So true. Yesterday my wife and I took a walk through the local mall and stopped in a "Spencers" store. We had not been in one for at least 20 years. Spencers caters to the youth of America and pop culture. It is supposed to be a edgy store. It was a place to get prank mugs and funny tee-shirts back when I was young
What we saw was not edgy, it was appallingly ugly and brutish. Thugs glorified. Sex glorified. Curse words on many many items. I felt like it was the pit of hell. I avoid pop culture as a rule, so I expected thing to be different, but I was shocked by the level depravity on display.
That is an exact parallel to the clean kid/dirty kid analogy. Hot Topic has “rubbed off” on Spencers.