subcultures are pretty much non existent in my area. If anything i would say. 'Nice guy' and 'Laughs easily guy'

Haha, this sounds about right. I can remember my friends being really passionate about being non-conformists and therefore embraced everything that was different. Shout it from the rooftop kind of mentality. I was sort of lukewarm about being non-conformist, but really I was just more happy that I'd finally found people that accepted my own brand of weirdness, that I could hang out with and just be myself around.

I noticed that as I got older and other subcultures emerged, I found I couldn't really fit in with them and had no desire to because you had to dress the part, listen to the right music, etc. to feel like anything less than an outsider.

I wonder to what degree cliques are subjective? Maybe I should talk to someone else from my high school who wasn't part of my group to see if they saw cliques and broke social structures down the same way I did.

I feel like going Glam Goth and starting my own clique. Must assemble the fashion pieces and the vampire makeup palette!

_________________

Do it, do it!!

Sadly, I think the 80s glam resurgence is over, and now we're back in the 70s, fashion-wise. However, if I wanted to start a clique, that would be the look!

I was never part of a subculture during my high school years/secondary education (ages 13-17 for me, there isn't exactly a direct correspondence between high school in the USA and secondary education in the UK since secondary education usually starts at around age 11, if I'm not mistaken, and high school at 14, but close enough I suppose), but when I was more actively engaged with my friends, what would you call us... We had people who loved anime, manga, manhwa (especially from the influence of a good friend of ours, an exchange student from South Korea), reading in general (to punish one of my friends, teachers/her parents would confiscate her book from her - just about daily the teacher had to take the book from her because she was reading instead of listening. Still learning, right?), animals, mythology, science, paganism, atheism, agnosticism,*lots* of artists among us, writers (a few of my friends and I would exchange notebooks with each other filled with stories, then provide feedback [pertaining to content, spelling/grammar, general impression, and what have you]) band lovin' folks, some drug lovin' folks, tarot readin' folks. Somehow we were a group of label-less people who didn't really conform to anything, without any effort imparted in doing so. We were just ourselves.

A fair amount of my friends and I didn't exactly dress according to what was in style, or perhaps that to which others were accustomed, but it wasn't related to conformity. It was more so our individual personalities leaking out through our external appearance. One of my friends, for example, loved art, and is now pursuing a degree in art. Her clothes would often be ones she had created or amended herself, and her whimsical, playful tendencies manifested through her everyday garb. The clothes I wore didn't conform to the norm, but, well, that was because I didn't have the money to buy clothes so I essentially wore the same outfit every day. Additionally, I had/have little confidence, so I covered myself with a black hoodie just about daily... I remember when I stopped wearing it, it felt like walking out of a prison. I couldn't even stand to look at the thing, whereas before I didn't feel comfortable leaving the house without it.

High school was weird, though. Despite unhealthy, self-damaging behavior, I was inexplicably somewhat happy, healthy, and sociable. My second two years were like... emptiness. Then my final year of high school it was like someone turned me on, and I started cranking out As, and I started hanging out with my friends more, from whom I had started to drift during the middle of my high school career. I only felt a closer connection to a few of them, as I had withdrawn considerably over the past two years, but we still had fun, meeting in the library every morning and causing chaos every now and then (book-lovers in a library can get a little messy). We still didn't have a subculture, just a shared interest in, I don't know, learning?

All I know was that for some reason I didn't feel I was on the same wavelength with the rest of the people around me, and the goals of my peers just held no weight to me. When I was with my friends, my cohorts, I guess you could say I felt like I was with people who saw the world through similar lenses, or at least who could understand and explore various possibilities without immediately interpreting them as outlandish - or, if they did, they supported their refutation soundly and thoroughly.

The summer of 2008, after high school... a lot happened. My first semester of college/uni I didn't have any place to stay, but by chance the hospital in which my sister was staying was right across the street. Thus, I stayed in the hospital (my loathing of hospitals has grown considerably in recently years...), slept in my sister's room at times, or in the waiting room, washed my hair in the sink, yada yada yada. I also threw myself into my studies, firmly affixed myself to the school library, and got a 4.0 in my classes the first two years (kind of the equivalent of a 70+). I didn't associate with large groups, and certainly not with anything that could've been described as a subculture, but I still associated with other sentient beings and made some friends, though I'm kind of terrible at maintaining contact with people...

The next year, one of my semesters I got one A- (65-69 for A-/B+?), then the next a B+ in one class, so that kind of threw off my groove. Still, things were OK... but then, I don't know. Now. I've detached considerably, and the following semester was something akin to those two years in high school. I'm still in a bit of a funk now, but what I've noticed a bit of trend. Whenever I disregard my formal education (not that I ever stop amassing information, learning from the world, or self-teaching, as anyone else), it seems to correlate with a disengagement from a group, from a collective with whom I can share ideas, question, and quite simply - feel some sense of belonging, a smidgen.

I remember someone in this thread previously stated that for them, their subculture remains a part of their identity, particularly for the subculture's emphasis on friendship. Even though I've never thought much of subcultures, perhaps it's because I erroneously fixated on what I perceived to be a laughable attempt at "non-conformity." Instead, I should have focused on what these subcultures provide - a haven, soothing aloe to one's wounds when others would grind in salt. In a time in one's life when a child is attempting to figure out who they are, to shape a seemingly endlessly shifting identity, maybe these cultures are the anchors they need to keep them stable. A home to which to come, when all else is overwhelming chaos.

When I used to live in Russia, in our city we did have subcultures. . Basically, everyone who didn't listen to just the radio music or looked somehow different in the crowd would be considered to be a part of it. Such people were generally called "informals" because they were not formal, of course, in the light of the general society. I was a part of those people because I used to have long hair and I listened to heavy metal those days and I was also in the band. The beauty of this group was that we were harassed everywhere, at school, at work, sometimes even at home for our unstandard tastes, looks or habits. So eventually all of such people just started to gather together at a specific location. We had a few spots we would alternate so that our enemies: petite criminals, gangsmen and other haters of us, the different people, wouldn't know where to look if they wanted a fight. We had groups of 40-50 people sometimes being together. This way we felt safer as no assholes would start raging against our bunch. We could walk home together after gatherings, which was especially nice for the girls that wouldn't have to find their way home in the darkness alone. Our city was a pretty dangerous place at that time. We also visited concerts together, drunk, went camping, fell in love, all the good stuff young folks are into.
And we had such a great time! We were all different but united by the fact that we didn't belong anywhere else. We met a lot of friends, had many laughs. We had our own traditions. For example if a person joins the group: a guy would have to walk around and give a bearhug and a handshake to every single male in the group and give a kiss to every female, a girl would have to give a kiss to all males and females. It wasn't uncommon for straight males to kiss each other, modestly of course, as well as females. That's what we did, we just didn't care about the norms, a sign of affections like that should really be universal. For the newbies it was strange but then it really started to make sense as it really showed some love and care among everyone in the group, no matter of the sex, age and other aspects.
Thus a victimized group found itself a home, somewhat.
I think this whole scene we had was pretty unique and it kind of died out in the beginning of the 2000s. But the golden age is still in my heart and constituted an important part of me being a teenager, finding myself, friends, etc.
A lot of us were anarchists who rebelled against the norms, yet together we created a democratic society to stand against all what we didn't like. Man, I miss those times. .