The Grunge Psyop
In 1990, the primary demographic for loud, guitar-based music was young white men.
The most prominent type of music genre which provided loud, guitar-based music to young white men in 1990 was heavy metal, as it had been for the last several years prior.
Heavy metal promoted aggression, machismo, and sexual libertinism. It glorified a lifestyle of hard-partying and Dionysian excess. The heroes of heavy metal were brash, cocky, unabashedly narcissistic, unrestrainedly vulgar, and carnally prolific. Tight jeans, teased hair, flamboyant face paint, and spandex, fishnet tops were de rigueur.
***********************
In 1991, the primary demographic for loud, guitar-based music was still young white men.
However, a sudden change had occurred, nearly overnight (indeed, it might literally have happened overnight, so rapid was its onset), because heavy metal was no longer the most prominent music genre which provided loud, guitar-based music to young white men in 1991, as it had been in 1990 and for several years prior.
Instead, the most prominent music genre providing loud, guitar based music to young white men in 1991 was something that eventually came to be called grunge.
Grunge promoted angst, melancholia, and ironic self-deprecation. It scornfully mocked the notion of glorifying the cocky, oversexed, narcissistic rock star with his repulsive Dionysian pretensions and his horribly tacky clothes and his stupid face paint.
The heroes of grunge wore normal-fitting jeans and flannel and non-teased hair and no face paint; they seemed like regular guys, albeit with a significantly greater penchant for shooting heroin. Even their choice of drug was apt: while heavy metal guys snorted cocaine (an “upper”) so they could engage in even more glorious Dionysian excess, grunge guys shot smack (a “downer”) so they could blunt the pain brought by perpetual angst, melancholia, and ironic self-deprecation.
Heavy metal heroes were unapologetically egoic, loved being rock stars, and got off on the adulation of their fans. Grunge heroes— well, let’s be real here, we’re basically talking about one man, Kurt Cobain— hated being rock stars, were deeply suspicious of their fan base (“Here we are now, entertain us/I feel stupid, and contagious”), and wished to skulk back into obscurity (“Never speak a word again, I will crawl away for good”).
**********************
I remember, as a young man, noting the extraordinary, nearly overnight change in pop culture which took place in 1991, with the abrupt dethronement of metal and the elevation of grunge. At the time, and for a long time afterwards, I just sort of figured that metalheads had en masse rejected spandex for favor of flannel, had kicked party animals like Axl Rose and David Lee Roth to the curb to embrace the likes of party poopers like Eddie Vedder and Scott Weiland, and had junked all that familiar macho swagger and braggadocio to welcome depression and disquietude in their place.
In retrospect, however, it seems clear that this was not an organic transition. Rather, it is more likely that the appointed tastemakers chose to flip a switch, to elevate a new “vibe” while putting the kibosh on an older one.
And it makes perfect sense— in the light of recent considerations of the era and the cultural transformations which gave rise to “political correctness” immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War— that our betters would deploy their grunge psyop.
After all, during the 70s and 80s, when an all-out war against the Soviet Empire was still a possibility, it was important to send the message to young white men that they should be masculine and confident, so that if the time came, they would fight and die in WW3 with valiancy and honor. But with the Communist bloc defeated, an eventuality assured in 1991 with the official dissolution of the USSR, the parasitic elites in the West could finally turn their psychological weapons on the native population which they always despised in their hearts.
Thus, in 1991, white boys in the West began to be force-fed disillusionment, self-doubt, and ironic detachment. And so began decades of a relentless propagandistic assault against the native population, one which continues unabated to this day.
Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.