>If someone really prefers their subculture, which gives them mental ease and physical health, then what right do the rest have to interfere and drag them into the main culture?
Sure, whatever works for you.
But if you then stay awake at night crying "I'm so alone", are chronically depressed and demotivated, you swallow drugs like they're candy, and so on, you might want to revisit this "whatever new living fad became possible after 100s of thousands of year of evolution emphacizing human connection is equally valid".
A subculture is more similar in scale to human societies during the majority of those 100s of thousands of years of evolution than to the mega/giga scale of modern society.
>A subculture is more similar in scale to human societies during the majority of those 100s of thousands of years of evolution than to the mega/giga scale of modern society.
Yes. But the subculture in TFA is about people staying at home, and only/mostly human connection with the subculture online (and few/nobody else).
Normies can't sacrifice facebook, can they? Rare people connect online because they are geographically separated. Can you run this site offline, at which location, and what will be the resulting engagement?
All of the above is neither here, nor there though. This is not about "where to find info and others interested about a subculture" (sure, online will be easier). Or where to host gatherings for it (sure, online will be easier).
It's about what else you do.
"Normies" still have (or some have) the evolutionary human IRL connection (meetings in meetspace, touching, partners and friends they see face to face, etc).
The subcultures as described in TFA (and what I'm saying might not be the best for them) is lacking that.
That is, the subject is about persons shut-in, with no IRL contact, and connected through the web to some subculture(s). A hikikomori like existence.
Not about some everyday person that is fan of medieval bard songs, and aside their regular meatspace partners, friends, spouses, acquaintainces, etc. also frequent some forums.
Let's put it another way: "Rare people connect online because they are geographically separated" puts the cart before the horse. Connecting online is not the problem (as I see it). Not connecting offline as well is.
And the idea of "a rare person", whose criterium for connecting to someone else is them being part of the same subculture is part of the issue.
Not sure if all hikikomori must literally live like a lich in the dungeon 24/7. I'd say people who only prefer to spend their free time that way would qualify as hikikomori just fine. Then you can't really evade offline contact if you don't live in literal wilderness.
>And the idea of "a rare person", whose criterium for connecting to someone else is them being part of the same subculture is part of the issue.
In my experience subcultured people have more permissive criteria for connections, and mainstream people want to kill all nonconformance with fire.
No, that's a made up, long after cities, retroactive explanation.
Cities were made so people can co-live and co-operate in larger scales.
In ancient cities people (the people who made the first cities) weren't isolated at all.
In fact, in a city like Athens all life was public, in the sense that private matters didn't count culturally as something worthy of pursuing - it was all about contributing to public life, to be seen, talk, have fun, discuss, vote, participate, in the agora (public market), the pnyx (voting place) and other such places.
The same goes not just for ancient cities, but for most cities well up into the 20th century (just not ones dominated by car designed roads, large non-walkable distances, and/or scyscrapers).
Even in a place like New York, you very well knew your neighbors, and there was a community around the area, street, etc. Kids played together (80's suburbs style), grown ups collaborated, had fun, and gossiped with one another, etc (for example check most accounts of the ethnic neighborhoods, Jewish, Italian, Irish, etc. in 20th century New York).
Much more so in older cities, in Europe, Asia, Latin American, and so on, where most of the living neihborhoods where built as smaller communities, with small low-rise houses, central gathering places, and so on, and people knew each other.
Sure, whatever works for you.
But if you then stay awake at night crying "I'm so alone", are chronically depressed and demotivated, you swallow drugs like they're candy, and so on, you might want to revisit this "whatever new living fad became possible after 100s of thousands of year of evolution emphacizing human connection is equally valid".