Band authenticity or scene elitism?

I was wondering if your scene has/had local rues on how crust punk or band merchandise "should" be done, for example When i was getting into it i was always told only buy band merchandise from shows (this came from a hardcore straight edge friend of mine, so it wasn't because he wanted to stay an anarchist or DIY). I kind of think that it's a good rule, but i'm curious if others here have same idea. Clearly some don't since people are ordering shirts from crust websites on here.

I also got the idea here that using sewing machines was very fashion punk, but hand stiching also seemed fashionable to me.

Another question i had would be that i heard a rumor that the band defiance were nazi punks?

 

Just a rumor i heard. I was able to see them here once and during a quiet part of the song while they were playing someone yelled "You're fat!" to them and it sounded really loud and clear, then they played an hostile song back.

 

Edit: Sorry for writting an entite essay, i just have a lot to say.

I completely agree with you, as someone who has been the 'poser' and the elitist, and as someone who has regretted being an elitist.

I think the idea is to stop the corpritization of the subculture, that has happened to many other subcultures, like rap/hiphop, industrial, emotional hardcore. Teens that are new to the subculture cop the look, and support companies owned by the companies cashing into trends set by movies, if enough unsuspecting people buy in to it, becomes a permanent mall commercialization. Similarly to the permanent variety of band shirts in markets.

The problem happens when people of the subculture authorize to new people how the subculture 'should' be done to contradictorily keep it good/creative. Their idea is that people will use up the scene then move on to the next to try the fashion out, leeching the scene of creativity for a fad.

It's safe when a subculture stays small. When they grow too big they lose their purpose. Hiphop/rap was all about living in the ghetto and selling drugs in poverty, but once the media took over it, it became about being rich with a ghetto mentality, despite the protest from original rap artists. Punk already had a laughable mass media pacification around the 2000s-2005s when mtv was passing pop-punk as the standard. My point is that once something gets too big it becomes a farge made by the rich and powerful, kind of like how misandrist the 3rd wave feminism movement is right now, compared to the 2nd wave, or nerd culture. Even classist subculture can be inverted and humiliated like what biker gangs are now.

If there are too many new people it changes a meta for the culture, if there are too few new people the scene dies, unless of course the city is known enough to attractive a constant flow of bands like San Fransisco.

There is also the elitism of feeling like a special snowflake for having the look and being resistant to others 'ruining' it when you could have a friend who likes what you like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA (Portlandia is pretty hit and miss comedy show, but a lot of it's premises deal with this subculture and the other leftist ones surrounding it, i highly suggested it if you can relate to their somewhat funny parody of counter culture.) They also take on crusties/oogles/gutterpunks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYIqBG1v8BY this particular clip leads me to two points, as well as a very common criticism of the subculture from the outsider's prespective.

I was told by a friend that crusties look like they're mocking the poor by glorifying in the culture's fashion? My answer to this was that i never considered punk fashion as "poor", When someone looked poor, they were badly dress. As in the wore sweat pants and an old shirt of something irrelevant, but sweat pants were affluent and fashionable a few decades ago, and my connotation of poverty-stricken patch fashion was 1600 peasants. To me punks were more like a spin off of bike gang fashion.

What do you think of class mattering for the subculture, like rich crusties? I actually had a friend who was a mansion rich crustie.

I was also wondering what you thought of the crusty page of this counter-counter culture site
http://www.dobi.nu/yourscenesucks/ (yeah, for some reason i can't link to the actual page) They have crusty as well as street punk, and i was curious of everyone's thoughts on the descriptions.