A lot of this sounds like truism, or selection bias. Thing isn't popular or exciting to most, then it catches on and grows, then it stops growing, fragments into new directions and isn't novel but becomes part of the mainstream. This HAS TO describe literally anything in the past that was ever popular/exciting, because it wasn't always that way (started small) and can't grow indefinitely without becoming either an institution (stable leadership/direction), fragmented (new leadership/direction), or just falling apart.
But what about cultures that never grew, or that don't confer enough money/status/passion among participants (not exciting enough) that you can quit your day job? I guess you wouldn't call it a subculture then ... but some people take e.g. being a bike rider quite seriously, without there being a status struggle about who is True Lord of the Bike Shorts and Leader of the Movement.
Rewards being high for the innovators (like the example of founding Google) isn't a Ponzi scheme, because the reward for doing X is how much value X produces, not getting people to pay you so that they too can do X. The Google founders don't sell the secret of how to found Google in an infinite cycle of Google sales, they sell ads. Probably why Google isn't "a subculture" either, but weird example.
Also a Ponzi scheme is strictly better for the first movers. Here we have a phase of low-reward die-hards before growth that don't get their investment paid off, that were there before it became a Ponzi. Maybe blogs in the 90s were higher-visibility and you trace that to the culture of today, what about the BBS users before that? So better to say "at some point, some subcultures become a sort of Ponzi scheme", which would also make more clear the post-selection of picking just the successful subcultures and just the right times.
I think you aren't accounting for things that start and stay small but endure. Capuchin monks have existed for 500 years, but Capuchin Catholicism and related processes have never become a cool subculture that's subject to the cycles Scott describes.
I think Scott isn't accounting for those things, this is what I meant by the selection bias of the theory. Only subcultures that get big enough work with the model, if they're too small they "never grew" like I said.
A lot of this sounds like truism, or selection bias. Thing isn't popular or exciting to most, then it catches on and grows, then it stops growing, fragments into new directions and isn't novel but becomes part of the mainstream. This HAS TO describe literally anything in the past that was ever popular/exciting, because it wasn't always that way (started small) and can't grow indefinitely without becoming either an institution (stable leadership/direction), fragmented (new leadership/direction), or just falling apart.
But what about cultures that never grew, or that don't confer enough money/status/passion among participants (not exciting enough) that you can quit your day job? I guess you wouldn't call it a subculture then ... but some people take e.g. being a bike rider quite seriously, without there being a status struggle about who is True Lord of the Bike Shorts and Leader of the Movement.
Rewards being high for the innovators (like the example of founding Google) isn't a Ponzi scheme, because the reward for doing X is how much value X produces, not getting people to pay you so that they too can do X. The Google founders don't sell the secret of how to found Google in an infinite cycle of Google sales, they sell ads. Probably why Google isn't "a subculture" either, but weird example.
Also a Ponzi scheme is strictly better for the first movers. Here we have a phase of low-reward die-hards before growth that don't get their investment paid off, that were there before it became a Ponzi. Maybe blogs in the 90s were higher-visibility and you trace that to the culture of today, what about the BBS users before that? So better to say "at some point, some subcultures become a sort of Ponzi scheme", which would also make more clear the post-selection of picking just the successful subcultures and just the right times.
I think you aren't accounting for things that start and stay small but endure. Capuchin monks have existed for 500 years, but Capuchin Catholicism and related processes have never become a cool subculture that's subject to the cycles Scott describes.
I think Scott isn't accounting for those things, this is what I meant by the selection bias of the theory. Only subcultures that get big enough work with the model, if they're too small they "never grew" like I said.
Ah, I see.