It’s something different.
If you're going to cast anarchism as "culture," I just have to ask... what does this "culture" actually offer the rest of the working class?
Are you sure of that?
Yep. The rebellious teens who drew it everywhere here back in the nineties was doing so because the anarchy symbol was "popularised" during the Satanic Panic of the late eighties - and I can assure you that most of the kids who did so are now full-blown fascists.
But in the context that I exist in normal people do not act anarchically.
Neither do anarchists - I have yet to meet an anarchist who has successfully "opted out" of the capitalist mode of production. If they could there'd be no need for anarchism, would there? There may be some extremely privileged ones who gets to do so... but I have no interest in what they have to say. Politics that aren't rooted in the experience of the working class is less than useless to any leftist.
One of the joys of anarchism is getting to choose where you belong.
But do you? Anarchists can pretend that they are "choosing" this or that... but their choices are subject to the mathematics of the capitalist mode of production no differently than the (so-called) "normies" in the working class. Counter-culture can provide a safe-space socially, but it cannot provide you with an economic one - unless you're Chumbawumba, I suppose.
I could never be on the front lines.
Well, neither can I... my health isn't what it used to be (and it wasn't really all that good to start off with), but that's not what this is about. It's about understanding the true nature of revolution... and the inevitable counter-revolution.