Welcome to Minority Report

Subcultures, outliers, a view from the fringe. A mix of reporting, essay and memoir.

credit: Mariam Dwedar

I’m Sanjiv, an “English” reporter based in LA. I write about subcultures and fringe groups because I love weirdos they’re a fascinating way to make sense of the world.

I’ve been writing since flip-phones, mostly for GQ and Esquire, where I interviewed a ton of celebrities, several tons, (and yes there will be stories). But the rest of the time, I was off exploring the fringe, all the oddballs and outlaws, the freaks and seekers that America churns out with such abandon. I moved from London to LA around 2000 and immediately found the scale and wildness of America daunting. Subcultures seemed the most interesting way into this mad country—not quite the front door but the side hatch that leads to the crawl space…

I’ve covered pimps, Nazis, swingers, trolls, bikers, border vigilantes and sovereign citizens. Also furries, Bronies, hackers, hookers, ultra runners and sneeze fetishists (bless them). I’ll take you into all of these worlds, and more. Like the polygamists of Utah and Arizona. I fell down that rabbit hole in the 2000s during the whole Warren Jeffs saga. My investigations led to a documentary for Channel Four (UK) called “The Man With 80 Wives”. There was also a book, Secrets & Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy (Counterpoint).

Since then, I’ve found a new rabbit hole, with actual rabbits this time (or at least that’s how they identify). If you’re interested in furries and you like true crime, then stay tuned…

Why Subcultures

Lurid fascination. That’s usually how it starts. Weird obsessions, secret lives, it’s all so juicy. But then the curiosity deepens. The day I learned, for instance, that there’s a whole community of people online who can’t get off until their partner sneezes, the questions kept coming, one drawing out the next like a box of tissues. Why sneezing? How do fetishes begin? Is this an internet thing or does it go back a thousand years? What part of the human mystery does this reveal? (A post is in the works…)

I want to be clear, this is not some freak show. None of us are “normal”, whatever that means, and freaks in glass houses etc. Besides, once I get chatting to a sneeze fetishist or polygamist—or any other ‘other’ for that matter—I’m always reminded that whatever our differences, we are all human and vulnerable, born into lives we didn’t choose, and subject to forces beyond our control. And that alone is reason enough to write about subcultures.

But there are other reasons too.

1. They’re a window into society

A warped window, perhaps. A lens. The fringe is always a comment on the mainstream, it circumscribes the center and contains it. Every society is defined by its edges.

2. They force us out of our comfort zones.

Which is never a bad thing. It’s healthy to look at life a little differently from time to time, and stress-test our assumptions. From what I can tell, there’s a lot of that going on right now anyway, which brings me to…

3. They’re more relevant than ever.

The center is not holding, to borrow a famous line. Groups and ideas that were once considered ‘out there’ are now very much ‘in here’, by which I mean, ‘in charge’. Fringe groups are actively shaping our world. We’ve succumbed so fully to technologies of fragmentation that our institutions are crumbling while feverish little subgroups grow in strength and number. The pendulum swings from majoritarian to minoritarian, the old order gives way and norms perish. We’ve entered an age of cults and madness. From Q Anon to Queers for Palestine. From Stop The Steal to Great Replacement Theory. Men can get pregnant now. Everything is racist. And the center has become a clamorous town square full of jostling out-group minorities, not just ethnic , but religious, political, ideological, sexual…

4. I’m a minority.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. My parents came to England from West Bengal around 1970 and three decades later, I left for America, as though afflicted by the same restless immigrant gene. I’ve tried living in London, Bombay, Delhi and LA, but no matter where I go, I never quite fit in. Which is probably why, out of the four, I ended up in LA—with its uncanny gravity for the untethered. And also why I’m drawn to fringe groups, because they’re outsiders too. Only they found each other and made a home, a place they belong.

To be honest, I envy them. Who doesn’t want to belong? It goes beyond the immigrant thing for me, back to when I was a squalling baby with two warring parents snapping at each other over my crib. I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in, a visitor, on the wrong side of the glass. I don’t think there’s a subculture I’ve covered that some part of me hasn’t wanted to join. Except the pimps, but we’ll get to them later.

I once gave a talk to a bunch of polygamist kids at their school in Short Creek, southern Utah. Not that the kids themselves were polygamist, they were kids, but they were part of the fundamentalist community there. You know what I mean. It wasn’t a great speech. More of a rambling account of my life as a rootless young man trying to scrape a living as a writer. Plus ca change. But I thought it might inspire some of them to break free of their dogmatic little world and venture forth, as I had done. Didn’t they want to be like me? Well, no, as it turned out. They looked up at me, puzzled, all these polite white faces. Why had I chosen a life like that? With no church, no children, no sense of home?

The bell rang and they returned to class, leaving me to walk back to the house in town where I was staying. The streets were empty, there was desert all around. A sharp wind rolled tumbleweed across the plains and whipped dust up into my eyes. And as I walked, all I wanted was to be one of those kids, to join their class on Mormon history or whatever. Not for the polygamy, but for the sense of tribe and home. The comfort of being exactly where you’re supposed to be.

I may not have found my people yet, but I’m still looking. That’s why I’m here.