logo

Under the counter


Down with the kidsAccording to my son Sebastian, who understands these things better than I ever want to, there are four stages in the development of all youth movements: invention, early adoption, entrepreneurial invasion and finally corporate annexation. Essentially, this means that shortly after the cool kids get into a new trend someone works out how to make money out of it, and before you know it the whole thing has been overrun by capitalists disguised as hippies - what Sebastian calls "the Steve Jobs phenomenon". Another case in point is the interweb phenomenon MySpace, which to be absolutely honest I hadn't even heard of until long after every single 16-year-old on the planet had started using it to swap emo or whatever it is they do nowadays. Then it got bought by Rupert Murdoch, which pretty much killed...

The rest of this article is for subscribers only. Would you like to take a free trial?

Free trial

  • News & Analysis access
  • Extensive data searches
  • Access to archive
  • Weekly newsletter