliminate all of the challenges independent artists face, it provided the tools necessary to overcome some of the initial humps. For starters, it allowed musicians a bit more control over the music readily available to their audience. Rather than relying on the sometimes garbage-quality concert recordings available on p2p sources or debating whether a song was worth spending $0.99 on at the iTunes store, you could just go to your favorite band’s Myspace profile and listen to uncorrupted, absolutely free audio files. While the system wasn’t perfect (Myspace did not pay its artist any royalties), it at least provided bands with the ability to share a taste of what they had to offer with potential listeners.
The platform also played a huge role in connecting acts with fans and fellow artists alike. Through friending and influence lists, musicians in the same genre with overlapping fanbases could endorse one another. By sifting through your favorite band’s Top 8, you could quickly tumble down a rabbit hole and spend hours discovering new artists. Considering that the alternative for many unsigned acts was relentless local promotion and a steady stream of demos destined for radio and record producers, Myspace proved to be incredibly efficient. What’s more, musicians could use the platform to quickly relay important information to fans. The site’s bulletin feature made it much easier for audiences near and far to find information concerning upcoming tours, album releases, and much more. Some bands even “rewarded” fanbases with exclusive Myspace content, such as early track releases.
As a result, some of the most notable acts of the decade emerged from the depths of Myspace. Internationally acclaimed artists like Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Paramore, Lily Allen, Drake, Adele, The Arctic Monkeys, and Skrillex would have likely remained unknown had they not created accounts on the site. Even those with existing fanbases, like Panic! at the Disco and Avicii, would have never found the same degree of mainstream success if it weren’t for their social media presence. But fame and wealth for a few was only a small part of what made Myspace so revolutionary.
One of the most alluring aspects of the platform lied in its lack of restriction. Starting a profile and uploading music didn’t require a record deal or a manager – high school kids recording in their parent’s basements could utilize the platform with ease. Conforming to commercial norms was no longer a requirement to be heard (just look at Tila Tequila, who essentially ruled Myspace music charts6 despite being publicist nightmare fuel). The environment lent itself to experimentation, and with more material to derive inspiration from than ever before, music began to evolve at exponential, unprecedented rates.
What do changes in the music industry have to do with the development of the scene subculture? Simply put, Myspace became the coolest place a person could be between 2004 and 2009. Just as the digital frontier was largely lawless in nature, so too was the content set loose onto it. The lines between genres were quickly corroding, and rules that had dictated what made “good music” were blatantly ignored. It wasn’t always pleasant to listen to, but there was no denying that much of it was different from anything anyone had encountered before.
And the sparks those graceless songs generated ignited scene subculture.
What is the ‘Scene’?
If Friendster made up the bones of Myspace, Makeoutclub.com was its soul. As journalist Andy Greenwald wrote back in 2003, “To log on to Makeoutclub…is to see the national subculture at its horniest and best”.
Before the term “social network” meant anything to anybody, there was Makeoutclub. Named after a song by the indie rock band Unrest, the site was populated with profiles divided into “boys” and “girls”. Lively message boards covered everything from contemporary music to clumsy sexuality, and the teenagers that wound up there quickly adopted it as a space to explore and experiment with identity. Just as the bored kids confined to the doldrums of middle American suburbs were some of the first to fully embrace the punk movements of the 1970s and 80s, the misfit children of the 00s were some of the first to wholeheartedly accept the earliest online social platforms.
In his book Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo, Greenwald elaborates on MOC’s significance as an outlet for isolated young nonconformists everywhere:
Kids in one-parking-lot towns had access not only to style (e.g., black, black glasses) but also what books, ideas, trends, and beliefs were worth buzzing about in the big cities. If, in the past, one wondered how the one-stoplight town in Kansas had somehow birthed a true-blue Smiths fan, now subculture was the same everywhere. Outcasts had a secret hideout. Makeoutclub.com was one-stop shopping for self makers.
Obviously, Makeoutclub.com never operated on the scale that Myspace. But the further one digs into the archives of MOC, the more it begins to resemble what Myspace looked like at its peak. Users of both sites littered their allotted space with lists of favorite bands and ironic emo lyrics. MOC had its own unspoken hierarchy and pseudo-celebrities (though, unlike Myspace, MOC valued seniority over total friend count). Even profile pictures – awkwardly angled, littered with digital noise or harsh front-facing flashes – followed the same photographic trends Myspace teens would soon adopt en masse.
Because of the site’s early emphasis on music, the migration from MOC to Myspace came naturally. And because Makeoutclub fans were some of the first to arrive, they played an enormous role in shaping the cultural landscape of Myspace.
While it’s true that bands were experimenting with emo-hardcore fusions and neon-crunk mashups before the platform exploded, they were encouraged to push further and get weirder with their content when they’d garner hungry teenage followers overnight. While many underground artists were well aware that there wasn’t a place for them among Top 40 airwaves, there was suddenly a glimmer of hope in the form of open-minded kids willing to embrace edgy new genres. So, artists got a little bolder with their music. Myspace listened and asked for more, eventually resulting in a renaissance of sorts for musicians that marched to their own beat.
Though the results that came from intermingling genres weren’t always impressive, they became beloved anthems for dedicated Myspace denizens. The loudest of these supporters would ultimately become the pillars of scene subculture.
As time progressed, scene’s definition would push beyond music. After all, the very nature of the scenester’s platform of choice emphasized individuality and imagination. As Kerry Mallan and Natasha Giardina explain in a 2009 article from the peer-reviewed journal First Monday:
“MySpace users can…express aspects of their personalities by customising the “look and feel” of their profiles with background images, layouts, banners and modifications inserted with direct HTML coding. This creative re–coding is enabled by a loophole in the MySpace architecture and has become a highly popular way of personalising one’s profile and creating an overall aesthetic
Having grown up on the garish aesthetics of the early web and Geocities, thousands of Myspace users (myself included) taught themselves HTML basics specifically to spruce up the dull blues and sans serifs of Myspace’s default layout. Everything from glittery animated backgrounds to marijuana leaf cursors was fair game – the most fundamental rules of design were often abandoned entirely.
The same garish colors and ostentatious accessories that dominated profile pages also dominated scene fashion. Just as Greenwald mentioned in reference to Makeoutclub, Myspace introduced teens to thousands of new stylistic ideas and trends almost instantaneously. Drowning in options, teens anxious to go against the grain seemed to meld as much as they could absorb into overblown, frenetic ensembles.
You might observe tutus and tiaras paired with a graphic tee donning skulls or cartoon characters in a single outfit. All genders embraced the androgyny of heavy eyeliner, teased hair, and ultra-tight jeans. Scenester hair came in jet black, bleach blonde, and essentially every color in between. Some would get rebellious phrases tattooed on knuckles and inner lips, others would splurge on snakebite and septum piercings. The look embodied the chaos and confusion of teenage rebellion.
Trying to attribute scene fashion to a single parent is an impossible task. There are obvious roots in the dark, gender-defiant trends popularized by the hardcore-emo hybrids coming from Makeoutclub and musicians. But, as J’Nae Phillips of Fashion Tingz astutely pointed out to me, scene fashion also clearly derived some inspiration from US and UK rave culture. Hints of Harajuku street trends are present, with everything gyaru to gothic lolita influences creeping into western ensembles. The exaggerated jewelry and shutter shades teens donned have clear ties to hip hop trends popularized by mainstream rap acts7.
To outsiders, the entirety of the movement was easy to denounce in the same way that elders have contemptuously questioned younger generations since time immemorial. It was messy, and on a surface level didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But therein lied the beauty of it all.
Scene’s appeal lies in the fact that it is unapologetically a Frankenstein monster. People loved it for the same reasons they loved media like Demon Days and Cowboy Bebop. These pieces of iconic media are, at their core, little bits of disparate ideas and culture stitched together to create something unexpected and beautiful. They are individual gems only made possible thanks to an increasingly globalized world filled with many voices. Where previous counter-cultural movements often struggled to recognize the value in dissimilar subcultures, unprecedented flexibility defined scene. Tomas Tofalvy, an associate professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, elaborates on the role emerging social media played in facilitating the free-flow of trends and ideas that scene subculture capitalized on:
“With social networking sites…well–coordinated border protection was practically impossible, affecting not only online communication but the life of the whole genre scene. While the number of users of underground forums are relatively closed, genre–bound and controllable, a social media site opens avenues of discussion for numerous of [sic] styles and musical cultures with a single, uncontrolled registration — or with a single ‘like’ on Facebook. Thus, borders of community, communication and content become transparent in all directions: a social media platform provides a flow of opinions and genre negotiations of many scenes at once and allows free passage between them.”
Without the usual gatekeeping and policing of “posers” prevalent in the past, scene spread like wildfire8. There was always just one sacred, steadfast rule – to reject rules. Whether that rebellion manifested in extreme body modification, a total rejection (or wholehearted embrace) of drugs and alcohol, or something as simple as a sparkling animated gif declaring “only soup cans need labels!” was beside the point.
Were the results always pretty? Absolutely not. But scene was hypercognizant that a period of unprecedented change was upon them, in which lines blurred between IRL and online persona, where a steady stream of sharing would erode borders. And missteps be damned, they wanted nothing more than to blaze their own trail into a screaming, muddled new world.
The (Questionable) Death of a Subculture
For a few glorious years, rebellious youths of the 21st century painted their world in fluorescent shades of neon. But something so bright cannot burn forever. Just as quickly as the scene came to be, it disappeared almost entirely.
A lot of this had to do with the rise of Facebook. Though it’s hard to imagine considering the cesspool of disinformation and memes it has since morphed into, during social media’s infancy Facebook was largely considered a more sophisticated platform9. After all, it was developed at an Ivy League institution and popular among the college-educated (never mind the site’s original intention). Facebook did away with the excess of DIY layouts and eliminated the blaring songs that played each time you visited a profile in favor of clean white minimalism.
Some were quick to jump ship and join Facebook for the social capital that being on the platform supposedly provided. In fairness, it proved to have a few things figured out that Myspace had not quite mastered – direct messaging (implemented in 2008) was made significantly more convenient, and there was no denying the addictive nature of the endless feed (introduced in 2006). A flurry of media hit pieces portrayed the site as particularly depraved. But even so, many diehard Myspace adopters were reluctant to leave, valuing the creative expression of their online home base.
Unfortunately for the powers that be at Myspace, rather than catering to the loyal users that stuck by through thick and thin, a scramble was made to win back the hearts of deserters. A 2009 change in ownership brought with it major overhauls to the site’s design. While music remained a core feature of the site, gradual updates ate away at the soul of Myspace. Customization capabilities were phased out and gradually replaced with sleek minimalism to further resemble its rival. Little by little, the magic died and people moved elsewhere.
Despite all that Facebook had going for it, something that it lacked was the indescribable spark necessary to facilitate organic community growth. The collaborative nature Myspace inspired was snuffed out in favor of a more efficient, addictive networking experience. Though there was a certain freedom that came with infinite possibilities of a blinking cursor on a blank status, it didn’t come without sacrifice. On Facebook, each post is a cog in a perpetual motion machine, a contribution to a beast that’s never truly satiated. Standing out and making a statement becomes a difficult task to accomplish when you are simply a blurb in a neverending stream of conciousness.
Scene, in all its defiant glory, simply could not function in this sterilized echo chamber. As much as they found inspiration from varied sources, it could not come at the cost of individuality. Ultimately, a botched server migration in 2019 resulted in the loss of 12 years worth of data ranging from audio uploads to image files. At that moment, most of the records that scene existed at all vanished into the ether. The world became a little less colorful.
Or did it?
While Facebook’s societal impact is undeniable, it really didn’t hold the attention of younger demographics for an especially long time. Today, just 3.8% of Facebook users are 13-17 years of age. Almost as soon as they became available, teens shifted to more visual-heavy platforms like Instagram and TikTok. There, they were once again able to evade the eyes of adults. And sure enough, with a quick search of “#scene” on either platform, you’ll find those lost scene queens, still intact and eternally young.
Whether scene is in the middle of a full-blown comeback or this is simply a nostalgia-fueled anomaly is hard to say. But what isn’t up for debate is the lasting influence left behind by those original scenesters. It survives in the hit song that’s hard to assign to a genre, in an over-the-top fashion choice that makes you do a double-take.
And most of all – though it may not be as visible as it once was – it survives in the spirits of a new generation of internet users. Because for them, the internet is no longer a cold, clinical, complicated tool, only open to the mythical genius-hacker. Scene showed us then, now, and always that in the right hands the web could become something vibrant and radical, a megaphone and a safe haven for punks, misfits, and rebels worldwide.
The Electric Factory is now known as the Franklin Music Hall, which we can all agree is a vastly inferior name.
Unfortunately for Shwayze, his 2008 singles – “Buzzin” and “Corona and Lime” – would be the only hits that would ever enjoy any sort of mainstream popularity.
Just in case there’s any uncertainty about the nature of these lyrics, Cyrus stated the following in a 2009 interview with Kerrang! magazine: "It's actually about wanting to be in a relationship with a girl who's underage so bad and how age limitations don't let you do that. We like to shock people."
While Metro Station would retain an on-again-off-again relationship in the years following, the initial 2010 breakup marked an abrupt end to the band’s commercial success. Considering how poorly some of their content has aged, it’s probably best that the band has largely been forgotten.
These intentions, while coming from a good place, were mostly in vain. The large gap in computer know-how between many parents and teenagers allowed countless kids to maintain an online presence without their parent’s knowledge.
In fairness, this was partially due to an oversight on the part of Myspace. Essentially, every visit to Tila’s profile counted as a stream, which in turn skyrocketed Tila to the top of the site’s charts. However, most of the appeal rested in Tila’s modeling career and her general antics. When Tila tried to take her act to iTunes, she was met with commercial failure.
I’d be doing you a disservice not to make a note that Myspace didn’t just impact independent and alternative music scenes – hip hop and R&B also thrived during the site’s heyday, bringing in an entirely different subset of fans that would eventually call the social network home. The prominent role rap and hip-hop culture played in forming the site is impossible to ignore, and naturally, some aspects of it bled into scenester trends. However, I’ve consciously opted not to delve too far into this particular topic because A) I don’t think I’m the most qualified candidate to do so and B) this article would never end.