My teenage son asked me the other day what "grunge" and "goth" were. I was then trying to explain "subculture" and "counterculture", and it was surprisingly difficult to explain.. or convey, especially in the context of what he's seen so far in his life. I tried using examples of my own youthful adventures and communities -- still not easy.
I've heard it claimed that hardcore punk was the last American youth subculture, I think street skating qualified too. Those were pretty much the end of it though. You can't have a youth subculture that your parents drive you to in the car.
Any successful culture, be it sub- or counter-, will eventually be swallowed by the mainstream. That’s because a culture is such only if it gets transmitted from person to person. Denying transmission is not counter-cultural, it is anti-cultural: it denies its own validity. Which is why I laugh at the elitism and pretentiousness of articles like these, who want to be purer than pure then take their clues from the likes of MTV Unplugged. The search for purity in culture is a fool’s errand, one might as well burn every page one writes. In reality, culture has to be transmitted, and the purists are just another bunch of competitors desperately trying to elbow everybody else with what little leverage they have.
The modern lack of visible “alternative” cultures is simply due to the fragmentation and recombination that new media have allowed. Guthenberg has invented his press a few years ago, Luther just started writing his thesis, and we are all here wondering why amanuensis culture is not as vibrant as it was.