Well, I guess this particular point I'm about to make about the internet's impact also concerns the pop culture drones, but I liked this title better.
See, one thing that we discussed during our lecture on the internet was the blurring of the line between "underground" (culturally speaking) and "pop culture." Hipsters now have to work at only being hipster. They must isolate themselves completely from pop culture. On the flip side, the pop culture drones have to equally isolate themselves from anything that's remotely indie or unpopular. Its impossible, yet both sides still try. There are now a lot of people in the middle, or a lot of influences in the middle. For example, anime is not in any stretch of the imagination hipster or underground, but it isn't apart of pop culture. Yes, its popular, but it has a specific following of a specific group of people. Masses of people aren't just sitting around saying "You know what, I'm going to watch anime." It doesn't happen. Its in the middle of the spectrum, because of those reasons and the fact that some animes have become wildly popular (by this I mean Soul Eater, Sailor Moon, and Hetalia. Teen Titans, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, while good and definitely anime-inspired, are not animes.)
What was that seemingly pointless rant about anime for? To bring me to my next point. The internet has spread out and distributed cultural ideas such as music, books, animation styles, fashion, and ideals so that the "underground" is popular, and sometimes things ride the continuum between the two, like anime. I've also seen "popular" teenage fashion magazines have whole articles on how to look hipster!
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