Counterculture Chronicles: 40 Engaging Facts About Subcultures, Trends & Movements

Otaku is a Japanese term for people with consuming interests, particularly in anime and manga. Osama Bin Laden was a fan of Japanese Otaku culture with a collection of games including Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Ball Z, and Erotic Games.

27. There is a subculture of people called “Otherkin” who believe they are non-human and identify themselves as fairies, androids, aliens, plants, and even cartoon characters.

28. “Itasha” is a subculture in Japan that is focused on anime prints on cars. Itasha (痛車, Itasha) literally means “painful car” as they are considered painful to look at.

29. Raggare is a subculture found in Northern Europe (mostly Sweden) that celebrates classic American car culture and often uses imagery like the confederate flag.

30. In 2013, a photographer recorded seventeen seconds of footage of an elusive night parrot, a Lazarus species that hadn't been spotted in nearly a century. A bird expert called it “the bird-watching equivalent of finding Elvis flipping burgers in an outback roadhouse.”

“Skinheads” originated in the United Kingdom around the 1960s and were not associated with racism, but were a working class outsider subculture that incorporated elements of mod fashion and black Jamaican music. It wasn’t until the 90's when disaffected, Neo-Nazi youths in eastern Europe adopted the style.

32. The iconic “Make Love, Not War” anti-Vietnam war poster was created by Wilfred Weisser a globe-trotting hippie from Germany, living in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. He then disappeared and has never collected a single cent in copyright royalties.

33. Chap-Hop is a music genre originating from England that mixes the hip hop genre with elements from the Chappist or steampunk subcultures and stereotypical English obsessions such as cricket, tea, and the weather.

34. The Incroyables and Merveilleuses were aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution who created a macabre and decadent subculture and “greeted one another with violent movements of the head as if in decapitation.”

35. The Stilyagi (Style-hunters) was a Soviet counterculture movement of the '40s-'60s obsessed with swing and rock-n-roll, snappy foreign clothing, and making musical recordings with old x-ray films.

The early hip hop and punk scenes were heavily intertwined as hip hop was a counterculture based on rejecting disco and punk was a scene about rejecting conventional rock at the time.

37. La Sape is a counterculture movement in the Congo where the adherents wear tailored high-end suits in order to resist their country's sociopolitical climate. These men embody the elegance and style of colonial predecessor dandies and will go out of their way to buy expensive clothing even if it means half-starvation during the month.

38. Swingjugend (wing Youth) was an underground counter-culture in Nazi Germany comprised of youth who loved jazz and swing. They gathered in secret dance halls and opposed the Hitler Youth.

39. Several schools in Utah banned students from wearing the phrases “Drug Free” and “Stay sober” due to a violent straight edge subculture.

40. There is a youth subculture in Ireland called the Dublin Pony Kids. These boys and girls camp with their horses in front yards or on city wasteland.