Using Rushkoff’s exuberant—and often fairly well-informed—discussions of youth subcultures and their relationship to technology, students have the opportunity to explore youth writing, and writing about youth, as both critical representation and as intertextual and multi-dimensional representation. 

One of the specific youth subcultures that Rushkoff examines and that we discuss in class is rave-culture. Most students are at least somewhat familiar with raves and rave-culture, and a handful admits to having participated in raves. Others have seen either news reports about raves, and a few have cruised through raver-oriented Websites.

In his enthusiastic discussion of rave-culture, Rushkoff aruges that

This is a good example of how Rushkoff’s mid-nineties utopian sensibility links technology to nearly inevitable cultural change, inviting us to believe that computer networks, and the youth wired to and through them, will save us all from cultural stagnation and social desiccation.

How do students respond? They are often intrigued, but a little skeptical of Rushkoff’s enthusiasm. In particular, those who have actually attended raves question the seeming "inevitability" of "global community and cultural tolerance" arising out of the rave experience. For instance, students report that hierarchies in raves seem inevitable, and certain seemingly arbitrary standards of dress and even physical attractiveness "give the lie to" a rave’s tolerant community building. In this way, students begin critiquing their representation—and use—by a writer. To further the discussion and put more representations into play, we scour the Web for available sources of information about raves and rave-culture, and we invariably find a hodge-podge of information, slowly and painstakingly building a picture of what rave-culture must be like. The majority of pages we find speak positively and enthusiastically about rave-culture, such as any number of sites we found via a Web search on Google. Students frequently view the pages with a mixture of amusement and genuine interest, often commenting on the sophisticated graphics and visual rhetoric of many of the sites.

In terms of interrogating writing's connection to ideology, examining such sites shows students the creation of counter-culture. Hyperreal is clearly a community effort, with numerous links leading to contributors’ postings detailing and debating the various uses of technology, music, drugs, and raves in furthering a sense of global unity and tolerance. In some ways, dissemination of such information could be construed as an act of resistance, questioning the dominant culture’s mistrust of drugs—and technology, for that matter—and asserting youth’s right to create its own vision of the future. More specifically, in terms of the dissemination of provocative information, Hyperreal offers extensive commentary about drug usage and links to yet other numerous sources for visitors to explore and learn. Indeed, Hyperreal is quite candid and explicit about both the prevalence of drug usage at raves and their connection to the rave experience of "synchroniz[ing] our bodies and souls to the rhythms of the universe."

Following the emphasis on drug use, students noted that Hyperreal links to another prominent site about raves, Dancesafe.org, which describes itself as part of "a nonprofit, harm reduction organization promoting health and safety within the rave and nightclub community" (About).   Dancesafe provides information about drug use, seemingly focusing on Ecstasy, but does not attempt to dissuade youth from taking drugs—hence the emphasis on "harm reduction." Rather, pointing out the failure of "Just Say No" campaigns to prevent youth from taking drugs, the goal at Dancesafe is to provide sufficient information so that youth can make informed choices. In fact, the site even cites Paulo Freire in its "philosophy" section, which maintains that Dancesafe’s "goal is to increase the ability of our peers to positively influence their own health and safety, by providing the tools and information needed to make informed decisions."

As we saw with Rushkoff and Hyperreal, the assumption here is that providing information will empower youth to make choices, suggesting that "being literate" is--maybe simply--having exposure to information. At the same time, there seems to be the recognition that information should be attractively and enticingly displayed, and the use of the Web as a visual tool is not ignored: Hyperreal’s section on drugs is visually sophisticated, presenting pictures of various forms of the many drugs discussed, drop down boxes providing cross references for information, and additional color-coded links. Indeed, the "Chemistry" section of Hyperreal could serve as a case study in visual rhetoric on the Web.

As such, Hyperreal utilizes the Web’s ability to link compelling visual rhetoric with shared, community writing to create a counter-cultural site, and providing it in such a sophisticated manner represents an understanding of the importance of considering the medium in crafting community-building communication forums. This links up with Rushkoff’s understanding of how youth use technologies, such as the Web. For Rushkoff, "The screenage activist assumes a certain level of intelligence on the part of the general population and seeks to disseminate information, promote networking, and provoke action in as natural a way as possible. It amounts to a restoration of arrogant, youthful optimism" (200).

What are the political implications of such a philosophy? How is such sentiment politically used? In general, there is a lot of attractive confidence and optimism here, particularly about the continued dissemination of information to affect our social, cultural, and political institutions for the better. And such thinking finds reflection in Carla Freccero’s recent theorizing about youth, popular culture, and technology:

Rushkoff would agree too, I think.  Moreover, the ravers of Hyperreal seem to use and support a variety of technologies—from the Web to consciousness-altering synthetic drugs—to support their agenda, which has its own political intervention—global tolerance—as a goal.  But how resistant is this seeming counter-cultural site?  And how might the seductiveness of the Hyperreal Website occlude a more critical understanding or interrogation of its claims?