Free-radical (culture)

This article is about sub-cultures. For related uses of the word, see Free-radical.

In culture, Free-radical is a term regarding a sub-cultural trend originating in the early 21st Century.

Cultural identity

People identifying themselves as Free-radicals are united by a sense of non-conformity to other sub-cultures. Although they may identify with certain elements from other groups, such as music, clothing and films, “Free-radicals” do not choose to identify with the fundamental underlying patterns of other groups, thereby making a distinction between Free-radicals and other sub-cultures. Although the Free-radical sub-culture borrows” much from other subcultures, it remains fundamentally different since members prefer to “make things up as they go”, rather than follow any defined trends. This means that people within the Free-radical group are completely unique with regard to their preference of clothing and music, for example. The group is very largely centred around the internet, and typically use it as their preferred means of communication.

Status

Free-radicalism is somewhat controversial as a "sub-culture", because it diverges from the traditional model. Other popular cultures such as the “Emo” subculture require a certain amount of uniformity, which may include hair style, clothing, music, or even sexual preference. The key difference in the Free-radical movement is a complete lack of requirements, members of the group identify with each other because of their lack of desire to belong to any other popular culture group. Too overcome this, Free-radical’s use various ways to show their allegiance as a Free-radical. This commonly involves subtle things such as displaying a badge in their online screen names. A common badge to show is “\\ ɟr \\” at the beginning the online screen name.