The Viewpoint November EXTRA

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EDITORIAL Marijuana usage has been a growing factor in teenagers’ lives and, to many, it seems to be getting out of hand.

Ultimately, the problems with marijuana differ from those associated with tobacco. It is not seen as physically addictive, but it can often become mentally addictive, which can result in emotional and financial issues.

Sure, marijuana is not as physically harmful as tobacco, but responses to the drug vary wildly. Marijuana can cause an enjoyable high, but can also result in paranoia or overly impulsive behaviors. Safe marijuana use is all about moderation, something teenagers are not typically the best at.

Support for the legalization of marijuana is on the rise, with eight states allowing recreational use. Even when marijuana was illegal in all 50 states, it didn’t stop people from getting their hands on it. However, according to PBS Newshour, a survey performed by the federal government shows that “the average potency of pot has more than tripled in the past two decades,” and that trend is continuing.

As marijuana becomes more potent and more readily accessible, safe usage becomes even more important. If marijuana were to be legalized in a state, there should be commercials and public service announcements implemented to raise awareness of the effects, dangers, and consequences of irresponsible marijuana use. They should be similar to

November 2016 Volume XI Issue III

Managing Editors

Hailey Bullis Morgan Ocetnik

existing media campaigns promoting awareness of the use of cigarettes or alcohol to at least show the potential problems with the drug, so that the public is well informed.

Although everyone is responsible for their own actions and decisions, it is still important that officials make the public, and especially teenagers with developing brains, aware of the disadvantages of marijuana, since habitual behavior can develop quickly.

The thing is that teenagers are smarter than some give them credit for. If you tell them that marijuana is made of razor blades and snake venom and that using it once will make their heads explode, they’ll use it once, realize you were lying, and assume you’re also lying about all the long-term negative effects (as well as, potentially, those of other drugs).

It’s important to provide teenagers with information that isn’t just exaggerated fear-mongering nonsense, but is instead accurate fact. Otherwise, teenagers will assume marijuana has no negative effects whatsoever, or, perhaps, that heroin and crystal meth are perfectly okay.

Whether or not this drug ever becomes legalized in the state of Virginia, the decision to use marijuana is not one to be taken lightly and, as with any choice in life, people should be informed of the possible consequences of their actions.

Social Media Editors

Lexi Strawder Abbey Whitehead Copy Editors

Leah Garza Reagan King

Photography Editor

Emilee Holmquist Extra Editor

Paige Doerfler Briefs Editor

Ruby Jackson Adviser

Trisha Strahl The Viewpoint is a cross-section of the news and opinions of the student body of Mountain View High School. It is a forum of expression published by aPrintis. Letters to the editorial board are welcome and should be submitted to rooms 303 or 311.

Staff Writers

Jenny Bullers, Nicholas Chechak, Charlotte Hazard, Damien Veal, Austin Venable, Adam Skoloda, Sophie Perez

Feature Figure

Jenny Bullers

by Jenny Bullers

The up and coming Pingpong Club has ascended the Mountain View chain of popularity, drawing a lot of attention to this underrated sport. The club was started seven years ago by Zack Ranberger, a former student of Mountain View. Initially, it was not popular. Senior Pingpong Club captain, Connor Walls said, “The thing about Pingpong Club is that it didn’t really get big until this year. Forever ago it was just about five guys slapping the ping pong ball back and forth, but this year it prospered; it blossomed.”

Club supervisors Megan Taylor and Brian Eanes watch over the Pingpong Club practices every Wednesday after school. Pingpong Club was well advertised on the announcements during school which led to 40 students attending tryouts. “So many students showed up that we had to cut kids and even make a JV and varsity team,” said Walls.

A predicament arose when a fire marshall attempted to cut the program, claiming the tables underneath the stairs were a fire hazard. As a result, they cut the JV team completely leaving only the chosen varsity players. This was not in the game plan for the Pingpong Club, but in order to not have the entire program cut, they did what needed to be done. Now, the club only has one table under the staircase rather than three.

A common practice consists of students coming to Taylor’s room, half of them hitting pingpong balls against the wall to warm-up and the other half getting the games going so that they can play each other.

“The club’s ultimate goal is to be able to play against North Stafford High School because they have a Pingpong Club as well,” said Walls.

“I see it [Pingpong Club] as a great way for people to play a sport that is good for the mind, body, and soul. It helps with getting active in the community and school activities,” said junior Caleb Stuart. The students in the club agree that it is a good experience that they have definitely benefited from.

“Pingpong Club has ultimately shifted my life into a whole new level where I can only become the best person I can be. It has changed my life; I get to go out with the boys and ping the pong,” said Walls.

This club has brought students of Mountain View together in a fun and active way. However, there is a lot of competition that takes place behind the scenes as well, which keeps things interesting and improves the players’ ability to deal with pressure and sportsmanship, just like any other sport would.

Front Cover Hailey Bullis Paige Doerfler 2014-2016 Virginia High School League State Championship First Place Award Winner 2013, 2014, 2015 Free Lance-Star Best Over All Newspaper 2011 Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Medalist 2011, 2010 and 2009 Virginia High School League First Place Award Winner

Mountain View High School 2135 Mountain View Rd. Stafford, VA 22556

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November AT MOUNTAIN VIEW Electrify your strings by Leah Garza

Reagan King, SCA president

by Damien Veal Senior Reagan King is having her first year as SCA president but what has she done to help the school?

King says there wasn’t much to build off from the previous student council but there are the events the SCA always does. The SCA focuses on events that involve the whole school such as pep rallies and homecoming, whereas class officers focus more specifically on their grade level. King explained that the events the SCA does takes extensive planning throughout both the school year and the summer. The school has recently became a part of Jostens which supports for better relationships between students and teachers. Events like “Adopt a family” which gives food and gifts back to people who need it during holiday seasons, are run by the SCA as well. These drives have done very well at our school helping give back to the community.

During the VSA convention there is an achievement award given to schools who fill out the requirements for the award. In recent years the SCA hasn’t put Mountain View in the running. This year Mountain View has been put in and will hopefully be selected to win the award. King has also been working for new bylaws for the SCA which hasn’t been written for The Mountain View council. She plans to give students more support in the school and more events to get students more positive reinforcements in the school.

Many good changes have come from King’s time in the SCA council and hopefully more to come.

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Professional violinist Mark Wood visited Mountain View High School to perform a concert with orchestra students from Stafford County High Schools on October 27. In the days leading up to the concert, Wood held a workshop for the students, teaching them performance and technical skills in a fun, interactive manner. The event was organized through the combined efforts of the county’s Fine and Performing Arts Coordinator, Anna Marie Bellino, and the county’s five high school orchestra directors, including Mountain View’s orchestra teacher, Mr. McDonald.

The concert opened with a strings rendition of “Carry on My Wayward Son” by Kansas and continued with numerous covers of classic rock songs like Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die”and Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” Wood’s favorite song to perform.

Wood is a former member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, an Emmy-winning composer, and the founder of Wood Violins, the first company to make electric violins. During the event, he spoke about the importance of teaching music in schools, saying, “We gotta communicate heart to heart, eye to eye… We must constantly fight for the arts.” He also raffled off one of his electric violins to raise money for the orchestra program.

School Board Meeting by Sophie Perez On November 26th the Stafford County School Board held a work session to discuss possible redistricting in the upcoming years of 2017 and 2018. The redistricting would involve taking students from Colonial Forge and transferring them to North Stafford and here to Mountain View. The reasoning behind this is that Colonial Forge is highly over populated and their numbers are only expected to rise whereas North Stafford and Mountain View have room to spare. Some specific things that the school board members look at while discussing redistricting of Colonial Forge students are if there are any specific programs offered there that could have an impact on population and could be taken out. Another is that even with Colonial Forge’s current additions being built they still do not have enough classroom space. If redistricting does happen, the board will try to keep as many current students at Colonial Forge as possible and will mainly have rising ninth graders be redistricted. If any rising ninth grader wants to remain at Colonial Forge, they will have to provide themselves with a ride as no busses will be provided to areas not districted for Colonial Forge.

Solutions that have been suggested included adding trailer classrooms and even adding a new school in the next 10 years, although that option is much more unlikely.

Helping Hunger Maintaining a family can be difficult but, with the help of food drives, parents can now feed their families by Adam Skoloda

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of Americans are reliant upon food banks and pantries

About Holiday Drives According to USA Today, 1 in 7 Americans are reliant upon food banks, and according to Feeding America, 1 in 8 Americans struggle with hunger.

Everybody in America should be aware that there are less fortunate people all over this country, and that there is always something that can be done to help.

According to USA Today there is a network of about 203 food banks in America. Feeding America is the most successful organization in feeding families across the nation.

Feeding America Feeding America is the nationwide program founded in 1979 to settle hunger in America.

According to Feeding America, they have provided over 3 billion meals. They have more than 60,000 food pantries and programs.

Today there are approximately 318.9 million people living in the United States today. Feeding

According to Feeding America, they have more than 60,000 food pantries and programs America has provided for over 46 million people in the US. Which means that Feeding America has benefited for about 14.4% of today’s American population.

It doesn’t seem like much, but 46 million people is a lot of people. According to Worldometers.info, Spain’s population is approximately 46 million.

Local Food Banks Fredericksburg has a regional food bank which helps provide food for Caroline County, Fredericksburg, King George County, the Locust Grove community, Spotsylvania County and Stafford County.

Also Stafford has a program called S.E.R.V.E. which stands for Stafford Emergency Relief through Volunteer Efforts. They also have an Emergency Assistance Food Pantry.

In addition, the FCCLA had a food drive here.

The American Legion needed help from Mountain View to raise cans for a food drive. The FCCLA had help from the TSA, HOSA, the Step Team, the Hon-

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of Americans struggle with hunger ors Society, and the secretaries from the front office.

Together they raised just under 700 cans.

“The American Legion should be excited,” said Mrs. Hederer, the advisor for the FCCLA. Hederer also stated, “We did really well, it was a success.”

Importance Food drives are an important part of so many Americans’ lives. It’s all they’ve got, and some rely on food drives with their lives.

Food drives are available at schools all the time to help provide for families during the holidays.

This is a particularly tough time for parents to feed their families because, unlike at any other time, their children can get lunch at school.

People just need to think – one in seven Americans rely on food drives, and one in eight Americans go hungry. Peoples’ lives depend on you giving.

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Days of the week How can the day of the week affect the way you act in class? by Damien Veal The phrase “I hate Mondays” has been said countless times by almost everyone. But does Monday really affect you that much? How does the day of the week affect the average student?

Mon.

Tues.

Wed.

Thurs. Fri.

Monday is the end of the weekend, which is why so many people despise the day. But how do people act differently each day? “I just don’t talk to people,” said sophomore Cassie Rafael on how she acts on a Monday. She said people act different according to the day of the week: “On Mondays everybody looks tired; on Fridays everybody looks happy.”

Tuesday is neither the beginning nor the end of the week. “It’s the day after Monday,” said sophomore Esmael Akbary. Akbary said he doesn’t usually see a change in how people act on Tuesdays. He said he just drinks coffee to help himself stay awake on a Tuesday and that the only thing about Tuesday is that it’s better than Monday.

Also referred to as “Hump Thursday is widely seen as Friday is the day before the merely the day before Fri- weekend. Friday leads into Day,” Wednesday is the middle of the week. Many day or the day before the the weekend and days off teachers say that students weekend. Many students of work or school, which is what makes people love are most involved in class get more excited as the week goes by, which can the day so much. Most on Wednesday because students aren’t too excited make them more involved students tend to be almost for the weekend, but also in class but also more dis- hyperactive on Fridays, aren’t too tired from Mon- tracted by things outside ready for their days out of of school for the upcoming school. Even stocks tend to day. However, Akabary rise in an anomaly known said that he is most active weekend. as “the weekend effect.” in class on a Friday rather than any other day of the week because he is excited for the weekend.

According to Behavior Finance, “The weekend effect (also known as the Monday effect, the day-of-theweek effect, or the Monday seasonal) refers to the tendency of stocks to exhibit relatively large returns on Fridays compared to those on Mondays. This is a particularly puzzling anomaly because, as Monday returns span three days, if anything, one would expect returns on a Monday to be higher than returns for other days of the week due to the longer period and the greater risk.”

In a survey done by Sreeram Panicker, the day of the week had no correlation with people’s mood. In a survey done by Sreeram Panicker, the day of the week had no correlation with people’s mood as they could not find a pattern with how people’s emotions changed throughout the week. This means that the day of the week alone doesn’t change someone’s mood completely.

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On the brink of death

Today, over 16,304 species are on the endangered list due to over-hunting, water pollution, habitat destruction, and more. The Endangered Species Act protects these animals by preventing the selling, trading, and killing of endangered species by Ruby Jackson

Hammerhead Shark As the first shark to be protected by the United States Endangered Species Act [2014], the Hammerhead Sharks have a wide head and eyes, which allows them to have a better visual range than most sharks.

Their pointed, large fins are in high demand in Asia and are used for shark fin soup. This soup is illegal in the European Union, Australia, and the United States. To get the fins for this soup, the sharks, preferably young, are caught in nets by poachers who cut their fins off and throw them back into the water to die. Since they cannot swim and survive without their fins, they die a slow death.

These fins are highly valued and are sold for anywhere from 40 to 100 dollars.

However, placing a ban on the finning of sharks is only part of the problem. Hammerhead sharks are the victims of overfishing and are frequently caught in nets and killed instead of released. While some countries have laws in place for this, they are sometimes ignored and rarely enforced.

The population of Hammerhead Shark population has decreased 80 percent over the last few decades. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) offers an option to adopt these and is working to help stop overfishing of all ocean animals and to reduce the demand and regulate the trade for shark fin soup by making it illegal in more countries. The WWF has proposed legislation for all governments, and said, “We aim to ensure both sharks and rays are harvested more sustainably, yielding practical benefits for people without compromising marine ecosystems.”

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African Elephant

Red Panda

A previous symbol of God and royalty, the African Elephant has experienced huge population declines in the past 40 years due to high levels of poaching and deforestation, as well as increasing urban development.

African Elephants were named an endangered species in 1978 and many efforts, including legislation, have been made in order to repopulate and ensure the survival of the species.

Despite the efforts being made, ivory, produced by African Elephants, is still in high demand and is illegally trafficked in many countries including Tanzania and Kenya. In order to obtain ivory, elephants are murdered and stripped of their tusks. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, over tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year for ivory trade. These traffickers are rarely caught and if they are, they are leniently prosecuted and face little to no punishment.

In 1989, the United States placed a ban on nearly all ivory entering the country.

This paved the way for the establishment of the African Elephant Conservation Fund, which has since received millions of dollars from Congress to help prevent the extinction of the African Elephant. The fund does everything possible to help, including working with farmers to ensure an ample water supply, expanding ranger presence, and funding forest reserves.

“I think that signing petitions to stop the demand of ivory is the easiest and cheapest way to save the elephants, because all you have to do is go to an organization’s website and add your name to their list.

Many organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund let you ‘adopt’ a wild animal, the money going towards conserving your adopted animal’s habitat,” said sophomore Angela Tran.

Located in countries like Nepal and China, Red Pandas prefer high altitude habitats and spend most of their time in trees. However, due to deforestation and sport killings, the Red Panda has suffered a 50 percent population decline over the last two decades and there are estimated to be less than 10,000 left.

Because of the growth of agriculture due to human population increase in the eastern Himalayas, deforestation has resulted in the loss of nesting trees and habitats for Red Pandas. Their diet consists mainly of bamboo, and since it won’t grow back if cut down, their food supply has been heavily diminished. The Red Panda is also poached for supplies like pelts, meats, and medicines.

The World Wildlife Fund has worked with farmers and herders in the Himalayas in order to lessen the human impact on the species. For example, they have come up with alternate ways of making fire without burning wood and limiting the amount of traps set (Red Pandas often get caught in traps set for pigs and deer). They worked with several countries in order to establish poaching laws with heavy fines and up to 10 years in prison as the punishment for selling, killing, or buying pelts of Red Pandas. The World Wildlife Fund, along with other several other organizations around the world, has set up donation and adoption websites. This money goes towards the effort of saving and repopulating the Red Pandas.

“I think that people can raise awareness [for Red Pandas] by doing charity events and donating money,” said Jessica Jerrell.

ocean views Since The Great Barrier Reef’s discovery in 1770, it has been considered one of Earth’s most beautiful natural wonders. Despite this, could humans be taking a bigger part in its destruction than we realize? By Sophie Perez, artwork by Madison Sparks

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he Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of Queensland, Australia and is the largest coral reef in the world. According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Life Authority (GBRMA), it is also home to over 30 species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Approximately 215 species of birds visit the reef islands and six species of turtles lay their eggs there. Clearly, it’s an understatement to say that the Great Barrier Reef has a diverse ecosystem.

It has long been considered an amazing attraction, but its beauty could be coming to an end.

Climate change is considered the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs around the world. Ideal water temperatures for the reef range from 86 degrees fahrenheit in the summer to 75 degrees fahrenheit in the winter, but since 1929, ocean temperatures have risen more than 33 degrees fahrenheit. Temperature increase around the reef changes not only the environment and the species that are able to live in it, but also causes coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is an all too common problem with much more serious effects than meet the eye. When coral bleaching is initiated on a coral reef, the algae that provides the coral with food and its vibrant colors begin to die and fall off. This leaves the coral without their main source of food, creating

a bleached white look. This is the first step in a long and dismal chain reaction. Once the coral dies, the small fish who once inhabited it no longer have shelter so they either leave the reef or die off. When the smaller fish are gone, this leaves no food source for larger fish which in turn leaves no food for even larger inhabitants, such as dolphins.

Other factors in the Great Barrier Reef’s declining health are different types of pollution and tourism.

A common problem that the reef faces is fertilizer runoff from farms. The fertilizers smother the coral, preventing access to sunlight and making it even more susceptible to coral bleaching. Unfortunately, some of the people who come to admire the reef don’t always leave it as clean as it was before they arrived. This of course can be prevented by tour guides and scuba instructors explaining the importance of cleanliness to the reef’s visitors. Thankfully, there are many organizations, such as Fight for the Reef, that are dedicated to protecting the reef. Sophomore Emma Barchanowicz said, “I think that the declining health of the Great Barrier Reef is partially our fault and I would definitely donate to help save it and the organisms it’s home to.” If you feel as strongly about this matter as many others, you can donate or just spread awareness by educating yourself and discussing it with your friends.

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Evolution of the Family

As with many other words, the meaning of “family” has changed over the years. The normal family isn’t so normal anymore. by Austin Venable

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hen people hear the word “family,” they often think of the stereotypical “nuclear family”; the family that has both parents present. The family in which the father goes to work and earns the money for expenses, while the mother stays home to raise the children or perhaps has a part-time job to help make ends meet.

This family has two kids, ideally a boy and a girl.

The boy plays sports and does well in school, and the girl is intelligent and

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soft spoken. Everyday, this family comes home after school and work. They sit down, have dinner, and talk about their days.

They laugh and discuss their plans for later in the week. After dinner, the kids do their homework and chores and are free to hang out with their friends.

Then they all go to bed, ready to repeat the cycle the next day.

While 56 percent of families in the United States are still considered the “nuclear family” (Pew Research), this number is declining quickly-- and is down from a watermark high of 73 percent in 1960.

There are so many reasons as to why a person may not have a nuclear family. Some examples are death of a parent, divorce, living with extended family members, same-sex couples, being an only child, being raised by a single parent, etc., showing

that this idea of a nuclear family isn’t always realistic.

Senior Ciboné Everette didn’t grow up in this stereotypical family structure . Due to extenuating circumstances, her father was not present in her life, and her mother was unable to raise her. Therefore, Everette lived with her aunt and uncle during childhood.

“It affected me because I had to move to Stafford and switch from a private to a public school. I couldn’t go to school with the friends I grew up with anymore,” she said.

Living in a non-traditional family may have consequences for children that may be present.

Single parent households are usually at an economic disadvantage because they lack a second income.

A study conducted by Princeton University shows that this may cause poorer academic performance,

self-esteem issues, and problems developing romantic relationships later in life.

Other problems that are much more pronounced for children of these families are drug use, higher rates of unemployment, and depression Still, others argue that non-traditional families may be a good thing. In the Princeton study, it was shown those that come from non-traditional families may have a greater sense of responsibility. In another study by the British Sociological Association, it was shown that there was almost no difference in overall happiness between traditional families and non-traditional families. It concluded that the biggest factor in determining a child’s happiness is how the child is treated by their guardians. In addition, children of traditional families

may be affected greatly by arguments between the mother and father.

A study conducted by child psychologist Dr. Martin Ruble concluded that children learn the concept of gender specific behaviors and tasks by watching their guardians.

Children from traditional families were shown to be much more compliant with traditional gender roles, whereas children of non-traditional families were a bit more flexible with this concept. This is thought to be caused by a sense of greater responsibility and independence that is often fostered by living in a non-traditional home.

Overall, as many things continue to change, the definition of what makes a “family” may very well change from what is common place now.

Disintegration How rock music killed its own popularity through fragmentation

By Nick Chechak

Rock music is no longer the cultural vanguard it once was. Over the course of the past decade or so, the genre has fallen almost completely out of the mainstream consciousness, and fallen hard. Even “alternative music” radio stations, once the last bastion of rock music in the mainstream, have turned to faux-80s synthpop in an attempt to stay relevant and “down with the kids.”

Rock isn’t “dead,” per se–it’s just left the building. For all intents and purposes, rock has long since forfeited its status as the leading genre in popular music.

Ten or so years ago, when both pop and “alternative” radio stations were dominated by the headache-inducing sounds of 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Hinder, and Puddle of Mudd, this seemed unthinkable. Who could have predicted that these bands would actually be the excruciating death throes of mainstream rock? It seems rock suddenly entered hibernation right in the middle of a new commercial peak. How in the world did that happen?

Taken out of context, it seems pretty simple. These bands were terrible.

They represented the stagnation of a genre that had remained under the popular lens for far too long, fermenting into an unpleasant post-grunge stew. Clearly, everyone was tired of hearing about daddy issues from 40-year-old men with distortion pedals, so they looked elsewhere for musical entertainment.

In reality, however, things are a bit more complicated. Only in the most popular subgenres was rock completely stagnant. Even in the late 2000s, plenty of bands were producing innovative rock music–Ulver, LCD Soundsystem, Porcupine Tree–it’s just that they were doing so in increasingly distinct niches. The true problem with rock lies not in stagnation, but in fragmentation.

For an explanation of the underlying cause of this phenomenon, we must begin in 1969 – the peak of psychedelic rock. Acid was happening. Vietnam was happening. Making pottery and organic yogurt while doing yoga in cloth tents was happening. Rock had already been the dominant genre of popular music for several years, but only now were bands first starting to experiment with it, mixing rock with other genres and newly developed techniques.

The Beatles were seen as the spearheads of this movement, with their opus “Abbey Road” topping charts upon its release in September. It was during the following month, however, that the year’s most important album found its way onto the shelves. In October, English band King Crimson released their groundbreaking album “In the Court of the Crimson King.” This was the album that kickstarted the fragmentation of rock music.

Building on the innovations of The Mothers of Invention and The Soft Machine, “In the Court of the Crimson King” saw King Crimson blending rock with lush orchestration and jazzy improvisation, demonstrating levels of technical skill and compositional density never before heard in rock music. This album created progressive rock–a subgenre based in grandiosity, complexity, and classical instrumentation–virtually overnight, paving the way for more popular adopters like Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Rush. Throughout the early 1970s, as progressive rock gained more and more mainstream recognition, its complexity increased. By the middle of the decade, bands like Gong, Magma, and Gentle Giant were producing multi-tiered conceptual records of such obscurity and abstruseness that many rock fans were simply left confused. As fascinating as these records were, the masses were getting fed up with the whole idea. And thus began the second step of the fragmentation: the punk rebellion.

Okay, so not that much of a rebellion, given that most of the early bands were made up of affluent middle-class white guys making easy music for a laugh. Regardless, it was the release of The Ramones’ self-titled debut in 1976 that formed the basis of a new subgenre. Made up of extremely low-skill, high-tempo pop rock, the album is seen as the impetus of punk rock, a genre that rejected the overblown complexity of progressive rock in favor of fast, simple, brutal power chords. For the first time, rock fans were split between two camps: you could either maintain your allegiance to the eggheads of the

progressive rock movement, or subscribe to the punk ethos, which labeled itself a return to the populist roots of rock and roll.

As punk rock expanded in the late 1970s, it essentially became a microcosmic representation of rock itself, splitting into several different movements that rejected association with the others. Wire and Television, among others, created art punk, which eventually turned into post-punk. Black Flag and The Dead Kennedys brought about hardcore punk, leading to a variety of hyper-specific subgenres, while local movements such as Oi! sprung up across the globe.

This brings us to the 1980s, likely rock music’s most confused period. The many offspring of punk each vied to gain mainstream traction, while hard rock, which had been splitting the difference between progressive and punk since the mid-70s, developed into roots rock and hair metal. In the underground, post-punk mutated into gothic rock and new wave, which often veered dangerously close to pop and electronic music, while hardcore influenced the beginnings of noise rock. With hair metal doing radio duty, all these underground subgenres had time to mature as undisturbed wellsprings of innovation, eventually gaining recognition in the “college rock” boom of the late 1980s. And by the time the 90s rolled around, they were ready once again to enter the mainstream.

The album that made it all happen was Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” the official and eternal musical embodiment of self-righteous teen angst. Released in 1991, the album was the magnum opus of the grunge movement, which had found an audience in the Pacific Northwest as a combination of hardcore punk, sludge metal, and indie rock. “Nevermind” was the last album to unify the rock fandom under a single musical banner, but it was also the album that led to the fragmentation we see today. When Nirvana dragged “underground” and “independent” music into the limelight, they brought with them their myriad subgenres. When grunge died down with the death of Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter in 1994, those that had been fans of the genre found themselves deciding between the numerous alternative rock subgenres that vied for attention in its wake. Neo-psychedelia, pop punk, emo, post-grunge, Britpop, post-rock, slowcore–everyone was forced to take a side, with post-grunge ultimately reigning supreme in the mainstream.

And now we’ve reached the state of rock music today. Unlike pop, which has no real subgenres of its own, or hip hop, which by the mid-1990s had managed to unify much of its fanbase, rock music has splintered into an ever-growing number of small but devoted factions. As such, rock no longer has the cultural clout to sell itself in the mainstream. This all appears remarkably similar to the story of jazz; by the 1970s, jazz had lost its mainstream audience, due in large part to its splitting into cool jazz, fusion, free jazz, smooth jazz, avant-garde jazz, and a million other subgenres. It appears that rock has gone the way of jazz.

So is this fragmentation an inevitability? Perhaps not. Pop has managed to stay on top of the charts for six decades now without splitting apart, although that may be due to the fact that its only defining characteristics are catchiness and accessibility. What about hip hop, the leading genre in pop innovation today? It may take a different course, given that it is driven by a once-divided fanbase that gradually unified. But as I discussed in my last article, the Internet has revealed significant rifts in that fanbase not unlike those between progressive rock and punk rock–one prefers technical skill and intellectualism, while the other prefers simplistic populism.

In the end, though, it’s all speculation. There is no one reason why rock’s fanbase disintegrated, or why hip hop’s fanbase found common ground.

People simply listen to what they like, and reject what they don’t; they aren’t thinking about cultural preservation or musical fragmentation. Popular culture may be an enigma, but it’s driven by the preferences of the people, and no amount of disintegration can change that. opinion q november 2016 qthe viewpoint q13