You said you're doing it for a paper right? So that means for some sociology class or something? Well a subculture has its own vocabulary, dress, accepted norms, etc.... So people who can use 'switch 270 on', 'gorilla steeze', and 'jib' in sentence show that they know the skiing lingo, if they have armada or line tshirts and wear bandanas and have long hair have some ski style (you can argue with that if you want, its an example), and if someone thinks that a powder day is the best thing ever and its totally worth missing work for, or that being a ski bum is ok, even though everyone else thinks its a waste of money then they have differnet values than mainstream culture. These are just examples. I'm not writing the essay. but look at what subculture means to answer this.
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'I swear she looked 17!' -My 22 year old friend talking about his 14 year old cousin