MTHRBORD
Sign in Cart 0

§ MTHRBORD · From the underground · MMXXVI

Protecting
Underground Culture.

The Underground and the Americanization of Art — the joy of creating becomes the curse of keeping up.
§ A letter
It has been awhile since I have spoken my mind but I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now, watching the same cycle repeat itself across different underground scenes — and I feel like I need to revisit it again because it’s becoming more clear to many what is going on.
§ The pattern
There is a way of thinking that continually finds its way into underground culture, and every time it does, it slowly strips away the very things that made those scenes worth participating in. Every cycle we tend to call it something else but this time I really think it is simply just the Americanization of Art.
§ Naming it
The reason I use those words is to simply bring the point across: Americanization of Art is the hyper-capitalistic push that views overshadowing others always come first. That every project should reach more people than the last. That success is measured by constant visibility and leans toward overshadowing the people that made it possible for art to be heard and seen. This mindset has become one of the most unhealthy influences on modern underground culture and it’s becoming unsustainable for the purists in 2026. Artists begin chasing validation through numbers and algorithms instead of creativity, exploration, and self-respect: the joy of creating becomes the curse of keeping up.
§ The reasons
There are several reasons I call it out and reject this mindset:
§ Reason 01
The art becomes secondary.

When overshadowing others becomes the goal in the pursuit of ‘relevancy’, the purpose of the art form stops being the priority. People begin creating for ‘content’ and attention instead of creating for a deep part of themselves. Creation becomes content, and content is disposable.

Creating should leave room for exploration, experimentation, and innovation. Not everything needs to appeal to everyone. Some of the most important work only finds the people it was meant to reach. My favourite work was made by digging through deep archives on Soundcloud and other corners of the internet. If you’re reading this I’m sure you have the same kind of experience as well in some similar form.

§ Reason 02
It rewards bad actors.

I truly cannot stand this one. Attention has become its own currency, for some even more important than money and sadly more important than the people that helped each other grow in underground communities.

Instead of earning respect through their work, people manufacture drama, create divisions, and chase controversy because it generates attention. Validation from complete strangers becomes more valuable than the respect of the people building the culture beside you.

Over time, this destroys the communities. People burn out, leave, and search for healthier spaces. Eventually those new spaces attract the same mindset, and the cycle begins again. Sadly, I watched it happen for decades and the protection of communities is something truly important.

§ Reason 03
It creates unnecessary pressure and undermines creativity.

The expectation that every piece of work must outperform the last turns creativity into an almost guaranteed form of burn-out and it’s a never-ending cycle. Imagine the pressure of constantly banging your head against the wall to produce the same or ‘better’ results — and for some, for years. Artists feel pressured to become perfectionists, remain visible, and prove their relevance. The peace that once came from creating art slowly gave way to anxiety.

It’s a very unhealthy way of looking at your self-worth. The whole way of looking at worth should really be meditated upon by people in the modern age.

§ The first step
If something doesn’t feel right anymore then the first step is to acknowledge a problem is there. Some people can go ahead and chase the mainstream and that’s fine — but putting people down and trying to change the essence of what the underground is should never be tolerated. The positive sides of the underground are vastly superior to the alternative.
§ Signed, the underground

Long Live {em}The Underground.{/em}