Indie Sleaze And The Death Of Modern Counterculture
Foreword
I was looking forward to a dinner date with Juan Mendez and Simone Ling last Thursday night. We were going to talk about our plans to make art, be better friends, and probably — after a few drinks — move to a commune in the mountains.
Juan didn’t reply to my texts that morning; that evening I was told they both died from a fentanyl overdose, along with their friend Luis Vasquez.
This essay is dedicated to their memory. To the times I spent with Juan discussing the nuances of popular culture, cultural appropriation, and counterculture. To the artwork Simone created that was so inspired, and inspiring. This essay is dedicated to everyone and everything they touched. They are missed by so many.
This Isn’t New
The community I thought I belonged to as a teenager and 20-something no longer seems to exist, and the society we live in feels broken. Not damaged: broken. This may sound hopeless, but it’s not; it’s normal. Through history we have seen this pattern repeat as cultures and countercultures rise and fall within societies on time scales that range from centuries to years.
There are books I love that have been written about this; it’s well-worn ground for philosophical debate, and I have nothing to add to the words of Joan Didion, Bertrand Russell, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, or Kurt Vonnegut. Likewise contemporary writers Heath & Potter, Naomi Klein, and Robert Reich have all addressed the concepts of culture and counterculture at length in different ways. And there are newer artists like DeForrest Brown, who I recently discovered, and standbys like Hunter S Thompson, Susan Sontag, Jack Kerouac and Maya Angelou. Then there are magazines like AdBusters, Charlie Hebdo, and Vice.
Vice & Virtue
Oh yeah. Fucking Vice.
I wrote for Vice, sometimes contributing to The Vice Guide To Toronto. I moved to New York and drank Sparks or whatever shit beer was paying for whatever overcrowded party we were all at. I read the Do’s & Don’ts and wondered if I’d show up on Last Night’s Party after stumbling out of Lit. Eventually I worked with the Vice agency offshoot, Virtue.
Throughout all of this I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the legacy of what we were collectively creating. I didn’t think of the impact it may be having on counterculture, and I certainly didn’t think of the likelihood of the Vice brand still existing into 2024.
When I started hanging out at DFA Records in 2006 — working on tech projects — I was deep in what I recognized as some kind of scene. Not because I thought any of it was cool, but because it felt like everything we were creating was pushing towards something. Something better. God were we naive.
Collectively, we all helped build an industry by taking part in, and setting up the infrastructure to allow for the commodification of a counterculture we believed in.
We weren’t the first. There were glimmers of this in the ’60s (Woodstock), ’80s (Studio 54) and ’90s (Madchester) but holy shit did we monetize it. The socialization machine our generation built took off on a cocaine-fueled bender, and some of us hitched our careers to it.
As we worked towards finding ways to leverage the communities we were building as a way to make money, there was a convergence of “scenes” across cities and countries, spurred by the growth of the Internet. While once we had to hear about a new band through word-of-mouth or by scouring record shops, or seek out a community of like-minded people by traveling to a new city or maybe sending a letter to a ’zine we loved, everything was now coming to us — first in a trickle, and then an overwhelming flood.
This isn’t news, and to the generations from Millennials onward, it’s simply the way it’s always been. Gen X had LiveJournal. Gen Z? They are basically walking LiveJournals now. No escape. Everything is shared; we almost all have social streams, and those who are in their 30s and younger never knew a time when they didn’t. Performative participation has become almost impossible to avoid.
Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To
Winding their way through all of these niche communities have been drugs. Ecstasy, MDMA, acid, mushrooms, cocaine, ketamine, heroin, whatever. How many drug stories could I tell you? Well, how bored do you want to be? Listening to someone tell me drug stories rates only slightly lower on the “get me out of here” scale than having them rant at me about the dream they had last night.
Drug use — especially psychedelic drugs — as part of a creative process has been discussed for decades. Proponents of creative drug use like Timothy Leary and Alexander Shulgin pioneered a mythology around LSD and MDMA that bordered on the religious. But as we spiraled towards a more hedonistic approach to socializing and embraced rampant recreational drug use through the late ’70s and into the ’80s, things changed.
Cocaine became a means to an end; it was associated with a kind of excess that was at once glamorous and dark, dirty. That end was a perpetual party where creativity was centered, and then as time went on, sidelined. Spacemen 3 harnessed this brilliantly through their career: lyrically, Big City — their last single — calls to mind Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, whether intentional or not. McInerney’s novel captures the excess of cocaine culture in a party scene that has become devoid of meaning, and heralds the rise of narcissism and the damage done as a result.
The aspirational concept of creating art while sitting in a studio or someone’s apartment at 4am railing lines was commodified, decontextualized; twisted and turned into a lifestyle choice that pushed the result into a corner. Centered the way the process appeared, sounded, felt.
A point of perverse pride for some. No longer about the art, it became about a performance you could point to — about the photos and videos you could show others; how fucked up you all got one night while writing music.
Performative and empty, the art suffers, but the party continues.
Taking Drugs To Parties To Take Drugs To
Aspects of modern nightlife and creative culture have been consumed by this mentality. Rather than “Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To” it’s often about taking drugs, period. They’re the point rather than the reward; the reason to even show up.
Glorifying this sort of scene has been central to the rise of the cultural machine we are part of today, and Terry Richardson exemplifies the aspirational archetypes within it, both personally, and through his work.
An emblem of the excesses and ethical lapses of modern counterculture, Richardson is known for his raw, sexually charged photography that straddles the line between art and exploitation. His work has been as much celebrated for its unapologetic energy as it has been condemned for perpetuating a culture of objectification and misogyny. His reputation, marred by allegations of sexual misconduct, casts a shadow over his contributions to photography, embodying the troubling normalization of predatory behavior behind the camera. In this world where art, power, and morality collide messily, Richardson personifies the awkward, often ignored conversation about where we draw the line between creative freedom and the exploitation of that very creativity for harmful ends.
The framework for the canonization of people like Terry Richardson is bound up in the fundamental problems our society faces — racism, patriarchal sexism, financial inequality — and is what can only be described as a complete fucking mess. The awkward older white guy with Hunter S. Thompson aspirations taking advantage of young women from his position of power has become normalized; there is no escaping it. Ultimately this isn’t a problem about a single person, but the result of a community that fails to delve into the psychology and philosophy behind what we’re experiencing. In fact, that sort of introspection is denigrated as over-intellectualizing; it’s not cool. It ruins the party.
We continue to play into this with events that pander to male fantasy, promoting a transactional, superficially sexualized environment devoid of passion and actual connection.
How many people dreamed of becoming the next Terry Richardson? It was a viable path to success, and it worked for some — mostly men who found their niche in the world of party photography by adopting unique stylization, or having great marketing, or simply being in the right place at the right time.
We live in a world where American Apparel’s Dov Charney somehow gets a second chance. It’s a world in which, miraculously, the phenomenon we now call indie sleaze, gets a second chance as well.
Point:
I wish people could not take everything so far. Terry Richardson promotes misogyny through his photographs, but at the same time I like his photos. The fact that everyone is so stupid as to take everything further and further toward what may be a superficial “comment” on society and kind of use that “comment” as a way to define success is a problem.
— AnonCounterpoint:
I think it’s the blind adherence to the aesthetic as a means to perpetuate the commercial viability of the culture it helped create. It ignores the problematic aspects in favor of the aesthetic. It establishes the aesthetic without concern for the damage done.
— Me
Indie Sleaze (For Sale)
At the end of 2022 we started promoting a series of club nights in Los Angeles called Out Of the Races and Onto The Tracks; they were a reference to the music of the ’00s — indie sleaze. Some of the posters included the phrase, “meet me in the bathroom”, a nod to the book of the same name that documents the era. Yes, that’s a drug reference as well.
Indie sleaze pushed drug use, particularly cocaine, in a way that was purely about the party. It centered being seen at events, promoted the deification of the party photographer, and saw capitalistic idealism become the motivating factor for the movement — above music, art, community, and conscience.
The relentless chase for what’s perceived as “success” in our culture has a way of distorting our actions to the point where participation itself becomes a commodity. This transformation is evident in how indie sleaze pivoted from being a subcultural movement to a mainstream phenomenon. The essence of being part of something, of attending events, wasn’t just for the experience anymore — it was about leveraging visibility for profit. The parties weren’t just parties; they were networking events cloaked in cocaine and free booze, where being photographed meant you mattered.
This wasn’t just a shift; it was a sell-out, and everyone was buying in, including me. Most of us were blind to where we were going.
Corporations were quick to capitalize on this trend. Miller (who owned Sparks), Pabst, Viacom (via MTV), Red Bull, American Apparel, Converse… the list goes on. They saw the allure of this scene— the drugs, the music, the aesthetic — and they saw an opportunity to monetize it. What started as a countercultural movement, with all its raw edges and authentic disdain for the mainstream, was swiftly packaged into a marketable product. The very ideals that some of us purported to stand against were consumed by the capitalist machine.
Capitalism, unsurprisingly, won. The movement that prided itself on being outside the mainstream, on challenging norms, was ultimately subsumed by the very system it sought to critique. This victory was facilitated not just by the corporations but by the platforms that made everyone a photographer, a critic, a participant. These digital arenas democratized fame but at a cost —our movement became normalized, its once radical edge blunted by overexposure and commercialization.
Do you own Rizzoli’s Cobrasnake book?
The normalization of this brand of reactive non-conformity and the mentality it fostered didn’t just affect cultural and nightlife scenes; it bled into other, more insidious developments. Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice and later the founder of the Proud Boys, exemplifies this. The same irreverent, confrontational style that characterized Vice’s early days, pushing boundaries for the sake of it, later manifested in the formation of the Proud Boys. This group, known for its far-right ideologies and role in political violence, is a stark reminder of how a certain brand of edgy counterculture can evolve into something far more dangerous. It’s a sobering reflection on the consequences of a culture that prizes shock value and notoriety above all else, demonstrating how the lines between provocative entertainment and harmful ideology can blur, leading to real-world impacts.
In this landscape, the challenge becomes not just to critique or reject the commodification of culture, but to understand the pathways that took us from the parties we threw to the normalization of movements like the Proud Boys. It’s about seeing the connections between our cultural consumption and the ideologies we enable or challenge. This isn’t about over-intellectualizing; it’s about recognizing the power of culture to shape, reflect, and sometimes warp our societal values.
The Limits Of Growth
There are limits to the commercial growth of niche markets that explode too quickly. They fracture, the novelty wears off; the cracks become impossible to mend when there is no solid foundation. Their ambiguous meaning and intention is lost to so many interpretations and offshoots, to copycats and hangers on.
While the phenomenon of cultural co-optation isn’t new, the scale at which it happens today is unprecedented. The internet and global markets mean a niche culture can go viral overnight, attracting not just fans but big money looking to cash in. These trends span cities, countries, and continents. The proliferation of “Smiths Nights” (remember Sway?) around the world was a testament to this; a precursor of what was to come.
Just as quickly as they rise, these now bloated fads begin to fade. Attention shifts, the market saturates, and what was once the place you want your photo taken, becomes the last place you want to be seen having to stand in line because the old door guy disappeared. The cycle of hype burns out, leaving behind a landscape of social detritus.
With the death of the trend comes the withdrawal of investment. Brands and corporations move on to the next big thing, pulling their financial support and leaving the once-thriving scene to fend for itself without the influx of easy money. Clubs and bars that relied on their one big night attached to a burnt out trend start offering bottle service or losing their door policies. Crowds get younger; the addition of underage kids attracts a certain kind of clientele.
And yes, we’re creatures of nostalgia. We mourn the loss, the dilution, and the eventual death of these cultural movements, only to resurrect them years later, repackaged with a veneer of irony or nostalgia. We forget the bad, and the next generation never saw it. That one club is hot again, but for how long? And why?
What exactly are we looking for?
Death Of A Party
As I write this, yet more people have died from fentanyl-contaminated cocaine. We recently began a billboard campaign in association with End Overdose and dublab to bring more attention to the problem across Los Angeles.
In some circles, there are people offering cocaine nasal sprays as a means to mitigate risk, the efficacy of which is filled with caveats, and the false sense of safety a dangerous narrative to push. But there is no benefit to being the morality police. Those who focus on drugs above all else will continue to do so; our aim should be education, not judgment.
The question of how to foster community, conversation, and self-awareness through honest communication and introspection is difficult to answer. There is a line of demarcation between those who find these concepts laughable and needlessly complicated, particularly as they apply socially, versus those who choose to engage with them through every aspect of their lives. Common ground is hard to find.
Given the cyclical nature of the social patterns at play, and the deeply rooted systemic issues we face, there may be no answer. The answer may simply be acceptance, but that would be a shame.
We have an opportunity to learn from our mistakes; to create spaces for ourselves and each other that we want to be in — to challenge those that roll their eyes at terms like “safe spaces” in ways that promote conversation, rather than disdain.
This is a question I want to pose to you. How do we help each other? How do we acknowledge the social imperatives that come from operating within this broken, consumerist, capitalist society we live in, while coming together in ways that promote a culture of creativity?
Let’s talk about it and build together, not at the expense of each other.
Afterword
Writing this essay exposed me to my own hypocrisy in ways that shouldn’t have surprised me. Being the product of a generation that was mired in self-importance, and often closed to concepts like talk therapy and introspective psychology (yes, I am the child of Boomers) engendered a tendency to avoid inspecting difficult emotional reactions, and the problems they cause. Being wrong was bad; I fought against the wrongs of my parents, but my own? I ignored.
But yeah, holy shit have I been wrong, behaved poorly, and done things that I would eviscerate others for. There is no mea culpa — there is only acknowledgment and adjustment.
I have realized that trying to be — at least superficially — friends with everyone only served to alienate me from my own ideals. There is a point where we all should grow up, take ownership, and learn to deal with who we are.
We don’t live in a world of good vs evil. We live in a world that is colored by shades of grey; where “good” is subjective, loaded with ethical and moral bias.
In the end, I believe we are left with honesty as our best weapon; with finding strength through vulnerability. I know this isn’t for everyone, but for me, there is hope in connecting with others who feel the same way.
I miss my friends who are no longer here, in the present. In my heart, they will never be gone.
