Alright, I’ve read the GMS post now. Unfortunately, because I am only coming to it now, ten years after it was first published, and through the framing of a Post-Mortem, whatever charm it may have had over me in its time is not apparent.

TL;DR: Chapman’s Grand Unified Theory of Subcultures (GUTS, if you will) is the socialism of geeks, ig.

Some thoughts:

1. No examples. If you’re going to present to me a GUTS, show me some evidence.
2. Post proposes a “lifecycle”, i.e., a description of a subculture’s life from birth to death. He defines/describes birth intuitively. He says death is when the “cool”/cultural capital runs out, and that this is caused by popularity. Sure, except the meaning/value of cultural capital changes over time, especially for any cultural capital produced by a subculture. Initially, the “cool” is worthless outside the subculture; once the subculture gains popularity, the value soars. The contention here is that the cultural bubble eventually pops, tanking cultural capital. Now, the post doesn’t adequately delineate between the loss of “cool” inside and outside the subculture, but I think it’s safe to say the author thinks the “cool” simultaneously evaporates inside and outside of the subculture. I don’t think this is true. Plenty of subcultures experiences booms and busts and live to die another day. This sometimes happens because the subculture doesn’t care about the outside world.
3. So basically, this post is an economics-flavoured look at subculture evolution. Specifically, it is a liberal critique, and therefore incomplete. It’s fine to bring up different ideas of capital. It’s also fine to point out that subcultures can suffer from cultural colonialism, both in an abstract sense and the real sense (e.g. licensing, IP, funko pops etc). Where liberalism falls short is when it suggests that the solution to problems caused by colonialism is to learn to be capitalist/colonialist in turn. It’s not, evidenced by fucking world history, unless you choose to ignore this fact and continue to be liberal.

I can see why this sort of narrative might appeal to the rats/incel-coded people. OP has kind of said it all, I think. To add to this, rats love to invent patterns/tropes and pattern match, especially if this means they can pile on assumptions to the thing at hand. Think: sneer clubs, conflict theorists, other names for enemies of the rat community. Yes, the irony that I am doing that here to the rats is not lost on me. At least I’m not putting a name to it! (Pattern Matchers? Regexes?!?!?)

Obviously, I think a better version of this post would entail:

1. Explicit acknowledgement of the role of capitalism and colonialist tendencies in corrupting subcultures, and noting that the solution to this is not “subcultures with capitalist characteristics” but explicit anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism.
2. A flowchart or state transition table that describes all the ways a subculture can evolve. Death is only one possible fate for a subculture; plenty live on in different ways. There is no GUTS, at least in terms of a straight-line narrative of how a subculture lives and dies.
3. Examples.

An example to illustrate some of my points (nb I have not thought this out, so it might blow up in my face upon further analysis): Internet piracy. I’d say it’s a subculture that, by its nature, is anti-capitalist and is thriving to this day. It requires an ultimately commercial framework to exist (i.e. the internet), but unless they shut the whole thing down, this is a non-issue. You can’t really sociopathically co-opt the cultural capital here- if you sell the shovels, hey, now you’re part of the subculture too, and those shovels better dig good.

And finally, RE: the Buddhism. Chapman is apparently an adherent of Vajrayana Buddhism, as opposed to a white-washed/westernised Consensus Buddhism. My upbringing had a Buddhist-influenced backdrop, but I personally never got into Buddhism itself in any appreciable form. That is to say, I couldn’t tell you what Vajrayana Buddhism is myself. That said, I am very familiar with the author’s conception of consensus Buddhism. I will use that term in this thread. I’ll admit that whenever I encounter a Buddhist in the West, I assume they are a consensus Buddhist. It’s a yellow flag for me, in the same way that knowing that someone is into crystals or the zodiac is- it’s not necessarily bad, just different. Not the point. There is a red-flag version of Buddhism to me, and that’s basically any white person who says they are Buddhist but isn’t a consensus Buddhist. Usually, when I encounter this kind of person, it’s some insane, hypercapitalist type with messed-up morality/rationality. So that’s kind of what I went in thinking, and it coloured how I read this.