Emily Barnes
Video Transcript:
Hi everyone! My name is Emily Barnes, and for my ethnography project, I chose to research the “scene” subculture, a fashion, makeup, and lifestyle subculture that has experienced two distinct waves.
In the late 2000s, the social media app MySpace quickly gained popularity among young teenagers. Many internet subcultures arose from this period, including the first wave of the “scene” subculture—a unique combination of punk, goth, and emo fashion and lifestyles. Unfortunately, a combination of relatively few privacy protections on the app and the vulnerable nature of this young group led to serious harassment for higher-profile members, both online and offline. These popular creators were often referred to as “scene-queens” or “scene-kings”, with their followers being “scene-kids”. MySpace ultimately fell out of popularity after 2010, though in 2019, the subculture experienced a second wave on a new video-sharing app called TikTok. Through my research I sought to understand how this subculture was impacted by the extreme harassment many members faced, and to what extent this impacted the greater culture online that existed between teenagers and young adults, in both waves.
Through fieldwork on TikTok, analyzing scholarly research, and interviewing a member of the subculture, I feel that I have developed a better understanding of this subculture and the difficulties that many members have faced, both on and offline. I have also concluded that the first wave of the “scene” subculture and the experiences of many prominent members impacted how important privacy was taken by younger members on MySpace, as well as other social media platforms. I believe that online culture as a whole shifted because of this—even if indirectly—given the status that many of these members held on MySpace, members such as Kirsten Ostrenga who uses the alias “Kiki Kannibal”, a young teen who rose to fame on the app for her makeup and fashion, only to be harassed both online and in person for years to come. Members of the second wave, on TikTok, still know Kiki’s name and find her inspiring, leaving comments on posts comparing newer looks to her older iconic ones.. The individual I interviewed explained that she knew Kiki’s story, but that not everyone who considers themselves a member of “scene” has followed the first wave. This is because of TikTok’s algorithm for grouping videos—I myself had noticed that many accounts using the tag “scene” were also using a tag called “scemo”, a combination of “scene” and “emo”, along with many other hashtags. When I inquired about these intersections, my interview participant responded explaining that “it’s hard to make smaller communities on TikTok… (people) have to put a lot of effort into finding similar accounts.” Community is crucial and the subculture works to identify members through boosting their videos to a wider audience, primarily by using hashtags.
The decline in popularity of the app MySpace coincided with the leave of prominent individuals such as Ostrenga, after she participated in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, and the harassment she faced became public. According to a study led by a researcher named Justin Patchin, titled “Trends in Online Social Networking: Adolescent Use of MySpace over Time”, use of the app MySpace declined rapidly around the same time that the experiences of these high profile members became public. In the article, there are references to experiences similar to Ostrenga, along with several other prominent accounts on the app. The researchers note that “youth are increasingly exercising discretion in posting personal information on MySpace… a significant number of youth appear to be abandoning their profiles on MySpace altogether,” indicating that the torment that this subculture faced online was enough for many users to relinquish their platforms.
I feel as though my research questions have been answered, though I admit that closure does not exist within the answers. This group continues to face judgement, even as social media has changed. My interview participant explained to me that she knew about some of Ostrenga’s experiences and that “no one has ever done anything, like, that extreme to me, but I’ve heard stories of other people being doxxed,” referring to individuals’ addresses and personal information being exposed online, namely on TikTok. I am curious to see how this subculture might evolve in the future, with the intersection of different aesthetics now occurring on TikTok. I am also hopeful that this group will experience less bullying and judgement in the future, and that the internet may be a safer place for their community to thrive.
The Digital Ethnography Project 