High Street Clones

Has individualism been eroded? For the past few years, following trends in music and popular culture ive genuinely found it exciting at the prospect of the generic excesses of the so called hip-hop generation being replaced by a more care-free attitude intertwined with indie credentials. Its good to see more and more people ditch the glitsy clubs for sweaty pubs and live music but distressingly what has happened is people have become confused as to what they have become. It used to be easy to spot the pretenders from the genuine article but what we have seen now is this uniformity start to take hold once again. Everywhere you look people are afraid to truly commit to something uniquely individual. People feel forced to follow the crowd and in some respects feel they are being truly original by wearing or listening to something different but what they in fact doing is wearing or listening to something that is a by-product of the current trend. This has always been the case through passing subcultures from the arrival of rock and roll from america at the start of the fifties, to early mods and rockers, the original skins, mod revival, new romantics and lad-mag britpop. What is different today is the fact it isn't possible to pigeon-hole any existing movement, some could say that this is absolute individualism, I would say that people are more confused than ever and are looking at their parrot-top hairstyles for answers. The answer to the majority is to wear your cardigan without knowing what it truly represents. Walk around any provincial town on a Friday or Saturday night and you wouldn't be inspired, you would be bored, bored by seeing nothing but comfort-zone fashion.