Researcher ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6409-3375
Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Media Studies
Reader 1
Jennifer Friedlander
Reader 2
Carlin Wing
Terms of Use & License Information
Abstract
In 2012, the “indie sleaze” subculture is accepted to have “died” — the same year Facebook bought Instagram. Named retroactively by social media in 2021, the “indie sleaze” subculture and its “revival” online provides a rich ground for investigating how and why social media converts subculture into aesthetics. Drawing on Dick Hebdige’s 1979 theory of subculture, this project considers new understandings of the political, aesthetic, and affective relationships between digital media and subcultures. In examining the evolution of “indie sleaze” from its origins and manifestations in an escapist party scene of the aughts to its online simulations from 2021 to the present, this project highlights a shift in the form of social media which enabled a conversion of “indie sleaze” from real subculture to a hyperreal, image-based myth. The fragmentation of mass culture perpetrated by aesthetic capitalism and social media’s alienating algorithms contributed to this shift. Through a postmodern approach and taking seriously the simulations of the “indie sleaze revival,” this project suggests political possibilities of embracing style and aesthetics in late-stage capitalism.
Recommended Citation
Mar, Lauren, "The Kids Aren't Alright: "Indie Sleaze Revival" and the Commodification of Subcultures on Social Media" (2025). Scripps Senior Theses. 2564.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2564
Included in
Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Social Media Commons, Visual Studies Commons
