Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the previous two centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.
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We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters.
-- from All Tomorrow's Parties, 1999
"We" being the monoculture (as voiced by the corporate bigwig who gives this speech). This quote gets more prescient every year--"mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious" was written several years before social networking's omnipresent "like" buttons.
(Hi, bloggy - hope all is well.)