Nobody wants to be the fat kid in gym class.
humans want to be accepted by a group of other humans. this is one of the most basic, primal, and influential human instincts - the desire to fit in. think back on your life, and you will see how this primal desire has shaped your life for better or for worse.
mainstream culture sets a filter on what is okay and what is not. it creates its own sets of rules and criteria for its group. it will create structures to ensure that the people in the culture meet the rules and criteria, such as education, religion, law, morality, family, etc.. those who meet these criteria fit in. those who do not meet those criteria are filtered out, do not fit in, and are turned into outsiders. think queers, criminals, jews, asians, otakus, incels, metalheads, radicals, punks, carnies, foreigners, the ugly, the strange, the mentally disabled. At best, they do not benefit from mainstream culture. the cultural institutions do not see them as one of them and will not work for their benefit - jobs, schools, social spaces, are not welcoming to these people. Likely, mainstream culture will likely actively persecute them and make their life worse. At worst, mainstream culture will kill them en masse in a genocide.
those who are turned into outsiders, if on a large enough scale, will join together to form their own mainstream seperate from the previous. this is known as a “counterculture”, named because it largely runs in opposition to the mainstream culture it was rejected from. it has its own set of rules and criteria to fit in that are not the same as mainstream culture. it is the dark to the light, the yes to the no. in a counterculture, some of those outsiders now fit in. that primal need is satisfied, and they can try to be happy again. they're still the fat kid, but its not gym class anymore, so its fine. they're safe.
in the context of music, countercultures want to be seperate from the mainstream. Something like screamo does not want to be mainstream. this is because if it is mainstream, it is not counterculture. if it is mainstream, it holds mainstream beliefs and tenets; a mainstream filter. if it has a mainstream filter, than those who were once accepted are once again outsiders. they’re the fat kid in gym class again.
people spread their personal beliefs to the world around them. they try to turn abstract ideas into reality. this increases exponentially when people of shared belief are together. if a group of mainstream people join the counterculture, they will try to shape their environment into what they believe, whether consciously or subconsciously. furthermore, because they are mainstream, they are more powerful. they have more resources and connections on their side. they can do it, and they can do it easily. the counterculture is forever in existential threat, and it knows this.
what this means is that the counterculture not only wants to be distinct from the mainstream - it HAS to be. if it loses distinction, then it disappears completely. it simply becomes a part of the mainstream again. once its a part of the mainstream again, then it restores the mainstream filters, and it establishes the mainstream in-groups and out-groups. its once again weird to smell weird, or to dress weird, or to listen to weird music, or to roll around on the floor screaming, or to slamdance into people on a tuesday afternoon, or to start your own record label, or to make a zine, or to start a band, and now you’re weird again, and people look at you weird, and people think you’re weird, and people treat you like you’re weird, and nobody wants to be your friend. So you kill yourself.
this is why gatekeeping exists. its not because counterculture people are evil or racist or stupid. its because they’re scared. its because they dont want to be the fat kid in gym class again.
