This is the reality. The tail is much longer and thinner.
I get the feeling that the author is mourning the great late 20th century counterculture movements. They are worth missing as they did produce a ton of creativity, but the thing is that there were never many of them.
There were maybe a dozen tops: hippies, hip hop, goth, rave, punk, a few smaller or shorter lived ones.
Today there are thousands. There is no identifiable counterculture because there are too many to count and they are always popping up and dying off. I guess you could say there is one counterculture and it’s the long tail itself.
As usual William Gibson, the single most prophetic sci-fi writer, got the feel of it (but not the specifics):
“Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like wind blown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification.” - William Gibson, Neuromancer
There’s a dozen more quotes like that. That’s the first one that came to mind.
I get the feeling that the author is mourning the great late 20th century counterculture movements. They are worth missing as they did produce a ton of creativity, but the thing is that there were never many of them.
There were maybe a dozen tops: hippies, hip hop, goth, rave, punk, a few smaller or shorter lived ones.
Today there are thousands. There is no identifiable counterculture because there are too many to count and they are always popping up and dying off. I guess you could say there is one counterculture and it’s the long tail itself.
As usual William Gibson, the single most prophetic sci-fi writer, got the feel of it (but not the specifics):
“Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like wind blown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification.” - William Gibson, Neuromancer
There’s a dozen more quotes like that. That’s the first one that came to mind.