Digital information technology's impact on rave culture*

Digital information technologies offer liberating, emancipating opportunities for the creation of new communities and spaces where young people can belong, yet they can be constraining and oppressive as well.

Digital information technologies could be considered constraining and oppressive in terms of access and usability, and the broad appeal and reach of digital information technologies has actually been a disadvantage to some cultures in terms of removing exclusivity.

For example, the majority of web content is written in English, which means that users must be literate in the English language, or hope that the website they wish to visit has alternate versions which have been translated into their language. The web also favours fast internet access and users without disabilities, as seen in the design and layout of many popular websites such as YouTube, which is better suited to broadband connections, inaccessible to the blind and does not yet provide captions for the hearing impaired.

To expand on my LJA6 essay on rave culture, digital information technologies have played a part in allowing access to what was once regarded as an ‘underground’ rave scene. The proliferation of change and growth in rave culture has traditionally not been openly accepted by the community itself even prior to digital media, forcing fandom and culture cycles.

With the integration of ‘dance’ music in commercial radio broadcasts, enduring news reports of illegal drug busts, films portraying the subculture, and websites dedicated to advertising rave culture, some aspects of this culture’s entrance into the mainstream, in what was once an “underground, pre-commercialised rave scene” (Siokou & Moore 2008, p. 56), is now regarded with nostalgic mourning by authentic raver identities (Siokou & Moore 2008, p. 56, Brabazon 2002, p.20).

So in a sense, digital information technology has removed the ‘exclusivity’ from what was once an underground practice, much to the dismay of the rave culture’s fandom as this has attracted thousands of punters who didn’t adopt their beliefs and practices, thus mutating the culture.

*Discussion Forum Activity posted on 1st April, 2009 by Maria Tan

CMNS6060 - eCulture and Audiences, The University of Newcastle

Children of the night

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This essay discusses rave culture by describing how a member performs their 'raver' identity online.

Why oh why can’t you just accept it? I’m a raver, not a f***ing drug addict! Yeah that’s right I do Es, I get plastered. Leave me alone, it’s my life, I think it’s sorted (DJ Hixxy & MC Storm, 2001).

Once an ‘underground’ youth subculture of the Gen X and Cold Gen Y age bracket in the 80s and 90s, the electronic music created by digital technologies that spawned the ‘rave’ scene and ‘dance’ culture still continues to assert its influence on youth culture and identity, on a global scale, to the present day.

The fandom created by this rave culture is evident in the continuous evolution of cultural, performative and local dimensions (de Kloet & van Zoonen, 2007) surrounding this rave and club culture community. Centred around a broad classification of ‘dance’ music with its many mutating sub genres, the idolisation of local and international DJs, as well as drugs, jargon, fashion, dance styles, and ideologies; the fans within this community discuss and ascribe to cultural elements which are neither static nor distinct for all ‘ravers’ as “rave, for the majority, is a ‘weekend’ culture of hedonism, sensation and escape” (Goulding et al 2002, p.263) that has now spanned two decades of youthful participation throughout Australia and around the world.

Fans in this community can be actively seen representing their raver identities in the Glowsticking.com (GS.C) website , dedicated to a particular prop used in the performative dance styles of rave culture, called ‘glowsticks’.

GS.C community members construct personalised profiles with the opportunity to blog, link to their existing websites, participate in various forum and chat discussions extending to Twitter and Facebook, and submit articles, photos and videos relating to rave/club culture. This allows the fan to express a representation of their identity online through a variety of textual and audio visual forms with others in the cultural community. For example, in the profile of a senior GS.C member, *+*Beautiful Starlite*+*, she states her interests in the ‘Personal Info’ section using jargon synonymous with rave culture:

Mixing Trance , Music Junkie (I love most EDM Genere's along with other Genere's) [sic], Learning new ways of Freehanding , Living Life To The Fullest, Loving As much As I Can, Laughing Till It Hurts, Smiling, and Just Being Me! P.L.U.R.R .o0o})i({o0o

Within the gallery and article submissions sections, GS.C members are able to upload personally created dancing tutorials, performative audio, videos and photos of themselves, friends and DJs at raves/clubs, and reinforce their online raver identities through attending GS.C’s ‘meet ups’ with others from the community, the outcome of which is documented on the GS.C website through photos and videos further establishing social proof of the community members’ cultural activism.

The online ‘narrative’ space GS.C provides, and the ‘techno’ music central to the performative rave culture are literal examples of how digital technology has shaped youth identity and social practices. This technological acculturation is noted by White & Wyn (2008) of Willis’ (2003) work:

“Young people creatively respond to electronically produced cultural products in ways that surprise their makers, ‘finding meanings and identities never meant to be there’.”

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^[1] Mixing refers to the audio mixing of various sound sources performed by a DJ to produce the effect of a homogenous and undisrupted sequential sound.
^[2] Trance is a sub genre of dance music.
^[3] Freehanding refers to a style of dance using glowsticks.
^[4] P.L.U.R. is an acronym within rave culture that stands for Peace, Love, Unity and Respect.

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