I recently started helping out with the Harvard Square Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Now two weeks in, I am completely intoxicated with the subculture. Lines from the movie, and call-backs, and songs, keep running through my head. I dwell on what happened last Saturday or what will happen next Saturday. I want to analyze every aspect of the culture, and figure out how it all fits together. I realize that it’s just a form of limerence, but it’s a distracting blast right now.

These are some first impressions I have. Take them not as facts but as a reflection of my perceptions, or a datapoint on a case study in learning a subculture.

• A good deal of social energy is geared to pushing each other to ever more extreme sexual deviation. Parties appear to be the main context for this, consisting largely of drinking games and sex games.
• They have a societal safeword (“yellow”), which can apply to any situation.
• Newbie-hood theoretically lasts two years, with maybe a third of party-goers falling into that category, although a much short span seems to be a more practical hazing cut-off.
• Most people self-conceive of a division in their personality between how they act during “Rocky time” and “Monday through Friday”– even if no actual division exists. There is also an information bubble around each party (“What happens at a party stays at the party.” — which is why I’m only posting in the abstract here).
• Most people enter the group through direct connections– they’re dragged in through friends.
• Most people are given a nickname.