When I taught writing, I always made my students write an essay about what subculture they belonged to, to promote introspection and the realization that everyone is ‘nerdy’ about something that they are into.
Since 18 year-olds have no life experience, many of them wanted to write about playing soccer, which I had to remind them was the single most popular sport on the planet, so therefore was culture, not subculture.
I instead played them parts of ‘Dark Carnival of the Soul,’ the amazing doc on the annual Juggalo gathering. I talked about how the subculture has values, beliefs and shared experience that are different than common daily experience. To this day I don’t really know if they understood, or if it was just fun for me to make them watch it in class.
