What happens to subcultural formations when they enter the cyberspace? And how does online communication alter connections and identification with the group? Are there new forms of community in the digital phase of youth cultures, and can they be related to the theoretical insights about postmodern fluid identities and ephemeral belongings? This text continues the reflections about the new forms of post-subcultural communities, bringing together some theoretical insights about virtual identity, existing studies of virtual communities, and the results of a research on the internet forums of subcultural groups in Bulgaria.

Information from Link to Link, and from Mouth to Mouth

I feel stupid and contagious,
Here we are now: entertain us.

The Bricoleurs

Vbox7, YouTube, Facebook, and even blogs, rarely produce news. As Geert Lovink notes (Lovink, G. 2007), the chances of finding bloggers committed to carrying out independent journalistic research are slim. What online platforms do is emit a thick cloud of impressions around given news and let loose the public opinion. News are extracted from the closed circle of the traditional media and released in the open Internet space. Here, they grow thick with opinions, comments, and interpretations. It is rather telling which news arouses the interest of Internet users. The Facebook cause "Miss Bulgaria 2009 is a crocodile" might turn out to be a lot more exciting for them than the economic crisis. New media are clockwork media. It is never known for certain which news would detonate the public opinion.

The relation traditional – new media may be examined through the strategies – tactics dichotomy offered by Michel de Certeau (Certeau, M. 2002). Newspapers and television constitute the official discourse, the neutral point of view. Internet users creatively consume, use the official messages. In this case these are not necessarily technologies of resistance. Video websites offer a perfect example at hand. There we see the political entering the field of the quotidian, the entertaining, the personal reading. In other words, new media enable us to take the well-known faces out of their institutional context and plug them into self-contrived plots and narrative configurations; to act as bricoleurs at their expense and deal with the available in unexpected ways.