Why does this publication get mocked?

It's trite. It's corporate. And it has nothing of merit to say. You know how people who aren't from New York think The Village Voice is awesome but when you really look at it, it's like the New Yorker minus all the stuff that actually matters? The Seattle Weekly is like that. It's pretty much the the Life Magazine to The Stranger's Vanity Fair.

Anyway I am curious, since you've got first-hand experience with the city and the scene such as it was, do you agree with the article's assertion that punk culture has had a negative effect on culture at large?

I absolutely disagree. Punk is, at its core, Dadaism. It is a transitional movement embraced short-term. Punks don't die, they move on, having been changed in some way by their passage through punk. That's why I called it "devil's advocacy" - punk is that first angry reaction against establishment, that first shot in the arm that there's something more and that what you have is corrupt. It's a pendulum and punk is at one extreme - everyone involved will eventually find their new center somewhere between "where they were" and "punk." You can't really talk about the lasting effects of ephemera - not even the Sex Pistols committed to punk for long (1975-1978). They got big because of Malcolm McLaren - who ten years later was selling out big:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxs106rp5RQ

You also mention that several of your friends, while starting out with punk, eventually found other musical cultures that they've held on to. Do you feel like those cultures contributed to the negativity that the writer mentions?

I think metal is cathartic. I think metal allows people who feel aggressive and testosterone-laden to channel their anger into harmless creative pursuits. Much as people keep trying to blame metal for all sorts of evil, metalheads are just about the chillest mutherfuckers you've ever met.

Goths?

Shit, son, Goths have been studied.

"It's a relatively middle-class subculture, so despite … all the going out and being into the music, goths have always had a fairly positive view of people who are also achieving academically."

It means goths may have better career options than an outsider might expect. Succeeding in their chosen career had, Hodkinson observes, become increasingly important to those he interviewed as they moved into their late 20s and 30s, and he was surprised by how much participants in his study were willing to adapt their look to fit in at work. "I even gave people scenarios where they couldn't wear certain things. I expected them to say that they'd have to leave [their job], but they said they'd have to seriously consider it."