that's the nice thing about corporate culture: it denies its past or, at the very least, filters it extensively. and, of course, what's old is eventually co-opted by the present mainstream and dubbed retro. a cool alternative becomes that when it is an act of choice, people consciously ignoring the accepted standards of 'coolness' and marking themselves as different, but doing so with a vengance. and mostly, such fringe cliques remain as merely inside jokes in the eyes of society. but occasionaly, if they are accessible enough, the mainstream begins to copy them. this is only to be expected. people used to beat up punk kids; now frat boys and high school football players listen to blink182 and call it the same thing.

the secret of subversiveness is the same as it's always been - eschew what's popular, do something opposite. express disdain for the mainstream. be elitist underdogs.

people who used to have street cred will get rich and famous, 'all the great themes will be used up and turned into theme parks.' that's the way it goes. it doesn't mean that alternative culture dies. new subcultures merely replace the old. as the world gets more connected, the cycle speeds up and things go in and out of style faster (read: swing dancing). but if you look at the world's history, it always seems to work the same way.