It scene“the scene” was born in the early 2000s as a digivolution of the subculture emo which first caught on among American teenagers and then spread throughout the world. Roots music hardcore punk From the beginning, it was making room for electronic sounds, while the aesthetics left behind the gothic and the downbeat to incorporate fluorescent colors, asymmetrical haircutspiercingswristbands, tight t-shirts and skinny jeans. Codes that turned what scene in something exclusively youthful: you can try to be indie either heavy past thirty, but it is easier to find a reasonably priced rental in the center of your city than in a emo forty-something.
And yet, the era of microtrends, of the simultaneous survival of everything and everyone and of hyperconnectivity has revived what scene with strength from a handful of influencers and antiheroes Among them stands out 6relyhuman, the stage name of Toby Aaron Hamiltonin his early twenties who, after a first hit viral on Tiktok (Hands Up!) has established itself as a benchmark for the return of the scene. From the underground More than that, Hamilton has amassed 1.4 million followers on the platform and, in his own words, has gone “from writing songs in my bedroom to making sold out in rooms”.
6relyhuman’s songs are party anthems with hard-hitting choruses and electronic beats. sneaker Among which stands out Faster n Harder, his hit The most celebrated and the one with the most TikTok videos of audiences losing their minds live. His alter ego is a superlative manifestation of his personality (he has declared his comfort with “any kind of pronouns”) translated into an aesthetic that, rather than embracing ambiguity, celebrates the lack of prejudices of his own and others.
“We are experiencing a liberation in terms of fashion: 6relyhuman is a faggot who puts on heels and a wig and looks divine and it is something groundbreaking” he highlights. Esty Quesada, youtuber who has transcended that label to become a figure of national popular culture through his channel I’m a loseryour podcast Special People Club (Podimo) or its program The Moderators alongside Yenesy for Prime Video. Quesada, a great connoisseur of the subcultures of the nineties and early twenty-first century, has been the only Spanish influencer to focus on and analyze the return of the scene.
The democratization of fame
Esty Quesada (I’m a loser) She says that this movement has resurged “because we are all fed up. People who don’t live in big cities are fed up because there is nothing within 20 km radius, the internet is pure escapism and people like 6relyhuman remind us of better and simpler times.” The content creator is also clear that the current moment is especially propitious for cultures to return and create their new idols: “before, to appear on TV and be known, you had to be judged by three straight people,” she points out. Now, she adds, “fame has been democratized, you don’t need to go to a casting: You upload a video or a Tiktok and you earn more than your father in a year. We are living in a very difficult time. do it yourself and I love that someone like 6relyhuman has gone viral and is famous.”
And the environment in which 6relyhuman moves is exactly that, made up of a network of friends/collaborators like the one influencer Tara Yummy (8.6 million followers on Tiktok), with his profile update party girl hedonist, artists like Asteria or Kets4eki, with whom she formed the musical collective FabFantasy, or the singer and trans model Britney Manson. An interconnected ecosystem reminiscent of the MySpace era and a key figure in the early days two thousand as the Scene Queens were. Names like Kiki Kannibal, Audrey Kitching or Jeffree Star were ahead of the phenomenon influencer as we know it today
Esty Quesada was one of those hundreds of thousands of teenagers who were left with the image and charisma of these early Internet personalities. “When I was about 13 years old, I became interested in the Internet thing. emo and soon I started following scene queens “I was crazy about Kiki Kannibal or Brookelle Bones,” she recalls. “I bought hairspray, all the combs, I backcombed my hair… it was a kind of euphoria for me, who is a living depressive person. It struck me that this was a very accessible subculture, because not everyone could afford to buy a 140 euro leather coat to look goth. At the parties in Iturribide (the town where Quesada is from) I felt like Jeffree Star, the movement scene made you feel special in a place where you weren’t special.”
Echoes of simpler times
The great success of the subculture scene, In addition to appealing to the disorientation and uprootedness of teenagers and weirdos, he knew how to find his own space, and do so with identifying and democratising codes. “It was a radical way of expressing himself, because urban tribes are very classist,” Quesada recalls. “The Goths were very classist, and, on the other hand, in the way they were scene It was all much more chill”, he concludes. Even when groups like Asking Alexandria, Blood on the Dancefloor or Cobra Starship achieved a certain mainstream success, a balance was maintained until it scene inevitably diluted over the years. A youth culture rarely survives from one generation to the next, and in the case of one so essentially adolescent, this was truer than ever.
It’s not surprising that it took a decade for it to revive, and that it’s happening now. “Since Myspace we’ve gone through many very boring eras like Facebook or Instagram, and then along comes TikTok, which is above all a playground and you can do whatever you want,” explains Quesada (I’m a loser). “Tiktok has room for everyone, there is even a trend of people who drink flavored water, so why wouldn’t there be room for that? scene Yes, also, with the revival “With the rise of bands like Deftones that are taking place on that platform, people are starting to get interested in the darker side of the early 2000s,” concludes the content creator, who also mentions Charlie XCX in that wave of 2000s recovery. “They have hit hard because they bring echoes of times when everything was simpler, of that philosophy of ‘I go out and party.’”
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