In August 2022, Dazed Digital published an article entitled How Ketamine Chic Became The New Heroin Chic. It announces that it’s “it’s cool to dress like an unwashed urchin, emerging from the landfill of consumer culture like a blabbering Minion”, and interviews the proponents on London based club night ‘Swagchella’. The article goes on to explain how ketamine chic is an attempt for London’s youth to explain the internet jargon they were raised with. Fashion for the terminally online, some may say.
The style attempts to align itself with the anti-capitalist culture that has always perpetrated the world of raves and free parties, but wraps itself up in a layer of modern irony that makes what it is trying to achieve as a part of the internet jargon they claim to be rallying against as an eight year olds YouTube home page.
When I initially read the ketamine chic article, it would be hard for me not to say that I was amused. Indeed, much of the article reads like the speech in the monologue for my upcoming piece The Latex Maid because the way the interviewees talk dominates modern rave culture. In a world wherein an Instagram aesthetic can mean more than any of the music you play at your night, it can become easy to get lost in the ironic world that the social media not-quite-known live in. That is not to say that I am anti-fun, and that my critique stems from believing simply that we should all go back to Wigan Pier. Instead, I want to encourage introspection within the scene, and to ask whether or not actively participating in consumer culture while also actively denouncing it seems to be the best way for subculture to thrive? Or whether, perhaps, we should strive for an underground music scene which wants more from its participants than simply donning a pair of wraparound sunglasses and calling something swag?