Why we might be witnessing a return to the spirit of Punk
Hanna Chalmers can see the re-emergence of the spirit of punk across music, climate change activists, tech, art and politics...
We’ve reached a point in mainstream culture that has never felt less exciting. As a life long fan, non-sneery watcher and participator in mainstream culture this is a hard truth to stomach.
The algorithm, designed to serve us what we want to see and tempt us with what it thinks we might want to see, is driving us downwards into a spiral of monotony. At best, and most hopefully, we are served more of the niche content we are interested in. At worst, algorithms suck us into new uncomfortable and sometimes sinister spaces.
All the while, it's watching what we look at, ready to flood our screens with more of what we have half-heartedly browsed.
This surveillance has, until now, been a price worth paying for many. The content vs ads balance felt worth it.
However, as influencers and content creators are pushed to create blander content in order to get the brand deals, we are seeing people that we might have enjoyed watching in the past become less idiosyncratic and less opinionated. And in doing so, they become uninteresting to watch, more cynical and more sales focused.
But this surveillance, which is the pact we make as social users, whether as viewers or creators, is also becoming riskier. As the geopolitical climate hardens and becomes more divided - what we view, say or do online is being more widely monitored.
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For many of us, the notion of surveillance, has felt tolerable (less so in Germany where the long shadow of cold war surveillance tactics has impacted heavily on concepts of privacy).
Recently, we have seen stories emerge of law makers attempting to access period apps in order to police women’s bodies. We’ve seen broadcasters lose their jobs for voicing their opinions. We also police our own reading material according to our preferences politically and culturally. And that means there is a shrinking of exchange, less open conversations across the boundaries.
As a Gen X’er (just) I grew up in the 90’s rave scene. We were, comparatively, utterly unsurveilled - we raved, we did mad dancing, many took ecstasy and gurned(!) for hours in fields all over the country with no thought given to how they looked - male and female alike.
Looking at the footage (there are so many pages/accounts on social media devoted to old 90’s rave footage) as someone that was there, and that has experienced what life was like before the internet, it still has the ability to sort of surprise me - it looks totally anarchic - unfettered, unconstrained, nuts and genuinely joyful.
Watching this old rave content with Gen Z’ers (my teenage sons) it’s sort of incomprehensible to them to have lived in a moment that was so unmonitored. And it brings into sharp relief the constraints of today’s level of surveillance and self policing. It’s one of several reasons why club culture is struggling - when young people now feel so self-conscious, body and internally focused, rather than outward looking - is it any wonder they don’t fancy losing themselves on the dance floor?
Since the 90’s, we’ve seen the unfettered spirit of punk in the early acid rave scene (DIY, anti establishment). We saw it too in early grime in the 2011 riots and arguably in drill.
But there’s a fairly prevalent feeling that the days of the punk spirit are behind us. Subcultures are dead, killed off by - amongst other things - the process of algorithmic enshittification and the almost immediate co-opting of emergent cultures for commercial gain.
Sameness is everywhere. And the internet is to blame.
Much has been written about the plague of the global coffee shop, so called ‘enshittification’, AI eating (or reading) itself, the global TikTok ‘mewing’ of teenage boys, beauty standards that reduce all women to a Love Island model of smoothness, all lips and lashes. The colours of beige, putty, cappuccino from cars to leggings, brands that all spout the same words, if it has been ‘crafted’ and ‘artisan’ for the last five years, it's now all about ‘joy’.
It’s so seamless and dull.
But I’d argue that the AI digital takeover/lava-like slop X political systems that feel more and more distant and at odds with the needs of normal people - are creating the perfect conditions for a return to the spirit of punk - whether that be in political activism or art.
As mainstream culture is imploding in on itself and can feel like a stitch up, new ways of being are bubbling up at the edges. It's more off-line - or at the very least in private online spaces. It's smaller, DIY in sensibility, and it's a safer space for its participants. Fundamentally it's unsurveilled.
There’s lots of signs of the re-emergence of the spirit of punk and we can see it across music, climate change activists, tech, art and politics - none exist without the other. It is defiant and dissenting - an expression of visceral rage against the current system.
It’s bubbling into the public consciousness.
Beyond the more obvious examples of Kneecap, we see it in the backlash to Turnstile going pop. We can see it in the widespread support for Greta Thunberg - an exemplary Swedish punk. We can see the punk spirit in Kate Nash’s latest track. And we see it in young women like Münecat - with over half a million followers on YouTube furiously critiquing far right media. (Is the new spirit of punk female led?).
It’s in new emergent forms of political activism. It's in person. It's hyper local. And it often seems to have more in common with anarcho-syndicalism than with contemporary party politics.
The spirit of punk is brave and uncompromising and in the current context, it is a radical act. Especially knowing that mainstream media will coalesce to ridicule you, silence you or bring you down.
People can see this bravery - it’s admired and championed. And of course - the punk spirit isn’t about being liked or agreeable.
The re-emergence of the spirit of punk feels like a direct response to our current malaise. It's challenging the discontent with contemporary society. In fact, in a 2024 research study entitled Gen Z: Trends, Truth, and Trust (PDF), Channel 4 found that 47% of 13-27 year olds (vs 33% of 45-65 year olds) agreed with the statement that ‘the entire way our society is organised must be radically changed through revolution’. That's strong feelings of dissatisfaction with the status quo…
Perhaps these signals will peter out - stifled by the increasingly powerful hegemony of tech and state. But I don’t f'in think so.
Hanna Chalmers is a researcher, big thinker, and the founder of The Culture Studio. A version of this essay originally appeared on her LinkedIn.
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