The High to Our Proclaimed Low: Subcultures in America, As Good As It Get's...

For all the talk of how mass culture is destroying America, and why not, let's go so far as to say the world, since the appetites of the Post War culture and lifestyle we unleashed on this world seems to have been a huge factor in our current massive environmental dilemmas, although it didn't seem so bad when you were listening to Buck Rogers on the radio, car's had fins to go with the show, and Jet Planes really did go that much faster.. there is one glimmering but apparently unrecognized high side to the all consuming consumer Home From Nowhere lost in the burbs culture that we all kind of bitch about or ignore as the elephant in the room: It has created what might be the most fascinating set of subcultures in the world.. truly.. for all the talk of Bowling Alone, as a whole, we join a hell of a lot of odd stuff..
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Just start with the Sci Fi and Fantasy worlds.. think of all those geeky little clubs you know guys belong to in places like Madison, Wisconsin and Cleveland, Ohio.. you know the guy, educated but casual, goatie and a shaved head and black rimmed glasses, thinks his job is easy, likes craft beer, steady girlfriend.. he goes to Trek Conventions (see the documentary Trekkies if you haven't).. sure he makes fun of it, but he goes.. all sorts of weird games he plays, intellectual pursuits he engages in to keep his mind lucid as he struggles to keep life going... how he wears a kilt in summer and goes on these medieval weekend retreats.. you make fun of it, but oh the fantasy of it all.. he might belong to a club that surrounds his sexual fetish to go to on Saturday night(One of the Cable Networks has a whole show dedicated to exploring this.. Real Sex.. there are women who make a living popping balloons with their clothes on in this country..) and there's the red state pursuits.. Civil War reenactment, 4x4 clubs, start with white tail deer, the rat's of the hunting world, and work up to groups that focus on wild ibex's in Kurdistan.. they have groups for it.. I am just guessing that there is some American group that if you google it they focus on wild Ibex's in Kurdistan... we are rife with odd pursuits, and stumbling upon them is such a thrill because we feel we have set the bar so low because we have come to see the norm in our country, through advertising and criticism, as one of a McMansion in the burbs, when in fact I bet only 30% of us live that way, but growing up there even, are these weird subcultures... endless amounts of them... Thanks to the 5 day work week (although we voluntarily work a lot more, so much more that I believe that despite all the claims of decadence, american' work the longest hours of anyone one earth, which might be due to the corporate slavery that goes hand in hand with the Suburban criticism, but could also be people who have these unique subculture/recreational obs and just love what they do, get obsessed with making the coolest new gun like on some discovery channel show, or work long hours to get people ready for the Nathans Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest (where else but in, you said it, America..2012, Chesnut´s 6th Victory.. GO USA!) 
Fact's may not support all this completely,  I almost don't want to look, it may be a happy fiction I tell myself to deal with the banality I encounter,  but with leisure, which reads as full bellies, safety and free time, comes intellectual exploration, and that leads us to what we have today, the Garden Club on speed, 5000 permutations into an endless experiment in new shades of ways to kill time.. and it's hard not to find it cool for all the Edward Scissorhands hate we see for what spawned it..