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At one time, 50 or 60 years ago, yes, there was a definite counterculture that existed. At that time society as a whole rejected radical individualism, so anyone who was a jazz musician, artist, communist, or any other thing that was far out of the mainstream pretty much had to take it on their own. Parents and institutions looked down upon these people as inferior.

Unfortunately the REAL revolution in the 1960s was one where companies realize that instead of marginalizing these groups, if we package commodities for them we can tap large segments of the market. By pushing society to accept EVERYONE (which is no doubt a good thing), the counterculture of the 60s allowed companies to start mass marketing goods to the "underground". Hence the phrase "The Revolution will be commodified!"

Here is the problem, and the answer to your question (I think), and it is somewhat rooted in the philosophy of Baudrillard, Barthes, and most of the existentialists with specific regard to Kierkegaard, to name a couple. (I'll give you some ideas for reading materials in the sources). At first the movement is authentic. The people who start it have pure motives and care about the message contained. Consider the "green" movement and more specifically, maybe we can consider organic handbags.

At first the only people who wore organic handbags were those who really cared about the environment. They wore the handbags maybe because they were made with cotton grown without pesticides, or in a fair trade zone. So then a mass-producer realizes, hey, we could be making a lot of money selling organic handbags. So they package the message as a product in itself, but without regard to what the message is -- their motive is to make money, and if it weren't profitable to sell organic bags, then they wouldn't do it. The effect is that a lot more people are wearing organic handbags, but only because it is the "cool" thing to do, the original message has been lost.

Hipsters sort of fall into this category. Originally there were probably some real hipsters somewhere who really were cool people. But now the IMAGE of the hipster has been packaged and mass-produced. The image sold is a copy of the real thing, and the trend becomes to copy the copy, and somewhere along the line, the original message, the intent, is lost. The concept is called Simulacrum and I think it's what you're talking about on a larger scale.