>I often wrack my brain trying to think, what changed...A subculture can only exist if there's a barrier to entry. Commodification, globalisation and social liberalism eroded those barriers.
In their day, hippies and punks paid a real social price for their subcultural identity - they outraged society and were marginalised for it. If you wanted to be a mod in the 60s, you needed money and cultural capital to get the right clothes, the right records, the right scooter.
The Wigan Casino and the Twisted Wheel formed a nucleus for the Northern Soul subculture, because they were the only place you could hear rare soul records. Carnaby Street and the King's Road formed the nucleus for the mod scene, because they were the only place you could buy tonic suits and winkle picker shoes.
Streaming has democratised access to new and obscure music. Retailers like H&M have democratised access to the latest fashions. Social media has democratised access to cultural capital. A new trend can spread globally within a matter of weeks, diluting any possibility of it spawning a subculture. There's very little that a teenager could wear or listen to that is genuinely shocking. Without a barrier to entry, there is no subculture, just culture.
There are two thriving youth subcultures, they just don't fit our idea of what a youth subculture is supposed to look like - the social justice movement and the alt-right. There's a social cost to holding extreme political views, which prevents these subcultures from being absorbed into the cultural mainstream. Your parents probably won't disown you if you dye your hair purple, get a neck tattoo or listen to Merzbow. They might well disown you if you start saying that all white men are complicit in rape culture or that Hitler had a point.