Kathryn's Sharebook 

Every movement in the indie scene has its own share of heroes and hangers on. While the underground subculture heroes pursue creative goals sincerely, the hangers on bask in reflected glory. So when the main provocateur cum precursor decides to punk the mainstream to radicalize the status quo, a new trend is born. The mainstream media’s hungry young poet hunters get working to editorialize and heap sometimes-unwarranted attention on the new pop culture man of the hour. The poseurs, meanwhile, cash in on the trend. They have been hanging around much too long a time on the scene not to know when it’s payback time.

The moment something from the indie scene crashes the mainstream, there’s nowhere else to go but down the aisle of pop retail commodity. You get a price tag that the system turns you on. You make money; get recognition, and more than anything else --- you know where to scrounge for that next meal. A far cry from how you used to be down the glorious slums of the underground. Pop commodity is:

• The trendsetter as punk inventor. He/she who has the new idea invents the new scene. As principal purveyor of whatever the new invention is, all related ideas are attributed to him/her. The punking of the scene is confirmed even more when big business trumps up the card game to the next level and the punk becomes brand. Say, from Malcolm Maclaren to Sex Pistols to Vivienne Westwood to Richard Branson to Virgin Conglomerates.
• The media poet as brand poster boy. When the brand speaks it speaks in tongues. Gibberish to some but words of wisdom to the Pied Piper retailer herding consumer sheep down mall culture’s great big boutique. Everything that the brand’s poster boy says, you believe. What wardrobe poster boy wears, you party in. You raise your drink to the brand and not the times for you know it will quickly change. You know it’s iOS today with your gleaming iPhone 5. Tomorrow it’s Samsung Galaxy S3 who eventually wins!
• The commodity as poseur consumer icon. All consumers are poseurs in varying degrees of concealment. You buy things to make you look cool before you buy things you really need. You will always deny this but you will fail every time because you know. You can always fool everybody else but never yourself. You never worked a day in your life but you’ve got the same tablet Steven Ballmer uses? Who are you kidding?! So when the punk, the poet and the poseurs creep up above ground and make friends with people like us, do they become strangers to each other in the process? Hardly!

Thomas Wolfe at the door

The punk turned brand poet begins to realize the impact of his/her innovation on the mainstream and soon enough learns to bask in the glory and the affluence it brings. It’s been a long, hard struggle and the bitter subway cold of dime-a-call phone booths is a real stretch from the RingCentral warmth of high-end high-rise living. However, the pangs of indie slum hunger and desperation can be nasty addictions to deal with. The punk-turned-poet at large begins to long for the independence of the underground and decides to make his comeback bid to revered anonymity.

There is no turning back, however. Thomas Wolfe will always be at the door: “Sometimes you can't go home again.” It is at this point that all the poseurs and consumers at the world descend to tell the punk-turned-poet: “At some point in your life, you’ve got to choose between your millions and your badly drawn pictures and crazy ideas!”