If you only consume mainstream media then you may personally live in a society which lacks a counterculture.
You strike up a conversation with the girl picking mushrooms in the middle of nowhere or you go to an underground death metal concert or spend a bit of time on 4chan and you'll find countercultures alive and well that you're just not part of.
If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then you must be looking at a woefully tiny portion of the creative world. It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness.
The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down.
Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we have that same situation now, but instead 4chan is treated like that.
BTW, just because it's not your counterculture, doesn't mean it's not counterculture. You guys are looking at this all 60 years after the fact and saying that hippies were awesome. That's not what people thought at the time. 4chan is generally anti-ukraine war and anti-vax. 60 years from now they might look like the good guys.
This is confusing cause and effect: 4chan was a countercultural force, in the same way that SA was. Countercultural forces always end the same way: they're either co-opted for a purpose, or they fade into irrelevancy (as counterculture becomes culture).
4chan is a case of being co-opted: there hasn't been meaningful countercultural activity on 4chan in over a decade, but there is ample reactionary activity masquerading as counterculture. Muddying the distinction between the two is the reactionary's objective.
I think this is an important point. 4chan today is largely populated by bot posters, especially on the bigger boards like /b/. Regular users will suffer through captchas mysteriously not working, getting (range) banned for proxy use when the poster is not using a proxy, or even just shadowbanned
"narrator" is a fitting username since you're narrating your own subjective reality. I don't think making disturbing sexual content with AI image generators is going to be viewed the same way as free love.
"Free love" to the very conservative social morals coming out of the 1950s was just as shocking. You're looking at this with a perspective 60 years after the fact when "free love" has largely been normalized. Obscenity and homosexuality used to be regularly prosecuted back in the 1950s for example.
Also, some aspects of the counterculture like the Manson family, Various Sex Cults, or Jim Jones Cult, massive drug use, the huge increases in crime were not good. However, now all the ugly parts have been ignored and idealized by the people who took the hippie culture mainstream.
Well I've got news for you. The 60s were about making disturbing sexual content available. People were trying to freak out the mainstream. History repeats. Your situation isn't as unique as you belief.
The nonces are still with us. Prostasia Foundation is the new NAMBLA, working hard to normalize "minor-attracted persons" within academia and the nonprofit space. They're aided by those who rationalize children's consent on questions of sexual and bodily integrity.
If you trust a nine-year-old boy to tell us they're actually a girl, and you trust an eleven-year-old child who wants to inject puberty blockers, and you oblige a thirteen-year-old girl who wants to inject testosterone and cut off her breasts at fifteen, where is the logical barrier to other forms of sexual consent?
Whether you like it or not pornography is always at the forefront of technology. I’m sure there will be much pearl clutching when sex robots are released.
You're also creating your own subjective reality. The poster made the claim that the dominant views on 4chan regarding Ukraine and vaccines may be viewed positively in the future, not the disturbing imagery.
4chan is almost 20 years old, it may have been a countercultural element but I assure you kids these days are not on the chans like they once were. If it is still a cultural touchpoint for males 18-24 it is unlikely to remain so for much longer. Your yardstick for cultural relevance centered around creative AI usage is myopic when compared to the interests of actual younger humans who presumably would make up the counterculture.
What is hilarious is that by your definition it is concevable that the increasingly old men who continue to use 4chan could infact be the counterculture you seek... so in 60 years they will all be dead anyway (vax or no vax)
Forgive my ignorance, but do you mean 4Chan is against the war in Ukraine in principle (anti-war), sides with Russia in that conflict (anti-Ukraine) or against US/West involvement in that war (anti-war but with a catch).
Participants in the general war threads on /pol/ fill every permutation of the above, including pro-war/radical pro-NATO involvement and anti-Russia elements as well.
Overall it's been more of an ideological bar brawl than a hive mind aligned in any particular direction.
There are a lot of sibling comments that seem to be upset that two counter cultures could be both different from one another and the dominant culture. I really don't understand the gate keeping of what is and isn't a counter culture.
A culture is information collectively held across many minds. A counter culture is a culture with contradictory information to the dominant culture.
It's clear both the hippies and 4chan meet the criteria. I found your analysis cogent.
>I really don't understand the gate keeping of what is and isn't a counter culture.
The people who brought in the mainstream culture are now older; they are now the fuddy-duddies. Time to move over for the next generation; it's either complimentary or contradictory and sometimes both.
Being antisocial is not the same thing as being counterculture. There’s not really a flourishing of new ideas or material culture on 4chan, just a race to the bottom of taboo-breaking.
You've basically described cultural art and music since at least the 1950s. Elvis dared to play black music and gyrate his hips. Madonna rolled around in a wedding dress talking about virgins. RAP broke a whole bunch of them. Cardi B sang about WAP. If a band just sings about relationship troubles and drugs like everyone else, their music / art probably isn't very remarkable.
That’s not an argument. If you think it’s not true you would need to provide a counterexample. What’s the 4chan equivalent of Jimi Hendrix or tie dye clothes?
The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war.
The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discovery, acceptance, mutual aid, egalitarianism, free thought.
That contrasts sharply with 4chan’s demographics and motivations. I don’t think that anyone will look back with fondness or positivity toward a bunch of closeted homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels circle jerking themselves into a froth over who’s the edgiest edge lord.
> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels
This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.
> Counter-culture is supposed to be [... list of stuff...]
No, it's not. The words explain themselves perfectly fine: an opposing culture.
What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture.
And just in case someone takes "counter-productive" and tries to argue that being against trying to make everything productive is counter-culture: that's not what I mean and you know it. If you were to find yourself not aligning with anything out in the world and you wish to alter that, there are a whole lot of things you could be doing to get there, but what people do on 4chan gets nobody anywhere, unless the digital version of sniffing glue is considered an alteration of the status-quo.
> being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive
I don't like 4-chan but isn't that what they said about hippies? That they are stunted (e.g. they spend all their time smoking pot instead of cutting their hair, getting a job and being productive members of society. They are irrationally angry at society and refuse to recognize the grim realities of the real world. They are destructively brain washing our youths. Etc.)
Ultimately i think counter cultures can be good or bad and that is separate from if they are counter culture
You don’t get it man. The counter culture is cool, hip and trendy and I’m a cool, hip and trendy kind of guy. I’m part of the counterculture, and I’m not part of 4chan, so obviously they’re not counterculture.
The fact that my views align much closer than theirs with many mainstream political parties, almost all of academia, most major media outlets and most major corporation’s stated values is because they all are also part of the counter culture now.
There’s literally no way that an awesome, too cool rebel like myself somehow became part of the mainstream instead of the hip and trendy counter culture movement.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines with flamewar and ideological battle comments, and ignoring our requests to stop.
> What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture.
Just because something isn't PC doesn't mean it isn't counter-culture. Hip-hop for example is riddled with extremely homophobic, violent, and sexist content but has become by far the biggest music genre in the world. That doesn't mean it isn't culture and it definitely was counter-culture (at least in the 80's and 90's).
A counter culture that has been productive and changed the status quo is no longer a counter culture by definition, since that implies that they have the power to alter the dominant culture, which implies that they are the dominant culture.
I think what you are really referring to is a social movement, which often aligns with a particular counter culture that has decided to organize. But there can be many counter cultures and not all of them the deliberate goal of social change.
Your list is literally what the main stream would specify about hippies: stunted in growth and irrationally angry at society for its goals and aspirations (hippies would be seen as man children who will rather do drugs and have sex than grow up, get a job and start a family).
It appears to me that you are so angry at 4-chan for its perceived ideas that you cannot see things from their perspective.
That argument seems to rationalize 4chan behavior by simply saying 'it's counter-culture', as if that makes the behavior better or worse, more or less bad or justified. It changes nothing; it's posers imitating counter-culture (by that definition).
Yeah, there's a million corners of non-mainstream culture today that aren't 4chan and aren't just "edgy" middleschoolesque trolling that are also "countercultures". There's more variety than ever thanks to the ease of people connecting.
If you're betting that 4chan is the one that's going to stand out of "ahead of its time" you aren't doing it because "counterculture is always ahead" you're doing it because it's the one you personally focus on. Otherwise you'd have to be evaluating it against all the other counterculture things. And many of them are much less derivative and backwards-looking.
> jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy
This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
Edgy because the status quo was so defined. The status quo is loosening up, so edges aren't so apparent. I'm in my 40s and my high school experience in the 90s sounds nothing like what I hear about today. We had well defined cliques. Today, except where bullying exists, it sounds like people aren't so hive minded but individuals and just float around various friend groups.
This may be unpopular topic, but I actually think having a non-traditional sexuality/gender is the new 'edgy'. I know that implies it's just a trend/fad and not a reality for some individuals. It seems to have increased in such a massive relative basis that I can't help but think it actually is a trend versus following some natural occurrence. Or perhaps, given significant hindsight I could see that the definitions around these things is just undergoing an accelerating foundational shift. We know ancient societies had massively different ideas for what was and wasn't normal. Hell, very recently ago our own society had very different norms for age of consent and age of "child".
Sorry if any of this is or sounds offensive, I look at it from a statistical mindset and what baseline seems to have existed. It's totally possible that societies around the world have used religion and such to suppress the baseline and it's starting to naturally come back - I wouldn't be able to observe things like that.
> This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
I'm not so sure about "emotionally and mentally stunted incels," but homophobia, racism, and sexism were all acceptable in the past, and given enough time will most likely be acceptable in the future.
Progress is a lie; change can go in all directions. It's a mistake to draw a line across living memory or the recent historical era and extrapolate whatever trend you find very far into the future.
Homophobia is enshrined in law in the majority of countries in the world. You will literally be stoned to death for having sex with the same gender in several countries.
Racism is core to nearly every country in the world. It may seem bad in the US, but it's worse elsewhere. And while people won't admit they're racist in the US, racism itself is pervasive.
Sexism might be the most prominent and long lasting parts of the culture across the world for millenia. Just look up the rape stats, and then keep in mind that most rapes are not reported.
Homophobia, racism, and sexism are deeply ingrained in nearly every culture on the planet today.
>queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture
Being supported by advertising, movies, tv shows, signaled by major corporations and workplaces, and supported top-down by the government means its edgy and counterculture? We live in completely different realities I guess.
Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships? How is the government providing this "top-down" support? Are there now tax breaks for people in poly relationships?
Being LGBTQ is one of the few identities or choices that will result in being disowned by a significant portion of American families. That attitude is edging out of the mainstream but it’s practically dogma among evangelicals and other socially conservative groups. So yes, those people do live in a different reality, where Biden admin policy and “Will and Grace” don’t matter at all.
You're making an emotional argument (LGBTQ people get disowned by families) against a logical argument (LGBTQ is supported at so many levels of culture that it no longer counts as "counterculture").
No I’m not. The culture of many, many Americans is so anti-LGBTQ that they’ll disown their family. Thats their culture! There is not one American culture, social conservatism is a very common culture in America, and being LGBTQ is counter to that culture. Ergo LGBTQ culture is counterculture.
That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
> That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
It could also be their outdated picture of "mainstream" culture is a fossil embedded in the self-justifications of the current mainstream culture.
Some people will forever pretend current-year is the 1950s, because, not because they want to live in the 50s, but because they see themselves as the people who are abolishing it.
This thread keeps conflating a subset of culture which exists within families or small subsets of already small towns within America which is a subset of western culture... in order to dismiss the dominant mainstream culture from which counter cultures are sprung from on the wider internet.
Despite the fact these current cultural trends and related ideologies are very much dominant on every major western social media platform and even more so among dominant traditional media platforms (and their executives and journalists). Yet they still pretend it's not the default culture in the west.
The existence of pushback from significant/influential parts of the population != you're not the dominant mainstream culture.
I think it’s less an issue with the thread and more an issue with people in general. The amount of people who view themselves or want to be viewed as a member of a dominant mainstream culture that is trying to force others to assimilate to the mainstream culture is incredibly small. Almost everyone prefers to view themselves as the plucky rebels fighting for survival and what’s right. There’s more than a few former hippie boomers who still view themselves as part of a counterculture sticking it to the man as they use the money they get from their cushy VP of marketing position at a major bank to sue any developers that try to build affordable housing near their gorgeous McMansion.
My aunt went from burning American flags and marching in support of interracial marriage and civil rights to clutching her pearls about Marilyn Manson ripping up bibles and gay marriage becoming legal, but even as she supports censorship and state mandated injustice, she will always view herself as the protestor that fought against censorship and state mandated injustice.
Even I find myself occasionally saying things about zoomers that sounds just like stuff my dad used to say about me and it’s a lot easier to rationalize it as “no, TikTok is actually hurting kid’s attention spans, it’s different this time” than admit that I might be acting just as silly as he was when he said exactly the same thing about my Game Boy.
I think you yourself are a little mixed up - these attitudes and opinions arent limited to small failing towns, its entire states when you get off the coasts.
There isnt really a default culture across america the way you are insisting. The place is fucking huge.
Yes, I agree that corporate businesses and the entertainment industry have broadly adopted acceptance of LGBTQ people. My point is that what counts as mainstream culture is still different in Florida and California. America is not a perfect homogenate.
That is by design and I consider it a feature rather than a bug. We have options to live at a local or state level closer to our own values rather than being forced to conform at a national level.
Our national institutions are very accepting of LGBTQ as well as the federal government. Looking at LGBTQ equality by state, https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps the majority of the country, 29 states are fair or pro LGBTQ vs 21 that have negative policy or low equality.
Is it still counterculture when it is accepted and embraced by the overwhelming majority of citizens, education and cultural institutions, and protected by laws in the majority of the country?
> [...] LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.
This is a vile take. It is sickening to compare liking a genre of music or wearing a certain style of dress or being queer to hating people because they're queer, not white, not male, or because they're a woman who won't have sex with you.
Jazz and Rock was the music of african americans that became mainstream in white america just like rap did later. Punk was a reaction to rock becoming boring and stale. Disco came out from the african-american AND LGBTQ community, and the eventual "disco sucks" mainstream backlash was at least somewhat motivated by racism/homophobia, not anything inherent with disco.
None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone. That they offended was a side effect of them changing the world, and the mainstream reaction to it, not the core motivation.
Now, I don't want to paint 4chan with one brush. I actually think a significant amount of internet creativity and beautiful creation occurs on it, and they never get enough credit for it. Most legendary memes - offensive or not - originate on 4chan. Internet memes are some of the most unique artistic creations of our generation.
But the parts that people get mad at 4chan for (the homophobic/racist/misogynistic parts) are not that. Those are creations intentionally made to get a reaction: "You tell me I can't say <blank>? Watch me!!"
There is a charitable interpretation of this that they are bucking against censorship and fighting for self-expression on principle. And some may draw comparisons to what they're doing to times in history when "blasphemers" criticized religious dogma. That making a homophobic or racist meme is the modern equivalent of proclaiming "There is no God" 200 years ago.
The difference comes down to the Paradox of Intolerance. Religion and the dominant culture associated with it, actively repressed everyone who didn't match their worldview. People were told you have to believe this in faith and act as if you do, or you will be punished. The modern "dogma" of LGBTQ/race acceptance is instead saying "You CANNOT tell others how to believe and act, and punish them accordingly. You cannot discriminate against those different from you by birth race/gender/sexuality."
It is highly childish to associate all "you cannot do <blank>" guidances as repressive and similar. And I meant that literally. Children can't tell the difference between "No, we can't have desert because i told you so" and "You can't touch the hot stove because it will hurt you".
So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out.
> None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone.
Rock'n'roll, punk, etc were definitely trying to overtly offend. Many rockers claimed to worship Satan, mocking the older generation was widespread ('hope I die before I get old'). Look up the Sex Pistols.
Those counter-cultures were for something, for their identities at least. What is 4chan for?
> So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out.
The problem is, young idiots were ordinary young idiots in the past. They didn't do much more than maybe snatch a car for a joyride or kick off someone of IRC by sending them a direct message with "DCC SEND" or whatever that caused middleboxes to drop the connection. Annoying, sometimes causing a bit of damage, but nothing too serious.
Nowadays? They radicalize each other into a spiral that often enough ends in real-world violence - or in bullying people to suicide, which is just as bad. And unfortunately, the importance of hateful bigots is not diminishing. Not at all. The Tea Party and, following it, the Trumpets are recently risen developments - and they're still rising.
Most of these countercultural ideologies confront oppressive bigotry in the status quo. 4chan is using bigotry against the status quo. Opposition alone is not the important dimension here.
Sid Vicious, Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper and many other artists who were undebatably part of counterculture very often did stuff to intentionally offend members of mainstream culture.
Manson did a ton of stuff to piss off Christians and rightoids. While it might seem hilarious with modern day sensibilities, Rage saying fuck on BBC live did offend quite a lot of people. Hell, Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux used to regularly wear literal Swastikas for the shock value.
Much of today's "counterculture" I suppose was more mainstream back in the 60s. Outsiders, delinquents, atavists and reprobates of many sorts are grouped together with, and generally accepted by the prevailing counterculture, but do not necessarily represent the counterculture's core beliefs and practices. They do, however, share a common antagonist.
> The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discovery, acceptance, mutual aid, egalitarianism, free thought.
Honestly, I think you're making the mistake of confusing your subjective view with "objectivity." Like saying your opinions and preferences are "objectively" the right ones.
Also, you appear to be describing your side in the most charitable way you can, those you oppose in the least charitable way, and unsurprisingly finding those you oppose wanting.
It's worth noting that the antiwar movement had less in common with hippies than many people think. Sure, there was some overlap - but the mainstream didn't get the idea that hippies were mainly interested in taking drugs and listening to music from nowhere. Most of the antiwar movement was in the hands of students and everday sorts of people - I think the fastest way to offer evidence for that would be the absence of typical hippie uniforms in photographs of antiwar protests. Something closer to the truth would be that the musicians hippies liked listening to made songs about the antiwar movement, and those songs had an outsized impact on the entertainment available in 2020, because as good a speaker as Noam Chomsky might have been, radio hosts don't put him on after The Temptations.
(I'd listen to a station that did that kind of thing, but that's not how it works presently.)
I can't find the citation, but legend has it that as CA governor, Reagan was in his limo, and was surrounded by protestors in Berkeley. They were chanting "We are the future!" while pounding on the windows of the car.
Reagan got his notepad out, and wrote "If you are the future, I'm selling all my stocks!" on a sheet of paper, and held it up to the window for them to read.
Looking at the demographic breakdown it certainly seems like he got most of the boomers(and their parents). The boomers were in their 20-30s at the time.
No it isn't? We have the benefit of hindsight and don't need to become preoccupied with what a lot of dead people thought about something. Leave that to the historians.
"I don't think anyone will look back with fondness or positivity towards a bunch of drug-pushing, mentally stunted adulterous freeloaders that disrespect hard working people, people putting their lives on the line for their country, people devoted to their families, and the nation that allows them the freedom to exist in the first place--while jerking themselves into a froth over who's the edgiest edge lord."
Even as someone who favours liberal drug laws at this point, the social upheaval of the late '60s had objectively horrific consequences for the poor in particular. The massive drug epidemic that to this day kills more Americans than the entire Vietnam War every year, the unprecedented doubling of murder rates overall in nearly every Western country from 1965-1975, and collapse of the family unit seem like more tangible downsides than a small number of what you describe as edgelords jerking themselves into a froth on a forum read by other edgelords.
Nearly every major social issue of the late 20th century exploded as a direct result of hippie culture bringing drugs and hostility towards the family and social institutions into the mainstream. People often think of rising crime as the result of the 1980s crack "epidemic," but the explosion in murder rates occurred almost entirely from 1966-1975 and actually grew at a slower pace up to 1990 (outside the UK): https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/uRI8Y/1/ The US murder rate in 1974 was exactly the same as it was at the peak of the "Crack epidemic" in 1990, and more than double the rate it was in 1964.
You can still argue the benefits outweighed the costs, but it's simply ignorant to pretend 1960s counterculture was some uniformly benevolent movement for peace and love, any more than the movement you identify with 4chan is merely a benevolent movement for "national pride" or "family values."
How 4chan specifically got designated the "counterculture" in this thread is questionable, but so is the inability to look beyond the status-quo, contemporary perspective of major media, academia and corporations.
>Nearly every major social issue of the late 20th century exploded as a direct result of hippie culture bringing drugs and hostility towards the family and social institutions into the mainstream.
This is quite reductive and ignores the role of dysfunction emerging from within families and institutional structures, including, but not limited to:
>The psychological and public health effects of widespread lead poisoning
>The psychological effects of family patriachs often being psychologically-scarred veterans, for whom drug use was sometimes prescribed by the military
>The artificial and contentious "community" of planned suburbs, which warped the character of family life while saddling local and state governments with debt traps which diverted funds from social services
>The intentional breakup of existing urban communities through "renewal", starting in the 50s
>The "benign neglect" of the remains of these communities following the King riots
Much like Reconstruction and TARP, the problem isn't that we did it, it's that we didn't do it hard enough.
“Nearly every major social issue of the late 20th century exploded as a direct result of hippie culture bringing drugs and hostility towards the family and social institutions into the mainstream.”
Sources? Wasn’t the crack epidemic more related to Contra and the breaking of the family unit due to disproportionate incarceration of black males by the government in attempt to break their political power via the selective targeting of specific drugs by the govt, i.e marijuana and crack over cocaine?
>Sources? Wasn’t the crack epidemic more related to Contra and the breaking of the family unit due to disproportionate incarceration of black males by the government in attempt to break their political power via the selective targeting of specific drugs by the govt, i.e marijuana and crack over cocaine?
The overwhelming majority of the rise in crime occurred between 1964 and 1974, in which time the murder rate in the US more than doubled and reached its all-time high in 1974.
Crack cocaine itself wasn't found in the US until the mid-1980s, i.e. well after the overwhelming majority of the rise in crime had already occurred. With no crack present in the US, it's clearly ridiculous to attribute the rise in crime to a drug-or laws targeting a drug-that didn't exist in the US until a decade later.
In other words, neither crack laws nor significant crack use itself existed until the vast majority of the rise in crime had already occurred. Even the most outlandish theories of Contra involvement in drug trafficking (which they were involved to some extent like many South American guerrilla groups) would attribute a literal drop in the bucket of the cocaine trafficked to the US to the Contras. Again, this is only even relevant if you think crack caused the rise in violent crime that occurred decades before it was introduced to the US.
To address your third point, the incarceration rates you mention didn't actually start rising until 1973 and remained much lower than in the 1950s until the mid-70s (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18613/chapter/4#35). Moreover, they didn't begin their rapid climb until 1980, at which point crime had begun declining. For reference, about 5 times as many people are in jail/prison today as in 1975: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18613/chapter/4#35 When incarceration rates truly began skyrocketing in the late '80s-2000s, violent crimes were rapidly dropping.
Put yourself in the shoes of a WW2 veteran in the 60s. He sees his children get sucked into drug culture and protesting against the military that just 20 years ago saved the Pacific from tyranny. You turn on the news and see them making a nuisance of themselves in the streets. They're ungroomed, ugly, and do weird sex stuff.
You ask yourself where you went wrong raising them and lament the collapse of society and death of American values.
Or more objectively, they see murder rates literally doubling from 1964-1974, a rise never before seen in American history. They see a massive drug epidemic and an entirely unprecedented breakdown in the family unit that results in literally millions of children born to single mothers. They see a collapse of social institutions coinciding with an again unprecedented rise in suicides and antisocial activities. They see cities like Detroit, Newark (and to varying degrees nearly every other major city in the US) begin rapid declines that haven't been reversed to this day. Then they look to every other Western country that experienced the same "counterculture" in the same period and see these same issues to a similar or even greater extent.
It is either incredibly ignorant or intentionally dishonest to pretend that the 1960s counterculture was some uniformly benevolent force for peace and love, and says a lot about the person claiming so's lack of ability to see anything outside their contemporary/status-quo perspective.
Didn't the gangs in for instance L.A. start using guns and selling drugs after they got Vietnam veterans in their ranks who had experience with all of that?
(Makes one wonder what chickens will come home to roost in Russia eventually.)
Yes, but it was not the same military, not the same purpose, not the same high moral ground. WW II for US started with attack on US by Japan, so it was clear defense. Vietnam on the other hand had beyond pathetic Tonkin gulf and otherwise absolutely 0 threat to anything American, as proven after war ended.
You could argue that it was attack on US values, but that was about it. Half around the effin world. In society where US was not welcomed in any way even in South Vietnam by almost nobody local (and for good reasons). Some continuous and serious mental gymnastics were required to keep feeling righteous in that war.
I know after-perspective is easy, but this is how history judges actions long term. Emotions of given heated moment are irrelevant and ignored.
You've made a mistake that most people do with hippies. Hippies were not political. Student protestors and hippies are seen as the same thing even though they're not. Hippies didn't go to protest.
4chan is another place you mischaracterize due to the mainstream media. Social rejects go there. Of every kind. You probably ignored the fact that there's been an LGBT board for more than a decade since you don't go there.
This is really a minor point and has no bearing on the larger argument being made here, but the hippies had all sorts of terrible traits. Some “rediscovered” lost diseases such as trench foot due to a need to eschew any modern practices such as bathing. And some raised their children in broken, drug-addled homes, in search of “enlightenment.”
This is a mischaracterization. 4chan was founded as a new place for Something Awful anime fans to post hentai and "loli" content after SA banned such things. It was always about contraband and bad-taste culture. The "dirtbag free speech" crowd flocked to it because of the side-effect of that initial culture being anti-moderation and being allowed to post whatever they wanted.
Can you see how '60s establishment types might think the same about people "hiding behind" peace and love gibberish to remain a cesspool of drug pushing, adulterous freeloaders, whose success in mainstreaming drugs and hostility to social institutions objectively coincided directly with an explosion in violent crime and social issues like single motherhood, drug addiction, rioting and urban decay, all of which rose to unprecedented levels from 1965-1975 in every Western country that experienced a similar "counterculture"?
That's not to make any judgement on the societal value of 4Chan vs. the 1960s counterculture. It's just that neither is/was a uniform group that can be defined as "rooted in X, Y, or Z," and people who claim they can are typically blind to the bias of their cultural perspective.
If only 4chan were rooted in those things. Sadly, it is rooted in only one thing: anonymised extremes. While you can stack other things on top of that, those are offshoots rather than the roots.
>I don’t think that anyone will look back with fondness or positivity toward a bunch of closeted homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels circle jerking themselves into a froth over who’s the edgiest edge lord.
If that's your view of 4chan then the whole point of 4chan went over your head. 4chan is about irreverence of and rebellion against the current mainstream culture that if you're non-conformist in any way or hold a view that may be construed as offensive to anyone, your opinion (and person) has no value. It's a reaction to upvote/downvote culture on the Internet that rewards conformity. 4chan, famously, has a highly contemptuous opinion of Reddit.
What 4chan says, self-deprecatingly, is "I will offend all your sensibilities. Oh you're still here? Ok, here's what I have to say."
In my opinion (it's impossible to know for sure) most of it is pretense. There aren't actually as many racists, homophobes, sexists etc. It's satirically amplified as a form of gatekeeping.
And yet there really are many, and their hatred and bile spreads out across the internet, their 'fun' little things (like Q) spread out and fuck up real life too.
It's a great example of how irony often doesn't really exist.
Oh you were only playing at being a total arsehole ironically? That's not actually a good thing, and you've helped give cover to actual arseholes, spread their message and hatred, and now people have died. And all because you think it's fun to be edgy. Congrats.
The central idea of 4chan is that it is liberal. Not liberal in the perverted US-American re-definition of the word. Liberal as in freedom. Anyone can express their opinion freely on 4chan and that includes racists.
If you're interested in a more nuanced view of hippies, read "Jester: Memoirs of a Retired Hippie"
No one is objectively good because they are human after all. Hippies had good values, but also bad ones such as: uncleanliness, irresponsible drug use, parasitism, thoughtlessness, and sometimes even vanity.
So in addition to them being homophobes, they are also closeted homosexuals?
Why is it that this is such a popular insult among people here on HN? It's like this strange and incoherent insult from lefties where they think they're being supportive of gay people by calling out homophobia as bad, but also calling the homophobe gay to hurt them in some manner, which would imply that being gay is an insult. I suppose your defense might be that being gay is an insult to the homophobe, but why specifically would you call a homophobe gay, without further information? It erodes any assumption I'd have that you genuinely respect gay people if you're willing to just toss around some claims that this person or that group is gay.
And if I thought someone was a gay homophobe, putting aside any argument with them I have otherwise, I'd probably feel somewhat bad for them to be in that position.
Anyway, we both know that you're an edgelord. That's why you wrote that sentence. So quit hating on people who are just like you. You're like a closeted homophobe, but for 4chan edgelords.
> The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war.
That's an interesting point I haven't heard of before, thanks :)
If you'd like to see it stratified as a full-blown fact, here's the interview where John Ehrlichman explained that it was a planned strategy to discredit Nixon's naysayers.
> “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
>That contrasts sharply with 4chan’s demographics and motivations. I don’t think that anyone will look back with fondness or positivity toward a bunch of closeted homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels circle jerking themselves into a froth over who’s the edgiest edge lord.
not to defend 4chan, but this kind of categorical and imprecise summarization of a group of people is strongly similar to the things that my (very) hippy parents were told by their (very) straight-laced parents.
We should defend 4chan. /LGBT/ has been one of the most active boards there for over a decade. Calling /lit/ emotionally and mentally stunted is ridiculous. /fit/ is one of the most egalitarian venues on the internet.
People in this thread are reducing all of 4chan to a board meant not to be taken seriously (/b/) and a containment board intended to keep far-right conservative discussions off of other boards (/pol/). Then they're somehow contorting the offensiveness of what goes on at those two boards as evidence that they can't be counter-cultural because "true" counter-culture apparently can't be offensive?
The mainstream culture of the hippie's day would have said, with just as much disgust as you hold for the 4channers:
> The hippies are rooted in things like naiveté, lust, drugs, immorality, communism, apathy, and atheism.
There is a sense in the more liberal communities that cultures are good-by-definition. They do mental gymnastics to ensure that any harmful cultural artifacts (e.g. slavery) are explained away as "not really culture, but a product of external forces" (e.g. imperialism).
I have never felt the need to do this: some cultures are on-the-whole bad, and that does not disqualify them from being cultures.
You are most probably correct about 4chan, I am not myself a visitor but seen similar references of it frequently. But - I can guarantee you that every single similar web I've seen (ie posting funny/gruesome/creative photos and videos, often from 4chan) is exactly the same.
Not every single user, quiet majority still goes there for (some of the) content and discussions are ignored. But once you open them its the same mess. It wasn't dominant so much before but it is like that now. Sparks of sanity drowning in pitiful empty statements. I don't know user details but it feels like bunch of frustrated teenagers who are racing to show who is more depraved and depressed, mixed with adults who are failures in real life and ventilate their anger and hate on such places (I don't believe it works for more than few seconds but its probably as addictive as cigarettes mentally).
“ At 75 I am in the baby boom and I was in the counter culture. Lets just say from 1965 to 1985. The counter culture was driven by the Vietnam war. Reciprocal to the war was the peace witness inspired by the Quakers. During this same period, instances of cheap real estate and low cost apartments and free places to live existed. Also developing the skills needed for living a counter culture life were helped along by, unemployment insurance. Unemployment irregularly functioned as a cost of living help when I went back to junior college to study film and sewing.”
“Conservatism is the new counter culture” is a very old line that has been passed along by older conservatives as a way to allure itself with young right leaning teens in mostly rural areas. It takes a complete misunderstanding of what “counter culture” means in order to believe it. It was always just marketing.
I still enjoy diving into *chans, (even 4chan which has become so mainstream) because the hobbyist boards are still the best places to have some engagement with hobbyists. Still thinking 4chan culture is a counterculture only supports the thesis that we are living in a society without a counter culture.
You have to be a coddled kid to believe that 4chan and their racism, misogyny and xenophobia are not mainstream or challenge the status quo. I mean, yes liberalism tries to stick a smiley face on the grimm reality, but it’s stupid to think you’re challenging anything just because you draw a frown and a hitler mustache on said smiley face.
4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though. It used to be a fun place where people didn't care so much about social conventions and focused mostly on having a good time and poking fun at each other, but it's degraded into just hating anything and everything that they can attribute to anybody they don't like. I've seen tons of cases where they were on-board for something until it became mainstream and then viciously attacked it.
There is "alive and well" counterculture, but 4chan is "automatic, boring, annoying, kneejerk" counterculture. It's like a sad shell of what it was, with all the fun sucked out of it.
> 4chan is obnoxiously and brainlessly countercultural to the point of contrarianism, though.
It would be a mistake to think that counterculture is inherently a good thing, or that countercultures of the past did not have their own pockets of “obnoxious and brainless contrarianism.”
I don’t wholly agree with you, but this is an interesting point. What does it mean to be “counterculture” in our increasingly fragmented culture? Perhaps the current debate here is so frenzied because each debater is speaking from their own island of culture, and some “other” mainstream always seems larger than their own?
Thank you, I don't entirely agree with myself, and feel that it is too reductive a statement. It is at least worth considering that countercultures contrast best against cohesive cultures.
We're now lacking both, mostly due to the transformations of the information age and how that has split many homogeneous cultures into numerous segregated identity clusters. For what it is worth (which is nothing) in 1992 I predicted what we see now; it has unfolded exactly as I expected.
It's not childish anymore. It's just angry and cynical. It looks less like the shit-talking edgy teenagers having fun being idiots like it was in 2007, and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia.
I wish the people on 4chan had the stupid childish fun that I did 15 years ago.
>and more like unhinged, hateful, contrarian paranoid schizophrenia.
You and I did not use the same 4chan in 2007...
I learned new slurs there, ways to insult people that I could have never imagined.
I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List.
I saw child porn get posted regularly.
I saw extremely hateful posts about women, extremely hateful posts about people that aren't white, extremely hateful posts about literally anyone.
I believe you're looking back with rose tinted glasses.
I was a teenager, so it's possible to a degree, but the things you're listing in my memory were there in significantly smaller degrees, and have since completely taken over the site. Back in the day, there was a hell of a lot more "Yellow van", "epic for the win" and the like. Now it's 'america is a far left cultureless “nation” and its tranny enabling (((mutts))) will never be white no matter how much they inbreed with other “whites” in their shithole trailer park'.
Yeah, the disgusting stuff today always was there, but it was a relatively small part of the site, and now it's the vast majority of it. I'm not going to pretend that it was ever "good", but you can't pretend that it hasn't changed at all.
I wholeheartedly agree with this analysis, and submit that those users condescendingly suggesting that it's we who've changed and not 4chan may never have actually experienced the kind of 4chan to which the parent refers. Things were, are, and presumably always will be done for "the lulz", but what those things are, at whom those things are targeted, and why those targets are chosen have changed dramatically. A bright, prescriptive mockery [0] has given way to a sullen, threatening white-supremacism dressed up like the historiography of the fall of Rome, complete with a would-be-kingmaker priesthood who half-ironically wield meme magic to (successfully!) sway real-world events [1]. And this transition is important, because much of the internet's "culture" is created on 4chan, only making its way into the wider world once it's been sufficiently, uh, digested [2] by successively more "normie" intermediaries.
The categorical error is that none of it was a "come from", rather it was a "passing through". The sites were all popular waystations, but none of them owned the creativity of their users, they just happened to host the party, and once the party died down something new came up and the same users moved on to that thing. Thus the large number of Twitter users who will post things starting like "in my 4chan days" "in my SA days".
That last line reminds me of the old refrain: "Ironic shitposting is still shitposting."
Also that old fake Descartes quote: " Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
>> I read posts from a schizoid that claimed to have evidence that the government was influencing his life through the ratings of popular animes on My Anime List.
This was called trolling for the lulz, you fell for it, & seem to have not realized even 15 years later.
Schizoposting as a fun pasttime has been a thing for users of 4chan/online forums forever. Go watch some South Park episodes centered on Gerald Broflovski trolling. Can’t remember which season off the top of my head. It may help you to understand if things don’t click.
Anecdotally, actual schizophrenics tend to post endlessly into their own little void on traditional social media, often not slightly being aware of or caring that they have either absolutely zero engagement or anybody seeing their profiles at all.
It really depends on the board that you're on. /g/ imo is one of the best tech forums that I'm aware of, as long as you don't get fixated on the occasional crudeness and racism. /pol/ is just racists and incoherent rambling. /tv/ is a good forum for critical takes on media but again requires weeding through the bad parts.
IMO having a kid is the cutoff between old young and young old.
Have a kid and the walls move in fast. Used to live in alternative shelters, backpacking in the outdoors for months on end? Yeah child services says that's substandard housing and abuse. Hell there were child abuse investigation just for a family backpacking the Appalachian trail, and that's a boring ass well planned thing that even old square fuckers can relate to.
Used to psychedelics or other drugs? Yeah the kid is trained at a very young age by police officers at the school to snitch you out, and they get them young enough they won't have a filter. DCS and/or criminal charges incoming.
Used to go overseas and do super dangerous stuff? Suddenly any family or friends that tolerated that say you're a piece of shit for risking your when a kid relies on you and the judge is gonna say even if you earn enough doing that to support the kid it's still not enough because the kid needs 20% of the imputed income you could make as a conservative working stiff no matter if they were fine before during the times you were making less, don't agree well then off to jail.
Your life is surrounded now by mandatory reporters. The doctor, the teacher, the therapist. Yeah, all mandatory reporters. Say something they don't like as a child-free and nobody gives a shit. Have a kid, fuck nah their alternative views are signs of abuse. Send in the investigators and let them sort it out.
And the people making these judgement calls are judges, lawyers, DCS workers. People plugged into the system. Not necessarily politically conservative but conditioned to fall within the norms of the system. Hell even SBF (the guy that never wears a suit even for billion dollar investment meetings) wears a suit in front of a judge, that's how conservative that system is.
You learn to keep your mouth shut. You learn to living in the boring ass house that has occupancy certification. You espouse the most boring views that will not anger a mandatory reporter. You diligently pay the taxes the government uses to drone strike brown people ovrseas. You refrain from drugs. You don't take risks that will result in not being able to make 20% of the imputed income you need to stay out of jail. Wait 18 years and you can be old young again.
I don’t disagree with the general spirit of what you’re saying, but as a former teacher the observations that fall under Mandatory Reporting are fairly specific. Additionally, I know more than one CPS worker on a personal basis and the types of things that get a child removed from the house are religious and severe. Nothing that you have said would cause me to call in a report unless your kid showed up to class with signs of violence on their body. The stories that get reported on are reported because they are exceptional, not normal. I lived a property less, transient lifestyle for years before settling in a place. I don’t write this to change your mind, but to respond in kind.
Yeah I agree there are people all over the board as far as their interpretations. I have family in healthcare and teaching. I believe most of the mandatory reporters are reasonable and possibly even willing to violate the law as they know the foster system is often even worse than living with even a physically abuse parent, but unfortunately the parent and child come into contact with a LOT of reporters over the years and thus they must optimize for the very worst of the ones they will encounter rather than the most reasonable.
Two thirds of black families in my county are investigated. My family have coworkers that explicitly state they will mandatory report things like a parent seeking health care to reduce their substance use.
> Saying “we live in a society without a counterculture” sounds ridiculous the more you think about it. How could it possibly be true, especially when you consider the past? And a lot of the 14 "warning signs" are general enough that they've always been true to some extent.
> But somewhere between your 38th Marvel movie and the millionth Heard-Depp trial rehash video, you might start to believe it. Even if it isn’t new, even if it’s easy to escape, and even if it’s not that bad, a cloying sameness occupies the cultural mainstream. It seems impenetrable, same as ever. But it’s especially surprising given how much creative work today exists outside the mainstream.
> It is a jarring contrast. At no point in history have people created so much with so few channels for consuming their work. Most consumers get their content through a narrow straw — TikTok’s “For You” page, the first page of Google’s search results, Instagram’s explore tab, miscellaneous streaming sites, and so on. Many lifetimes worth of creation get aggressively filtered down into a (very optimized) stream of content.
"It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness."
Completely agree. It has also never been easier to discover sameness, broadcast sameness, or replicate sameness. The Instagrammification of the world is why the hip local coffee shop in Thailand looks like it could be in Brooklyn or Amsterdam.
Find someone from any counterculture and everything from his/her ideas, to their music, to the perfume they stink from are probably all exactly the same. There's really nothing new that 99.99999999% of humans come up with. I mean a 4chan user in Poland spouts the same tired nonsense as a 4chan user from Argentina or the US. Same styles of dress. Same haircuts. Even uses the same wording in their posts. Try it for yourself, you'll find yourself reading the exact same comments and posts over, and over, and over again. There's literally nothing new there. Or, as another example, when was the last time you heard a genuinely new idea from a conservative? Or from a liberal? If we're being honest, I mean, we'd have to admit that we haven't heard any new ideas out there.
So you end up with 4chan users all having the exact same crap in their rooms, and political parties all having the exact same formats, colors, and even overall look to their "conventions". You only noticed the "sameness" with coffee shops. The reality is that cultures, and even counter cultures, thrive on sameness. Without sameness they don't exist.
> If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then you must be looking at a woefully tiny portion of the creative world. It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness.
Covered in the 14:
"Alternative voices exist-in fact, they are everywhere--but are rarely heard, and
their cultural impact is negligible."
Not at all. The weird stuff is well heard and has a large cultural impact. You'll have no problem finding countless examples of weird things that have been viewed and interacted with by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Compare that to say a punk band in the 80s that may have only had a few thousand people ever see it perform, or even the entire hippie movement which was only about half a million people at its peak.
Yeah, these things are still smaller and less impactful than the mainstream culture, but that's what it means to be a counterculture.
> You'll have no problem finding countless examples of weird things that have been viewed and interacted with by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
I don't think how widespread a piece of media is has a strong correlation with its impact. Yes, several billion people probably know who Grumpy Cat is. But it doesn't matter. Our awareness of Grumpy Cat doesn't change how we think about the world, how we live, how we relate to others. It's just a shared but otherwise mostly meaningless experience, like seeing a rainbow.
The Beat Generation was a relatively tiny subculture whose work at the time was consumed by a small number of people. But we remember them because the work they created mattered. It said something meaningful about the culture it was a reaction to and by doing that, it forced that culture to change.
Beats, hippies, punks, maybe early hackers were all countercultures because they in some way bent the arrow of history. There are no shortage of subcultures today, and they are great for finding people you share interests. But they don't have the same impact as a real counterculture.
Grumpy cat is mainstream culture. Yes, just because something has been widely consumed does not make it impactful, but that's a very different position from there are no impactful things widely consumed.
The impact of various past countercultures is only evident in hindsight. As you said, movements like the Beat generation were at the time tiny subcultures, of the exact same sort we have loads of today. To say that 80s hackers were a counterculture but modern biohackers are just a subculture is simply temporal chauvinism.
As a Gen-Xer, I can assure you capitalism was a dirty word for longer than that.
But that dislike has thus far had zero apparent effect on the complete domination of capitalism and corporatism over the public sphere.
Instead, what we largely see is huge capitalistic corporations draping themselves in an anti-capitalist aesthetic which consumers seem perfectly happy to accept. Every time you go to the store and buy a jar of "homestyle" marinara sauce or order a bo-ho wall hippie-esque wall decoration off Amazon that was made in a factory in China, you are demonstrating anti-capitalist style but profoundly capitalistic values.
> As a Gen-Xer, I can assure you capitalism was a dirty word for longer than that
In certain circles, but (assuming America) certainly not approaching a majority[1].
> Instead, what we largely see is huge capitalistic corporations draping themselves in an anti-capitalist aesthetic which consumers seem perfectly happy to accept.
I think it's too difficult to avoid this stuff as a consumer. Hell, even farmer's markets are mostly run by big corps now. But from the labor side, I think it's making a difference. Almost no one in their twenties is trying to climb the corporate ladder or put in effort at their big corp jobs. As soon as generations that were bought in to careerism retire, I think things will shift.
That's not a knife edge, counterculture is by definition not mainstream, and certainly today most people are not active participants in counterculture, but it has become easier to participate in countercultures if you so choose then ever before, and (while still being a very small minority) the absolute number of people participating has never been larger. The distinction between impact and mainstream impact is a very important nuance.
There are certainly creators today who are as influential to their groups as the Velvet Underground was to theirs, but just like plenty of people had never heard of them in the 60s, you're probably not going to know about them for another 20 years.
If only that person could have known which of the umpteen million counter cultures was going to be successful! /s
Identifying counter cultures is trivial. Knowing which one will become mainstream in the always uncertain future is unimaginably difficult. Empires have fallen because people bet on the wrong counter culture.
There are some similarities of successful counter cultures through history. Loose organization. Ease of understanding. Low financial cost of participation. And extreme inclusiveness.
Fortunately for empires, princes, and presidents, counter cultures and movements with all those attributes don't come along all that often.
I am old enough to remember the hippies and related counterculture(s). (I was very young.) This is something to keep in mind: the counterculture then was a place where people made a living. And the cost of living was cheap. You could raise kids on an organic farm, sell in the local alternative stores, have a live show on pirate radio. And pay your modest bills. Health insurance and college tuition was cheap. Jeez -- in California even the UC system was free! The hippies were the pot growers back then and all of Humboldt was one big counter culture. There were lots of niche markets and vendors who could sell to them and pay their rent.
A big part of what has happened is a huge rise in basic bills (rent, health insurance, tuition) and that has forced the counterculture people to make more money. It's an economic transformation and it has narrowed our culture in many ways. Smell the desperation.
Part of that, in turn, is the slow death of the American working class. This is a much harsher society economically. That is why you step over bodies in San Francisco's Tenderloin. It wasn't like that when I moved here (early 80's).
It's worth remembering that the hippies and related counterculture(s) became a threat to the status quo (most notably through their opposition to the Vietnam War), and that the War on Drugs was in part a way to criminalize that movement to limit its influence.
The playbook of "criminalize any counterculture that threatens the status quo" is arguably in continuous use now, preventing any countercultural movement from gaining that kind of scale through a combination of negative press and prosecution threats.
I see it differently. i think the playbook is that the system generates a counterculture to control the opposition narrative. The systems greatest trick as Ted K put it.
Sure, the hippie movement was branded countercultural. But to what purpose? Note that during the period, the US government was engaged in a large scale remaking of America both domestically and internationally. Domestically, we saw the remaking of immigration policies to no longer bias towards those of European descent, and instead towards what favored macro capitalism (the import of cheaper and low skilled labor). Internationally the US was scaling up engagement in hot and cold wars and no longer considering itself bound to the constitutional provisions for war. Lo and behold, during this period, a "counterculture" arises which glorifies drug use, the dissolution of the nuclear family and pushes forward the vapid strain of hyper individualism that we see today. Suddenly the anti-war movement is associated with drug use and degeneracy, whilst the nation's racial consciousness is broken in time to welcome a new wave of immigrants to help improve the margins of big business.
Note that the current "woke" counterculture follows the same pattern. Increased individualism, sublimated racial awareness, dissolution of family, and rampant degeneracy. Meanwhile the state continues its hegemonic march of constant international agitation.
This gets racist and/or homophobic enough at the end to be almost flag-worthy, but I'm going to respond to part of it.
I don't know where you get the idea of "increased individualism" from "woke culture". Racial justice advocates and queer leaders often talk about community and the importance of banding together - so much so that opponents have taken to branding that as things like "communism" or "black supremacy".
As for "dissolution of family", that's an anti-queer talking point; the nuclear family is not the only form of family. "Rampant degeneracy" is just a values disagreement but framed in terms of good and evil.
People need to give more attention to the collapse in ad-hoc labor. We've made life far too regimented and regulated for many people. I don't think we give enough attention to this gap in the economy.
This has been on the Forefront of my mind for a long time. Without getting too political it seems that many places, California especially, are Waging War against ad hoc labor and small businesses. Individuals are difficult to regulate in comparison to large businesses and individual autonomy comes with the trade-off of less security and protections.
I believe a big chunk of the homelessness today were people who were able to sustain themselves with ad-hoc labor and housing arrangements . Though they’re not comfortable holding down a 9-5 (blue or white collar) , they could pick up an ad-hoc job as needed until their next transition.
We’ve replaced a once diverse and diffused economy with a “all or nothing” labor workplace. Either you are “in the system” working full time or multiple part-time gigs, on assistance, or on the streets. There’s no real room for transients, hippies, hobos and the like to sustain themselves as they had.
Yeah, the other angle is the over-regulation of housing. Ad-hoc workers often lived out of boarding and flop houses, or otherwise simple accommodations.
Just like ad-hoc work has been outlawed to "protect the workers", minimalist shelter has been outlawed to "protect the tenants".
Both of these endeavors provide some benefit to a certain vulnerable groups, but they absolutely cut the legs out from under other even more vulnerable groups.
I can build a decent shack for less $1,000, or a crappy one for $200. To be clear, I wouldnt want to live in it, but it would be a hell of a lot better than living on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, low income housing projects tag in at more than a million per unit, so few get built.
People say it is inhumane to let people live in a shack, small rooms, or flop houses so it should be illegal. However, they balk at the cost of the alternatives and people are simply left out in the street.
A free person can't voluntarily choose to live in a 8x8' shack, but the state can lock you in a 8x8' cell for disobeying.
Same here in Kentucky. As a self-employed carpenter, these last 2 years have been brutal. There's work, but somehow the big exploitative companies just slurp up all the work. Most of my jobs this year have been friends and family who felt sorry for me and had bits of work done here and there. Seems like the only option anymore is to work for a capitalist or die.
By ad hoc I mean transients, hobos , hippies— people “off grid”— who want to pick up a cash job for a few weeks or a couple months e.g farm work, dishwashing, construction site, nursing, hospitality etc.
You show up to the owner, negotiate on the spot and start working.
the gig economy requires a credit card, bank account, background check , smartphone, app install etc – and all the tracking and hassle that goes with it.
Labor is an individual characteristic which happens to increase in skill. A person good at building cabins can have a nice cabin.
The gig economy is a set of relationships between the state of problems and pay. It pressures workers with the fewest skills to successively solve the same problem.
It's always like this - plenty of people who experienced raw version of the Internet as kids/teenagers/young adults with all the unfiltered content are now the ones installing various filters, gates, laws intended to exert control - but it's for the children, eh? Bullshit
> Now the tastemakers are gone or impotent, replaced by automated systems that optimize for engagement and revenue (within whatever constraints of safety and integrity that each company applies). I’m not sure how any countercultural work would make it into the mainstream at this point or how the mainstream could shift going forward.
that’s the point that sticks out to me. optimize aggressively for revenue, everywhere, and we get what you describe. the counter culture can’t always be productive in a way that the mainstream can capture. the counter cultures that try for that today are things like darknet/drug markets or just cryptocurrency broadly. the latter, for the time being, seems pretty widely viewed as a dishonest, selfish, destructive thing. the former seems much more in-line with existing systems of commerce than with a social movement: full of distrust, no interactions other than buy & click.
i feel that the counter-culture at this point has to be fighting for some alternative to that optimization process. was Occupy counter-cultural? were WTO protests counter-cultural? communist/anarchist ideals — presented as an alternative to that optimization — do seem more popular with the newer generations than the older ones, but almost entirely in dialogue form than in actual, physical ways of living. perhaps the counter-cultural streak is still here but the barrier for it to progress from a flare up to a sustained thing has risen.
I can believe in arguments for crypto as a counter-culture, personally. Both in terms of building on the cypherpunk legacy, and also in "utopian visions meet experienced reality" with the associated ups and downs. The hippies had visible lives and lifestyles, and pieces of that entered the mainstream and became influential.
The difference is that there is, and intentionally so, little legibility to how crypto "does" anything. Increasingly so as you go down the rabbit hole into less prominent projects that are untethered to traditional finance or venture capital. And if we're seeing like a state, that makes it a useless technology, ties it only to crime and the underground, because it can't be seen and controlled using men with guns or tattling gossips. And from a counter-cultural perspective, that should make one go, "hmm, that's interesting." Someone who is able to access state resources while being insulated fron state coercion could be seen as "useless parasite" or "bold counter-culturalist".
Right now it is highly inconvenient to adhere to a "crypto lifestyle", even more so than it was to be a hippie. As you say, buying drugs with it is a common entry point, and it's hard to use a crypto wallet for any kind of consumer activity. And everywhere you go, the discussion is unhinged speculation with an "exit strategy". The actual believers are quite a bit fewer in number, and are more likely to be along the lines of a Vitalik than an SBF - living relatively simply and focused primarily on intellectual concerns, vs a grand-scale dishonest charlatan.
And protest movements, while visually impactful, don't seem to terrify the mainstream like crypto. In many respects they have become co-opted, part of the show.
I think the idea that cryptocurrency terrifies the mainstream is a hilarious one. It certainly doesn't seem to terrify anyone on mainstream finance.
It may 'terrify' some ordinary folks and mainstream journalists, but that's more about the massive amounts of fraud and the enablement of crime than it is about it taking over in any significant way.
The lie flat movement is a physical embodiment of anti-capitalism or economic optimization. You could also say “quiet-quitting” is similar. Starving capital of labor is the only non-violent form of protest that works
It is funny seeing Laying flat/Tang Ping in action. People for decades have said "the revolution is coming!". It always has their own specific flavor or manner of mass action - typically in the form of something big and bombastic.
And yet the one protest that looks to have a chance of actually making any significant change is the once that starves the very systems itself. Doing less instead of more actively works. It is a fascinating thing to see in action.
Part of that, in turn, is the slow death of the American working class. This is a much harsher society economically. That is why you step over bodies in San Francisco's Tenderloin. It wasn't like that when I moved here (early 80's).
But why are you surprised? The hippies pushed free love and drug use. The inevitable end result was more children without stable families and drug addiction. When you step over those bodies you are stepping over the fruits of the hippy ideal.
That's a deeply flawed statement on a number of levels, here's a few:
1. Hippies were ~1960s. Children of hippies would then be adults in the ~1980s, and would be grandparents now. Tenderloin's median age[1] is 38, or 20 years too young
2a. Hippies pushed marijuana and psychedelics. Weed has a 10% addiction rate. LSD and psilocybin have no addiction rate.
2b. Drugs that are addictive (heroin) had complex, controversial and conspiratorial factors [2] (and that's aside from the complexity of "addiction" itself)
2c. Alcohol and alcoholism had (and has) way more impact.
3a. Family instability (re: divorce rates) occurs in far, far more places than the hippy movement.
3b. Just because a family is stable doesn't mean it produces healthy adults
1. I'm 35, was raised by people who came of age during the hippy time, and not only was I influenced by it via family members, but also by that point schools and other institutions.
2a. Recreational drug use cannot be so neatly compartmentalised as you might think. The only reason I tried marijuana and psychedelics but refused speed was because I was a nerd who researched things on erowid. I don't know if you've met young working class party-goers, but most are not so discerning.
2b. The quote you provided doesn't support what you said.
2c. It has a significant impact, but you're delusional if you think it has more of an impact than amphetamines and heroin. I'm certainly not here to defend alcoholism.
3a. Free Love is going to result in more accidental pregnancies and more children being born in unstable situations. I surely don't need to explain this.
Okay, hold up. The theory you appeared to me to present was that hippy attitudes towards sex and drugs would lead to unplanned children, addiction, and broken homes.
That you are 35 (hi, 36) and raised by people who came of age during the hippy time (also, hi, same!), I would presume, explicitly means you were not a result of hippy free love attitudes, and were a planned child, since those were ~60s and we're both 80s babies.
PS - Props to you for researching on Erowid!
Aside from any differences in observations about "working class party goers" (which, boy howdy do I have), if your theory is that "hippy attitudes towards their drugs cause addictive drug use today", that's going to run into a host of problems starting with the differences in which drugs.
I don't understand how direct testimony that significant power (political, governmental, social, etc etc) at the time was directed to destabilizing the community you're talking about doesn't support my assertion that any conversation around addiction in those communities is going to be complicated.
I'd bet $100 (probably more) that alcoholism has a larger overall impact than (illegal) drug addiction, if only because of there are far more people with an addiction to alcohol than there are people with addictions to illegal drugs; ie total case count. I can't speak to statistic regarding relative harm on a per-person basis; ie - yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the average heroin addict experiences more harm from their addiction than the average alcoholic.
Similarly, bet you $100 that abstinence-only education results in more accidental pregnancies and more children being born into unstable situations than "Free Love" ever did then or "sex-positivity" does today. If only because (IME) free love attitudes largely also come with pro-birth-control attitudes.
Re: Bets - I'm serious. We'd OFC have to formalize the question and answer-methodology ala prediction marketplaces, which might functionally prevent an actual bet, but regardless, I'm serious.
The hippies did not 'push' free love and drug use - those are themes evident in every generation's youth. It's what teens do.
In the hippies case, as the movement became more mainstream the establishment funded efforts to emphasize those aspects over the other, more socialist and anti-war aspects that were the basis of the earlier counter-culture.
Just look at the evolution in the music of the movement: protest songs of the early to mid 60s (Dylan, Sam Cooke, Simon & Garfunkle...) gave way to the commercially produced, glitzy psychedelic music in the late 60s. From Surrealistic Pillows in 1967 to American Beauty in 1970 and beyond it was basically about sex, partying, navel gazing and spacing out.
The message clearly became much safer and, as it happens, more profitable.
I've even heard one conspiracy theorist say that the change in attitude for many bands was orchestrated by 3-letter agencies to influence the anti-war movement, though I don't know how much evidence there is of that.
“ I've even heard one conspiracy theorist say that the change in attitude for many bands was orchestrated by 3-letter agencies to influence the anti-war movement, though I don't know how much evidence there is of that.”
There are similar conspiratorial views that the mainstreaming of Woke has been an elite push to distract/disrupt the class consciousness Occupy movement.
The medium is the message dudes. At this point in history, what will qualify a true counterculture is NOT BEING ONLINE. Whatever the true counterculture will be, it won’t be subject to the Internet and its all-seeing eye. It won’t be made out of memes and flame wars. No matter what the political bent, we’re all very much a captive audience online. “Master’s house/master’s tools” and all that.
People should read “Gravity's Rainbow” - or at least an analysis of it. A major point/theme is that no matter what you do, if it’s useful/profitable/empowering/etc then it will be co-opted by “the man” or whatever. There’s a never ending graveyard of counter culture artifacts that existed to spit on the mainstream that were nearly merged in, packaged, and sold back to the hordes of consumers that think they’re outside of it all. It’s hard to listen to Rage Against the Machine without laughing.
In essence, the message in the book is the only way to win is to not play. To live as far under the radar as possible. To just not participate. That you won’t change it because it will just co-opt you making it bigger and a more dangerous war machine where you’re a complicit participant.
No this is not a joke. You’re [going], “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself
Planting seeds.
I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. (Machi…) Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”
Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags!
“Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”
Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.
“Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill’s very bright to do that.”
God, I’m just caught in a fucking web.
“Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…”
How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?
I've read Gravity's Rainbow and it's very melodramatic but a good read. What is "winning" in this case? A feeling of liberation through avoiding the main path can be useful for some, even if life is deterministic.
>It’s hard to listen to Rage Against the Machine without laughing.
People like music for all kinds of reasons...and I see what you're getting at, but this example is a little cheesy. "I think you're all sheep for thinking your not sheep and it makes me laugh." is essentially what I'm reading.
While counter culture does get co-opted, it's not like RATM was gonna actually do anything to help us socially since music had already been commodified for a long time. Counter Culture can even START co-opted e.g. Label Music/Industry Plants.
Where this book misses is the failure to ask the question: What is the purpose of viewing yourself or acting in favor of counter culture. To look cool? To feel powerful? If those things work in your life model who cares if it's not the most "punk" thing ever. Some people live their whole lives happy being "posers" and I would consider that successful for them.
Frank Zappa said that when he first heard Bob Dylans "The times they are a changin" on the radio, Frank believed that he didn't need to get into the music industry because the change in the world was already on its way. Frank quickly figured out that this was not how it was going to go down and that Dylan was very quickly absorbed into the main stream.
Credit to Frank, he managed to walk the fine line of being in pop culture but never fully embraced by it.
“ the producer of mass culture has no use for experience, his own or another’s, which cannot be immediately shared. What is endured by one human being alone seems to him unreal, or even an effect of madness.”
The cited goal of counterculture has always struck me as utterly incoherent and inconsistent not only with its own actions but it itself. It always fell into the same self-contradictory hypocrisy with no self awareness.
Look at the "counter-culture archetype" and how well it fits.
- Dress the same to express your individuality" paradox.
- Don't follow the rules but follow the rigidly defined rules about what is real "foo".
- Say that you want people to think for themselves and be themselves yet get steaming mad at "posers" for not matching up with your vision or becoming adopted.
- Complain about it dying out after complaining about it being popular.
It becomes like any other bigot's ever greased high velocity goalposts for what it takes to be considered acceptable.
When I was young I thought I was missing something. As I get older I get the feeling that no I didn't, it really was that incoherent and unpleasable.
Another commenter mentioned off grid living. It reminded me of the bohemian communes of the 60's and I wondered if technology is destroying this concept as well by making it so easy for suburban chads to feel "off grid" with solar power and three-fuel generators and even cars now that don't require regular visits to a gas station. Easy to overlook how they're still using city water, sewage, trash collection, and shop for even basic things at stores though.
I think you may be right. Counter culture today may simply be being offline.
I was going to remark that people like myself that avoid (most) social media and avoid tracking via vpns and so forth are counter cultural right now. I'm still having to explain to people why I'm not on Facebook all the time.
I just had that conversation yesterday. The only pictures of me that exist are in relation to my current employer, and only because they post headshots of all new execs in the local paper (small towns are weird like that).
Otherwise, I flat do not exist online.
People are ASTOUNDED when I ask them to crop me out, or to ask my permission before posting with me in it. I'm always polite, but people act like I asked them to lick the bottom of my foot.
People are ASTOUNDED when I ask them to crop me out, or to ask my permission before posting with me in it. I'm always polite, but people act like I asked them to lick the bottom of my foot.
Most people are happy to have photos with themselves in it. Like it or not, you're the strange one in this situation.
I have cut contact with, and purposely avoid extended family functions for this reason alone. It is beyond me why people can't seem to respect you and your privacy.
On this topic: part of counterculture used to be the ability to *signal* your identification with the group to other group members. Styles of dress, certain symbols or artifacts have all been commonly used. How does one signal to others their social media rejectionism in the age of social media communication ubiquity?
Socialize in person. I don’t even remember the last time I went somewhere with the intention of socializing but without any knowledge or plan about who would be there (e.g. in my small town, there was a specific place teenagers used to just go to hang out without specific plans to do so, meeting with whoever happened to also show up).
A dumb phone, an old walkman, etc. but also some of the following: second hand clothes, a second hand bicycle, a car from the 90s, a cheap second hand watch etc. The gathering spaces include your local library, your small local music venue/record store, and your local print shops and book cafés.
“ local library, your small local music venue/record store, and your local print shops and book cafés”
With the except of publicly funded libraries, it might be notable to suggest that, in many/most communities, everything else on this list is struggling to exist.
I guess that is a point in favor of this being a counter culture. It is my perception of history that venues that cater to counter culture tend to struggle financially, at least since the Reaganonics of the 1980s.
You definitely do not carry a smartphone. You might be excused a flip phone, if only because you’re not likely to b super-connected with it, but honestly that’s pushing it; even the most primitive cellphone has sms.
Which I think signals a complete 180 from my lifetime.
Because, there was a time when being online was the counterculture. If you habituated newsgroups, IRC, BBSes, etc, you were on the fringe. Now, all of that is commonplace in some fashion. Newsgroups are basically places like this, reddit, even Facebook to some extent. IRC has its analogs in Discord, Slack, etc. BBSes are any online game community.
That brought back grad school memories. The Internet is an excellent example of this. We're watching -- in real-time -- the medium challenge society (at all levels and across boundaries).
The Internet is still an infant; yet look at its impact.
Really? The internet looks old. A teenager in the 90s, aged fast in the 2000s, got a family in 2010s and now is seeking to police everyone through its retirement.
In terms of information history, we're still in the newborn stage. We don't even have a single generation that has been born and died with access to instant worldwide communication - that will happen when I and my cohort die. I was one of the first kids to be able to independently access information without my local community adults gatekeeping it. It's one of those little things that becomes a big thing in hindsight, like being able to read the Bible in the vernacular. Gen Z (and maaaybe some Millennials like myself but that's questionable) are the first generation to grow up with geographically-independent hobbies and subcultures. Even the old stodgy or corporatized Internet has this property.
It is starting to even have a shape. People just stopped giving up on service formats (how are you supposed to read instant messages again?) all the time because they like some other one better.
We see versions but maybe there's a lifecycle to every medium. I m sure when TV was invented people made blue-sky predictions about how it would change the world for the better and not become the means that rich people use to rule over democratic audiences. The internet we know was the medium of one-to-all communication but it seems we -very soon- stumbled on the limits of such communication with all the censorship & tracking . Maybe the next medium will use some other mode, where one-to-all does not matter anymore
And while the internet changed societies, it did not "change societies", as in the western world democracies function pretty much as they did in the 80s, but with digital tools instead of analog. We did not see huge changes like when printing was invented: The world map is still the same
Bingo. I am not saying "Hey look at me, I am counter culture!" I am just being me. But usually, I am online only about once or twice a week nowadays and even then it is only for about 10-20 minutes at a time.
I suspect like folks going back to dumb phones, magazine subscriptions - the embrace of the analog world again to some degree. This is where the rejection of the mainstream will probably hit the road.
Absolutely. It is important to remember that consensus opinions on narrow internet forums like HN or even Twitter do not generally represent the default positions that people take on most issues. Often, they are not even in the same wheelhouse.
This extends readily also to the media spheres in which people immerse themselves. The consensus on cable news, for instance, hardly represents a good-faith analysis.
Yes, this - and especially as a parent. No judgement here, just observing that most parents around me don't think about what a phone/mobile device does to their kids and what it teaches them about what "normal" is. My 14 year old does not have a phone of his own, he uses one occasionally at home only, loosely supervised. He sees the difference, and he knows how to blend in. When he's on his own, he is on his own. I can only hope he won't be owned.
But "being online" is where millions of people find and engage in countercultures. You may be underestimating the vastness of online spaces and the communities that exist in those spaces (many of which you can't find by Googling).
I know what you are getting at, but just want to point out there are still plenty of offline jobs out there which are very much not privileged. For example, the independent recycler rummaging through your bin at night is likely all offline but they're not "privileged" by any means. From their perspective, those making money online are very privleged.
I'm pretty sure I've been existing in a number of counter-cultures for the last decade or two. These have been either linked to my identity or physical location, I couldn't have properly experienced them through consuming media on the subject. Certainly all required an active choice and/or lifestyle change on my part.
Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life:
- Freelancing/contracting, and actively living substantially below my means. This has given me free time in a way that really changed my view on the world and allowed me to be around other people who were not in the 9-5 working world.
- Sexuality & ENM, plus living in a large city. There is a huge non-obvious culture of LQBTQIA people in this culture which often have very different outlooks on life to the mainstream.
- Communal living. Living in a warehouse with people from very different walks of life. I was exposed to so many fascinating ideas and people this way. It was a truly magical time of my life in which I also played a part in supporting the queer/ENM sub-culture of my city.
- Buying land and living off grid. There is a whole sub-culture of people doing this, both online and (more importantly) physically around me.
So I think counter-culture is available but – having written the above – I'm not sure if I am agreeing and disagreeing with the OP. On one hand it exists, but on the other hand I'm saying that it is very hard to access without making material changes to one's life.
I agree with this, I had a friend who lived in a caravan in a forest in the north of England with a bunch of hippies. They'd throw parties now and again and there were tons of them. There are loads of people doing van life for various reasons or something similar like bike packing or living on a homestead. These people are counter culture but you won't hear about them because most of them aren't hustling to become social media influencers - they'll do some honest work to earn some money and then spend the year living out of a van and rock climbing or whatever. It's mostly word of mouth or messaging groups with them. At the party I went to, all the music played was mp3s on the guy's hard drive because he didn't want to pay for Spotify because he thought it devalued music. If you're looking for the counter culture on the mainstream platforms then you're not going to find it. The counter culture is 100% there they just don't really care about influencing you. You have to choose to break free of the mainstream yourself, they're not going to try and do it for you anymore.
Yup, people living it dont brag about it, gotta keep the poser johnny come lately herds away from ruining it. I have been living and crusing on a sailboat, mosty off anchor rent free when I can, surrounded by many other sailors who rather not see it ruined by Instagram.
The key here is the counter culture starts and ends in your heart. Get out and break out of the matrix.
It seems you are out of touch with the liveaboard boat market. It's totally feasible to pick up a boat suitable for coastal cruising for a couple of people for $2,000. Budget another $2,000 for upgrades and you're good to go.
Any boat you pick up for $2000 will need $2000 just for new bottom paint. Then you can start addressing the rusted rigging and the broken inboard and the rotten sails and the failing mast step supports... why yes, I have been boat-shopping recently! :)
I'll believe BLM is mainstream culture when people of color aren't being disproportionately killed by police.
Until then, if police forces are upholding a mainstream concept of law and order resulting in said disproportionality, BLM is countercultural.
Otherwise, if acknowledging the aims of basically what's a human rights movement via flags and spots on AP tests constitutes inclusion into mainstream culture, then the mainstream culture is absurd and perverse.
This is like saying being "anti-murder" is countercultural because murders still happen.
Just because something occurs does not mean there is no mainstream opposition.
I would go further and say that the most basic elements of the BLM were never countercultural.
opposition to excessive police force has been mainstream since the 70s-80s.
The only part of BLM that is actually controversial and countercultural is the idea of abolishing the police. As a result, the majority of BLM supporters reject this aspect.
I think this is a good point, and you don't deserve to be downvoted for it.
I think some of my examples do try to change wider society, but it is just more subtle and less overt/wholesale. I think there will be activists/evangelicals in any sub-culture.
google:
coun·ter·cul·ture
/ˈkoun(t)ərˌkəlCHər/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: counterculture; plural noun: countercultures; noun: counter-culture; plural noun: counter-cultures
a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm.
"the idealists of the 60s counterculture"
Being not native, I googled before I posted. In the first page I saw some phrases that seemed to confirm for me. For example, Wikipedia, citing a book from 1991:
Counterculture may or may not be explicitly political. It typically involves criticism or rejection of currently powerful institutions, with accompanying hope for a better life or a new society.
One big difference between the US and other countries: The US doesn’t look at counterculture as a fundamental threat or challenge to the government. The US citizens actually have freedom. The constitution went so far as to identify the sovereignty of the country with its citizens - thus no royalty.
This might sound quaint to some critical ears of the US, but that is the basis of the law and US systems. The US citizens only need to be reminded of this fact and decide whether they want to reinforce that fact with their personal choices - nonviolent protest, voting, etc.
Edit-That might not seem related to the definition of counterculture, but it absolutely is. The US has a culture of multiculturalism. It has the Amish and lets them largely have their culture within the larger culture. There are many such examples with gradients all over and within the US. Sure, sometimes some of those subcultures get political and exert themselves. But they do it within the peaceful political system as a strong trend.
Endlessly supported by literally every news outlet, major tech company, big 5 sports league, F1000, university, and at least half of the political class. You’re not counter to any major institution, lmao. You’re not the resistance
"Supported" in only the very thinnest sense. The Raytheon Pride flags are generally considered to be extremely "virtue signalling" even within the community; at best this means "we'll allow you to work here and prevent people using slurs openly in the office", not "we'll stop donating to politicians and parties pushing anti-trans legislation or increased police budgets".
The Tyre Nichols incident response shows some improvements, but those responsible have not yet been charged, and because US police are so fragmented it will be a very long time before standards are raised nationally.
Changing the colour of your logo on a certain date is not really "supporting". Corps gonna corp and if changing the logo and publishing some nice post brings more money, they'll do it. (While donating to Republicans at the same time)
If the entire establishment is seeking to ally itself with your movement/culture/etc then that’s a strong indicator that your movement isn’t counter-culture or otherwise subversive. They don’t have to become True Believers IMHO.
And FWIW, lots of big companies have DEI departments that preach this stuff internally and market it externally (my wife is a marketing consultant with these big companies and they eat this shit up so much that their contracts are dependent on proving their commitment to DEI by centering their “diverse” employees, holding internal and external DEI ceremonies, etc). I’m sure there’s still a profit motive, but there’s quite a lot more than an annual profile photo update.
When Coca-Cola embraced the flower children with its ads in the late 1960s / early 1970s, did that mean that the US counterculture of that time had become "the culture"?
Of course it did not. The flower children, the back-to-the-landers, the bikers, the free love communers all remained a tiny slice of the population (and a shrinking one by that time).
What the late 60s/early 70s US counterculture had going for it was a kind of credibility as "the new thing". It was not "the culture" (and it never really became it without mutating heavily), but it was interesting to many people who did not participate in it. It remained a counter-culture until it had changed so radically (and this was years after Coco-Cola first tried to ride the hippy chic train), and then, indeed, it was no longer subversive in any meaningful way.
As actor Peter Coyote noted of that era, that particular counterculture won the culture war in the long term - you can find yoga classes and wholewheat bread in almost every small town in the USA now, our attitudes towards sexuality and the environment and women and racism have been fundamentally altered - but it lost almost every political battle that it was concerned with. Wars continued, economic inequality, corporate control, the military-industrial complex ... all continued unabated.
I want to add that my final paragraph above really describes the fundamental flaw with countercultures if you believe they are a vehicle for political change. They are really premised on the idea that it is possible to make a set of personal, individual choices and that if enough other people make similar choices you can build a sort of parallel society to mainstream culture. If you believe in them as a mechanism of political change, you tend to imagine that parallel society serving as an example/lesson to mainstream culture and being adopted by it.
As Coyote's observations note, this can work for "culture" issues, which do indeed tend to be the result of individual choices about consumption, but it rarely works for issues rooted in the distribution of political and economic power. These require political movements demanding change from the mainstream.
Thing about 60s/70s counterculture is, it didn't become the culture. Rather, its members were recruited by mainstream culture with the promise of wealth and the good life, to betray the values they espoused as youths.
Were Gramsci alive in the 80s, he would be like "See? See? This is EXACTLY what I was talking about!"
This is not really true. While there were a few hippies who moved to wall st., the reality is that only a tiny percentage of the population were hippies (or their cousins). The "older adults" who made up the 80's/90's culture were, for the most part, the "young adult" members of mainstream culture in the late 60s/70s.
It's just like the way that the 90s mainstream culture in the UK was not based on punks ... not because absolutely no punks "crossed over", but because, as a percentage of the population, there were hardly any punks to start with (just a lot of media noise).
> When Coca-Cola embraced the flower children with its ads in the late 1960s / early 1970s, did that mean that the US counterculture of that time had become "the culture"?
Surely you understand that Coca-Cola wasn't "the entire establishment"?
But what you're describing is exactly where "counterculture" flips over to "culture". It may have been counterculture at one point, but once it's grabbed up by the mainstream canon, it is no longer counterculture.
This is an important element of "cool", which is essentially the ebb-and-flow of ideas between counterculture and mainstream culture.
Pretty sure BLM was a media darling from the moment it was discovered. Maybe I have a weird media bubble, but the content I saw was endlessly pro-BLM (even contortions such as the memorable CNN reporter wearing a gas mask against a burning Kenosha with the caption “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”) for most of the last decade.
I can’t think of a way that BLM was ever counter-cultural.
> Pretty sure BLM was a media darling from the moment it was discovered.
It was the polished, highly educated, upper-middle class version of the activists that sprang up around the Ferguson protests. BLM was the mainstream corporate replacement of a street level movement, whose leaders acquired a habit of being found executed in the trunks of burned cars. A rehearsal for #TimesUp.
Imagine if F500 companies displayed the Christian cross to the extent they did the Pride colors, for one month. Would that signal "support" for Christianity?
I think their point was that BLM has flipped from counter cutler to mainline culture
It’s on flags at schools, supported by government, roads are named after it, they have an enormous foundation with staff, and it’s even in college course curriculum
Ehh. I dunno, if that's "mainstream", why is this the third+ time this has had to be fought for? (BLM, Civil Rights, Civil War).
We've had pictures of MLK in schools, Civil Rights has been "supported by government", roads were named after people, there were and are enormous foundations with staff, and it's definitely in college curriculums - and it's been that way for an entire human lifetime...
...and yet the same fight is being fought again.
I'd figure if something achieved "mainstream", it wouldn't have to happen again and again.
(edit: In my head, I'm compare/contrasting with suffragette and other aspects of women's rights)
This is such a superficial understanding of "support". They make their logo rainbow for a month. None of the groups you mentioned support police abolition, prison abolition, for instance. Police budgets still go up. Homeless encampments still get bulldozed. Black people are still killed by police.
Capitalists have co-opted the least disruptive demands of advocates in an attempt to draw attention away from the actual point. They think if they focus on saying words and not doing deeds, people will move on and forget.
If your culture is well-known enough and seen as desirable enough that you start having to no-true-scotsman to differentiate between the corporate poseurs and the true believers, it's a pretty strong sign that you're not a counterculture anymore. People don't try to fake having low cultural status.
imo that's the problem - everything gets corporate poseurs so quickly now
could just be i'm out of touch and the countercultures have successfully hidden from me tho
That's faking low financial or political status in order to obtain cultural status. If the rich and powerful are generally hated, you don't become popular by flaunting your wealth but by distancing yourself from it.
"The leftist of the over-socialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.” --Theodore J. Kaczynski
Police budgets are up, but policing is down, killings by police are way down, and consequentially violent crime is way, way up. Protesters didn’t get everything, but they got a lot of what they asked for (reduction in policing, basically) and they seem content (no more major protests or riots since the precipitous drop in policing following the Floyd protests).
It seems hard to argue that there haven’t been disruptive changes considering violent crime levels (esp homicides), but I fully agree that “capitalists” (or maybe corporatists?) embraced BLM and other identity stuff because it’s a convenient distraction from substantial policy issues. A lot of folks made themselves into “useful idiots” over the last decade.
You're claiming that the US, unlike the rest of the civilized world, can't address crime without having death squads summarily execute people for trivial or imagined offences every other week?
Sure thing: "An event study design finds census places with early BLM protests experienced a 10% to 15% decrease in police homicides from 2014 through 2019, around 200 fewer deaths." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3767097
> You're claiming that the US, unlike the rest of the civilized world, can't address crime without having death squads summarily execute people for trivial or imagined offences every other week?
The US obviously doesn't have "death squads" who "summarily execute people every other week". Lol I can't imagine asking for a citation about police killings and then tossing this claim out there.
I don't think it's that activists are content. Rather I think it's that a combination of people returning to work, the end of Covid financial support, and high inflation means that people can't protest anymore. There's probably also a lot of fatigue after protests were going on for months.
I'd also contest whether activists really got much of what they were asking for. They generally weren't asking for simply no-police. Rather they were asking for issues like poverty, mental illness, and homelessness to be addressed rather than just being policed.
People protested for half a decade before COVID. Even if they couldn’t get out and protest, they could still engage in social media, and yet it seemed like their enthusiasm for the subject largely evaporated, even on social media. Even the cheapest of symbolic stuff like “#BLM” in Twitter handles and bios seemed to largely disappear. It very much feels like they cut policing in the name of black Americans and then lost interest when policing drove up crime rates, particularly in black communities.
> Rather they were asking for issues like poverty, mental illness, and homelessness to be addressed rather than just being policed.
I’m sure some were asking for those things, but mostly this was a media retcon when it was becoming apparent that “abolish the police” was jeopardizing Biden’s election campaign (“when protesters say ‘abolish the police’ and ‘all cops are bastards’, surely they’re really advocating for more spending on social services, right?”).
That wasn't my experience. From the start I heard people saying that "defund the police" was a poor slogan because it didn't convey to most people what activists actually meant.
This is such a misunderstanding of the current situation. The demands were varied, but common ask was _not_ just a reduction in policing paired with a ballooning police budget. Ironically, the "defund" movement ended up causing an even more reactionary movement such that police actually got more funding.
Protesters wanted to re-allocate resources away from the police towards other services, so that cops are not the first responders to every situation, they often wanted fewer police with more training.
Crime goes up as a result of the material conditions of people. The more unequal society is, the more poor and desperate people get, the higher crime is going to be. Acting like it's merely a function of enforcement is silly.
Society did not get abruptly and dramatically unequal between 2013 and 2015 nor between 2019 and 2020. Socioeconomics doesn’t predict these crime surges.
Richard Rosenfeld speaking to The Guardian: “The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson Effect”
Vox reporting on Travis Campbell’s research: “Campbell’s research indicates that these protests correlate with a 10% increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests”.
Harvard’s Roland Fryer and Tanaya Devi found that prominent BLM protests were associated with 900 excess homicides in the 5 cities they examined and 34k excess felonies. They report that the leading hypothesis is a change in policing activity, and the cities they studied had precipitous drops in the quantity of police-civilian interactions following the protests.
These are professional criminologists and economists—I doubt they’re being “silly” as you suggest.
If you don't think there is any correlation between the material conditions of people and crime I don't know what to tell you. You're basically subscribing to essentialism. There are plenty of cranks with ivy league degrees in economics.
edit: You are cherry picking your data points. I spent literally 30 seconds looking up your first quote it's not even congruent with what you're saying.
Obviously no one in this thread ever disputed the relationship between socioeconomics and crime. This is a flimsy, transparent attempt to move goal posts.
Of course they're being silly if they decide the mere discussion of holding criminals accountable is responsible for a rise in crime, just because said criminals happen to be wearing blue.
The solution is obvious. Start rolling heads of Police Chiefs until they get their hierarchies of people in line. If it ends with the entire police union fired so be it, insubordinate lawless police are worse than useless.
This is just a recipe for chiefs that are good are juking stats or playing PR. You can't just fire the person at the top, the institution needs to change.
That's happening in spite of BLM being endlessly supported. Doesn't negate the fact that BLM is supported by "literally every news outlet [save Fox News], major tech company, big 5 sports league, F1000, university, and at least half of the political class" AND the US government [0].
> elevated for blacks because the commit more crime
True perhaps, but very misleading. Consider that blacks are far more likely to end up in jail (and for longer) for the same crime a white person commits. Consider that ending up in jail and with a criminal record puts someone in a situation where they're more likely to commit crimes in the future. Sounds to me like racial bias is creating a higher likelihood of the police encounters that may result in shootings occurring.
I think your argument is wrong in several ways, but even accepting it hypothetically -- equality of far too many murders by the police is not actually what anyone is looking for.
It’s certainly not what I’m looking for, but BLM was obviously about purported racial inequality with respect to police killings or else Daniel Shaver, Tony Timpa, Justine Damond, etc would be among the Names that we’re told to Say.
So it's not monolithic, I've definitely been at "BLM"-y protests against police violence where non-Black victims were mentioned.
As far as actual policy changes we might want to advocate for or support, does it make any difference? I guess it would mean that "diversity training" for cops is not the way to go -- I agree and I think most BLM organizers would too (the ones I know anyway do). Instead ways that increase police accountability or limit police interactions are the way to go, which I again think would be agreeable.
I think the level of violence and aggression that police enact on certain communities would probably not be tolerated if it affected people with more political power -- they target people with less political power, which has racial components in the USA is why race matters, but is not exclusively "black and white", sure.
> So it's not monolithic, I've definitely been at "BLM"-y protests against police violence where non-Black victims were mentioned.
Yes, I'm generalizing. It's not possible to make meaningful statements about a millions-strong movement that apply universally, so I'm generalizing just like we generalize about "liberals", "conservatives", "progressives", "Trump supporters", etc. And I stand by my generalization--any mention of white victims of police violence was an aberration, an outlier.
> I think the level of violence and aggression that police enact on certain communities would probably not be tolerated if it affected people with more political power -- they target people with less political power, which has racial components in the USA is why race matters, but is not exclusively "black and white", sure.
I mean, I think virtually everyone agrees that police killings are classist. Of course, BLM wouldn't have been controversial if the message was merely "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)". Something like 90% of Americans in 2020 (per Gallup or Pew--I forget which--but think about how big this number is particularly in light of the polarization of American politics) agreed that police brutality was a problem and police reform was needed--this was extremely uncontroversial. But the claim wasn't "classism", it was "racism"--police target ("hunt" was even commonly invoked) black Americans because of their race.
> Of course, BLM wouldn't have been controversial if the message was merely "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)"
I'm confused why you think this is "of course"?
I'm confused why you are so caught up in whether the problem is described as "classism in a society where the poor are disproportionately black" or "racism in a society where black people are disproportionately poor."
I think in America you can't actually totally separate racism and classism as completely separate things, they are always related. Slavery, one major part of the beginning of American race relations, was, of course, a class relation -- enslaving people for their labor.
I think one reason non-poor Black people do get targeted by police is because they are perceived ("coded" to use fancy language) as poor, because in America Black is associated with poor. Like not even necessarily that the individual person is assumed to be poor -- although they may be, but it may not be that explicit or conscious. I don't think the police are even necessarily explicit or conscious about the fact that they can behave abusively toward poor people specifically (although they may be sometimes); but implicitly and unconsciously they know that certain kinds of people can be mistreated, that it's even their job to mistreat certain kinds of people -- and they are likely to read a Black person as that certain kind of person.
You can disagree with this analysis. No big deal. I don't understand why it seems to make you so angry that other people have this analysis you disagree with though; or why, if you agree that there is a problem with police brutality and abuse, as you seem to, and even agree with the problem statement "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)" -- you can't work with people who agree with you so much of the way even though they disagree on some analysis, work together on solutions that make sense to all (like no, not "diversity training" for police, literally nobody I know that's BLM or "abolish the police", and I know a lot of people, think that's useful either) -- instead of considering them somehow on another side. "you" being you personally, or anyone in this category.
> I'm confused why you are so caught up in whether the problem is described as "classism in a society where the poor are disproportionately black" or "racism in a society where black people are disproportionately poor."
Because those are different problems with different solutions, and picking the wrong set of solutions tends to exacerbate problems (as we're seeing now with soaring crime from which black communities suffer disproportionately).
> I think in America you can't actually totally separate racism and classism as completely separate things, they are always related.
I'm sure there's an element of "black == poor" (brings to mind Biden's "poor kids are just as bright as white kids" gaffe) and in that sense these things are interrelated, but it doesn't follow that we can solve the problem by ignoring what is likely a considerably classism component altogether.
> I don't understand why it seems to make you so angry that other people have this analysis you disagree with though
I think this is entirely in your imagination. I can chuck a few smiley emojis around if it helps? :)
> if you agree that there is a problem with police brutality and abuse, as you seem to, and even agree with the problem statement "police target poor people (who are disproportionately black)" -- you can't work with people who agree with you so much of the way even though they disagree on some analysis, work together on solutions that make sense to all (like no, not "diversity training" for police, literally nobody I know that's BLM or "abolish the police", and I know a lot of people, think that's useful either) -- instead of considering them somehow on another side. "you" being you personally, or anyone in this category.
As is often the case in politics, agreement that there is a problem is not actually very much agreement. 90% of Americans agree that we need police reform (Gallup 2020), that doesn't mean we should pick the proposals offered by the most extreme 10% (proposals which 80% of black Americans reject). Notably, there's a lot of research that indicates that the little bit of de-policing we've done in this country seems to be driving a tremendous amount of additional violent crime. Homicides are up 60-70% since ~2014, amounting to about ten thousand additional lives lost every single year (that's about three 9/11s every single year just in homicides, not to mention all of the "mere" assaults, armed robberies, etc) in order to stop a handful of unjustified police killings. Why would I work with the most extreme 10% who are actively making things worse when there's another 80% of the country that are open to more moderate reforms which can address police brutality without enormous body counts?
Oh God, not one of these "we used self-reported statistics from metropolitan police departments to determine valid discharges of firearms to paint with broad strokes all over the country" studies.
As if they say anything about the rural parts of this country, like my hometown, half an hour from where Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down.
That data generally agrees with victim surveys about the race of offenders of violent crimes. It stands to reason that a group with a larger share of violent criminals is also going to have more police killings. Is there any data that contradict these? Is there any plausible theory about why victims might conspire with police to make it appear as though black Americans collectively overcommit violent crimes?
At first, I typed out a more long-winded reply about why one can't conflate the self-report statistics of victims with the motivations of police in violent skirmishes, but I've been reflecting a lot lately on choosing my battles.
The "but black people are more likely to be violent criminals" rebuttal is a despicable one, and if you can't see the absence of causal links that you're deliberately hopping over in an attempt to shoehorn that in, then I doubt I'm going to make you see it in a HN comment. That said, I sure hope you don't ever correct someone on "causation vs correlation", as you'd be a tremendous hypocrite.
It’s only appears to be despicable to people who don’t understand statistics on a basic level (which, sadly, describes most Americans, even educated ones) or ardent racists who believe that “the race” supersedes “the individual”.
Notably, we can correctly observe that black people commit more violent crimes per capita than other races without implying any of the following:
1. black people are biologically disposed to crime
2. a significant percentage of black people are criminals
3. any given black person significantly more likely to be a criminal than any given non-black person
I definitely think your decision to pick your battles more carefully is the right one, and I encourage you to be even more judicious.
I firmly believe that you don't understand statistics on a basic level, and you've wholly demonstrated that in this comment by throwing around a bunch of "explanations" with no basis but your own intuition. So the irony of your opening assertion has a wonderfully humorous tinge to me, a literal statistician. Take your pseudo-intellectual trolling back to reddit.
Flamewar comments like you posted to this thread will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I will, as much as I enjoyed most of your posturing, including your misunderstanding of what constitutes an ad hominem AND the feeble attempt to invoke the guidelines. Is my tone too harsh for you? Or was it that I assumed the bad faith that you wear on your sleeve?
Flamewar comments like you posted to this thread will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Read your own citation. That conclusion did not reach the level of statistical significance. The authors admit it studied a single precinct that self-reported data. They had no way to corroborate or verify the accuracy of the data they were given.
“In essence, this is equivalent to analyzing labor market discrimination on a set of firms willing to supply a researcher with their Human Resources data!”
>Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life [...] I'm not sure if I am agreeing and disagreeing with the OP.
Your examples of counter culture are alternative lifestyles.
The author (Kirk Thaker) and his cited author (Ted Gioia) were talking about media and entertainment content. Basically, the "long-tail" of obscure/experimental content not being widely exposed and whatever content they do see all looks the same to them.
Those are orthogonal areas of counter culture. E.g. You have a digital nomad living 100% in a camping RV ... but watches the same popular Netflix shows as everybody else. Or, you have the person that ignores popular sports and tv shows and only reads obscure Japanese comics... but works at a conventional 9-to-5 office job.
The extent to which these kinds of lifestyles are astroturfed is always interesting. Not claiming it is necessarily the case, just that it does happen from time to time. Thomas Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool” is a good reference here.
Take a look at Twitter on pride month, even Raytheon changes their logo to a rainbow version. That stuff is so mainstream it hurts. It's a counterculture in Saudi Arabia where the logos don't change and they throw gay people off of buildings, but in the US/Europe it's part of the dominant culture.
I don't know, I think it's much more complicated. On one hand Raytheon changes their rainbow to logo for pride month, on the other hand some states are trying to ban crossdressing or force crossdressing people to register as sex offenders. And the majority of youth who are homeless are homeless because their families kicked them out for being gay/trans. I don't think it's reasonable to say that LGBTQ people are completely mainstream/acceptable or completely counterculture/unacceptable. Maybe it's more like it's mainstream to appear accepting but its counterculture to actually accept the gay/trans/crossdressers in your own life.
> And the majority of youth who are homeless are homeless because their families kicked them out for being gay/trans.
People lie about anything they can get away with.
When only one side of the story is being heard, people claiming victimhood because of a singular external issue are almost always grossly misrepresenting the situation.
See also: "I got fired because my boss / my car / my dog / etc."
IDK, I don't think the majority of children who are homeless have much incentives to lie about being gay or trans. It's still legal in some states to claim panic when killing a gay or trans person, just because they're gay/trans and it shocked you into killing them. Homeless people are rarely looked for if they're murdered, so there's less incentive for you to claim to be gay/trans because it literally targets you for murder more than you already are as a homeless person.
In my experience, more often than not the "homeless" kids waving the gay flag are glossing over unrelated behavioral issues on their own part.
> It's still legal in some states to claim panic when killing a gay or trans person, just because they're gay/trans and it shocked you into killing them.
The idea that deceiving someone into having sex with you is considered "shocking" and not "rape" astounds me. You can't induce arousal in someone, lure them into a position of vulnerability and spring surprises on them in the dark-- unless you're trying to become a martyr and add to the body count.
We already had to outlaw "pozzing" since the gays couldn't be bothered to disclose minor things like positive HIV status to unsuspecting partners. Now we're supposed to be cool with "stealthing"/"surprise sex" from the trans? It seems there is a pathological dishonesty at play here.
The laws should be changed-- LGBTs should be held more accountable for deceiving others. Murder has never been an acceptable response to fraud, so that needs to change too. This is not an example of sympathetic behavior on either side. I don't understand why you even brought it up.
I don't think you understand what gay/trans panic defense is.
I think if you didn't know what a legal thing was, you could've googled it, instead of making up some crazy hypothetical. Sorry, I'm dipping from this convo.
There is the Walmartized rainbow culture that you’re talking about and then there’s the meat and potatoes queer culture that is and will always be counterculture for as long as human reproduction remains sexually binary. There is still a substantial amount of “queerness” that you don’t see on TV.
Primary culture loves to pull from counterculture after the morsel has been thoroughly sanitized and monetized.
Countercultures have always been "cool" - the rejection of the dominant culture is part of their cool factor. Some of the most memorable aspects of recent Western cultural history are counter-cultural: hippies, punks, slackers.
A counterculture isn't defined by whether or not it's considered cool, but by whether or not it is actively participated in and shared among the majority of people. Queer identities may have a lot of public support (and even that's debatable), but queerness is not part of most people's lives. Western societies are still cis- and heteronormative. Queer culture is an other, not the mainstream.
I know they don't care about it. That's the point. They don't care about it but they do it, because it's socially expected that they do it, because it's mainstream. If being green was counterculture, greenwashing would have the opposite of the intended effect.
As a corporation why would you co-opt something that the public in general isn't on board for? Ask several people on the street "Should companies be more green?" and they will mostly say yes, as that is a mainstream idea. If you wanted to be counter culture you could start a company that isn't green, "We pollute ten times what our competition does!", lots of people out in the culture would be very upset, they would protest, that's what being counter to the culture is like.
Having lived in some of those scenes, the environment or the identity or political affinities that lead to the creation of those groups are only indirectly linked to the cultural aspects that emerge from it. There very much is specific music, specific visual art, written art, zines, comics, software (!) that emerge when people live off the mainstream. As for lgbtqia cultures even, with the lip embrace or sometimes slightly more heartfelt embrace by mainstream media, is far from being culturally present, let alone politically. Just tally up the ratios in the comments here…
A rainbow flag is not techno/house/zines/novels, advertising is not culture. Advertising is by definition the antithesis of culture, adopting cultural norms. Ultimately it will be hollow and opportunistic because that’s its mission. An ad showing a leatherbear is not culture, and I don’t think you will ever see a leather show on prime time, if at all. Yet a culture it is (and possibly a lifestyle, but one doesn’t imply the other).
It's really unfortunate that the comment chain attached to the queer aspects of your comment, because it seems that the communal living/ off-grid aspects are more interesting. I think that the article is lamenting the idea that these sorts of things no longer appear to have runway to potentially enter "mainstream" culture in a way that, e.g., raisin bran did in the early part of the last century.
It's possible that maybe the reality is that there's some aspect of abiltity-to-be commercialized that has always limited counter cultures reach? Or maybe that's an alternate way of valuing culture - can it produce concepts that can be adopted by the majority.
Ironically, given the replies, it seems that Christian communities (i.e., Hudderites or Mennonites) had discovered what you discovered a century ago, but the very nature of the counterculture they express limits their impact on the mainstream?
I don't think that what you described counts as counterculture in what the people in general understand as the "societal" meaning of the term. All societies in all epochs had their share of people living off of the grid or in hedonistic and socially repproachable ways.
A counterculture is a set of social norms that clash with the establishment to the point of generating a credible threat of replacing it and creating a new cultural reality. LGBTQIA people living in warehouses and doing orgies is not a common way of living for sure, but it sounds more like a bout of isolated risky behaviour than a new cultural norm.
I think it's clear that there is a dominant culture in the United States, one of consumption and competition, with a strong history of puritanical influence in our way of thinking; everything from how we view and treat 'others', to how we feel about our own actions.
The other clear thing to me, is that enough people find the dominant culture so objectionable that they are inclined to form other cultures, even when there are massive social barriers to doing so.
I think that one positive change, and this seems to be what TFA was really trying to say, is that it has become somewhat less punitive to seek out these other cultures and join them, largely because of our digital connections.
One thing I have found valuable in thinking about our culture, is living outside of it for a while. Experiencing another dominant culture and trying to gel with it gave me a lot of perspective on both how systems we take for granted can be different and work just fine, and on how hard it is for foreigners in our country to just exist here.
So yeah, I think counter-culture is alive and well, perhaps a bit too easy to access, but that's for the most part a good thing.
Raytheon's advertising employed "rainbow capitalism" on twitter, like most other American companies, is just following in the footsteps of Subaru and RJ Reynolds who realised gays have money in the 90s.
Rainbow capitalism isn't LGBT culture. It's attempts at getting our money.
The large majority of queer culture cannot be commercially re-packaged and will never be part of the dominant culture.
This is a great counterpoint, but you're missing the other half of the argument. The realm of subcultures that do not require one to change their material lives/location is far vaster than it has ever been. Perhaps the author is unaware of the seemingly endless array of niche blogs and forums and servers that cater to far-flung populations of people engaging in all manner of counterculture, some of it radically "counter", that did not and could not exist without the internet.
Bingo! As soon as you get to define counterculture as something else but "a kind of bullshit you read on the Internet which is different from what normies read", you realise that there is plenty of it.
I suppose it is counter-culture in a universe where people dismiss it as being hedonism.
And while hedonism may be a side-effect in some situations, even that comes from eschewing the standards of wider society. I'd argue that is the definition of counter-culture.
You would be hard pressed to find many people who would publicly call it “hedonism”, particularly among the cultural elites. Just because there is some niche that disapproves of a culture doesn’t necessarily make that culture a “counter culture”.
My bank decorates rainbow ATMs during pride month. A block away from my house my local council has created a rainbow street crossing. I don’t think it’s possible to get more mainstream than that.
Sounds like gatekeeping to me. I know LGBT culture generally used to be edgy and underground. But widespread mainstream acceptance means that’s not really true anymore.
In other countries it's still kinda "edgy". Yeah - gay pride is allowed and my bank changed its app icon to include rainbow colours. There also are no "LGBT propaganda" laws so gay-friendly pop culture is allowed. (Like movies depicting same sex families)
But at the same time gay marriages and civil unions are both illegal.
Adoption for gay couples is illegal too. Even if they are performed abroad. The state still treat gay couples as if they were roommates or something.
Lots of people are still against gay marriage in the USA. In many states it was legalised against the wishes of the majority. And it can be made illegal again. Just like abortions.
The public opinion numbers on this topic have changed drastically over the last two decades. It's an increasingly minority opinion. In 2004 it was 2:1 against same sex marriage. By 2022 it's 6:4 in favor. It's probably outdated to consider opposition to same sex marriage a majority opinion in much of the US.
In some states that's not a minority opinion. And the court decision also was kinda flimsy - 5:4 instead of 8:1 or something like that. That 5:4 can become 4:5 in the future. And just like abortions - gay marriage can become illegal in some states again.
In many states support is around ~50%. So opposition to same sex marriage isn't a fringe opinion in a lot of places in the USA. Even in liberal California 33% still don't support it.
It's not fringe yet, but it is extremely well on the way to being a minority opinion. It already is when you consider the national scope.
The states where a majority are still opposed are all states nobody wants to live in for a variety of reasons including poor educational standards and lack of economic development.
There might be some relations between these facts. Maybe not. But it is interesting, isn't it? That those are the places where these opinions stick around the longest?
I mentioned this in other comments, but the actual edgy counterculture these days is the tradcath types. They have all the funny memes, they make the media angry, Karens despise them – reminds me a lot of the hippies.
Personally I think the word “counterculture” should be retired, as we no longer live in monocultural societies. We no longer gather round any shared fireplace. For a counterculture to meaningfully exist, it has to be somehow discordant with a dominant narrative - but there is no dominant narrative any more. The west is not ruled by the left or the right or the church or the state. We are all fragmenting off into echo chambers and bubbles of culture, where we each take a slightly different slice of the cake. If anything, we are all the counterculture, and so the term’s meaning evaporates.
Speaking of bubbles, it seems like you're in a pretty big one. To speak directly to your comment. The shared fireplace is now composed of streaming services, news, and social media with its heavily censored content. There is a very strong dominant narrative in society right now, in the US it is somewhat two pronged but those tines are joined at the handle. The Western leaders all subscribe to the same clubs and seem to do a pretty good job of agreeing on the policies they introduce. The bubbles you speak of are all created and driven by the same underlying forces that have shaped media since the early 20th century. If you want to start to pull off the blinders, read Propaganda by Bernays. He lays things out pretty clearly since he was arguing for the use of it to intelligently manage society. If you take each principal he gives and imagine how it would be applied to modern media and technology you'll see things with new eyes.
I don't know if we can say that because YouTube censors some things that whatever it censors is counterculture. I guess pornography has been the ultra counterculture for a while now, or filming and streaming executions. But IDK, I don't consider just sexual material to be a culture. Maybe specific fetishes, like sexual enslavement fetishes?
Obviously not everything they censor is counterculture. But a lot of counterculture is censored.
Sexual acts are definitely culture. "Giving head" used to not be a part of mainstream culture and now it is. It is a part of our language, or media, and most people's private lives.
Separately, the word "kink" is better than fetish in this context. Kink means not mainstream. Fetish means primarily psychological rather than primarily physical. I think that all kinky non-fetish things are bound to inevitably enter mainstream culture, it's just slow because of censorship.
You are correct that society is fragmenting into groups based on diverse interests. However, there is an overarching political narrative among most of these groups. There are "easy", widespread and accepted opinions which do not challenge the "grand" social order.
I think this is an ideal we are heading towards in comparison to ~1970 but we are far from there yet. There are a hundred TV channels where before there was less than 10. There are more newsfeeds, movies, tv, books, music than ever before, and we can get the impression that our choices in which part of the culture we engage with places us in our own chosen bubble.
When surfing around, it becomes clear there are several narratives (or competing narratives on some topics) that are present throughout our culture. The truth is that most of the media consumed is either owned by one of a few corporations, or is heavily inspired by their work. Now we are dealing with a many head hydra.
I think you and the user you're replying to are both right. To expand upon that, for most of the 1900s, there was a dominant culture (as you pointed out, fewer than 10 channels). For there to be a "counter" culture, there must be a dominant culture.
I would posit that in the current time, we have a wide variety of well established subcultures whereas for most of the 1900s we didn't. Today our subcultures can exist easily due to mass media, whereas for most of the 1900s they couldn't - the subcultures were more "underground" - underground in the sense that you really needed to be part of a community in person to be part of the subculture. The "counter culture" was a push back on the smotheringness of the monoculture. Now that the monoculture is not so smothering and the subcultures can breath, there's less pushback - there's less "counter".
There have always been meaningful distinctions and divisions in society that radically shape how specific groups and individuals relate to and participate in it. The boundaries and dynamics change, have maybe changed faster in the last few generations than ever before, but the phenomenon isn't peculiar to our time.
I kind of think we have a fragmentary counterculture going against prevailing culture in certain aspects only. Just as hippie counterculture was obviously mostly in american college-educated middle class students and black panthers were obviously primarily black.
We have traditional catholics in america who are going against the pope's relatively progressive positions on gay people.
We have aggressive de-institutionalize-the-cops people.
We have had (for a while now!) anti-prison people (this is far longer than "defund the police" and has roots in anti-racism) and I think they're pretty countercultural. (This is not "we should make better prisons" people, I mean "we should have no prisons".)
We have had monarchists, people who believe we should do away with democracy and go back to monarchist rule. IDK about them but I know they exist.
I think all counterculture is going against some aspect of a culture, not all aspects of all culture. But since we're aware of so much more cultures than before, the relative counter movements all seem small in comparison individually. I'm sure hippies were never that big, nor punks.
When I think of counter culture, I think more about the cultural artifacts then some shared political believes. Sure the scene might have some shared politics, but that is a by-product, and is not necessary. I mean, see the punks and their wide range of politics.
As an example, other people have mentioned furries. They do have a pretty easily distinguishable aesthetics which you’ll spot immediately when you look at their art or their fashion. They might all share a pro LGBTQI+ agenda, but that is as far as their politics will agree, and besides most people have the same political view about LGBTQI+ anyway.
> most people have the same political view about LGBTQI+ anyway
Even in the anglosphere this isn't true. Those with differing views mostly keep silent. But get them in private or anonymously (e.g. a fellow train passenger) and a wide variety of views emerge.
> But get them in private or anonymously (e.g. a fellow train passenger) and a wide variety of views emerge.
A truly stunning diversity of views and opinions… but pretty much all of them agree with the idea that everyone should be entitled to basic decency. Most of the differences I've observed are attributable to differences in personal experience (e.g. subject-matter knowledge, perception of the consensus of others) and language use, rather than anything that'd get you kicked out of a fur con.
There are people who claim to agree with famous bigots, but when you actually get them talking, they just think the sky is blue (and that others insist it's orange with bright pink spots). I've never talked to anyone who actually agrees with newspaper vitriol surrounding LGBTQIA+ stuff (which I find surprising, considering how many people seem to agree with newspaper nationalist vitriol).
I do mourn a little, that people feel they can't be open about their views. If we talked to each other more, I think we'd find we agree about more than we disagree. (Then again, the things we do openly talk about seem to be highly polarising topics; I know not what causes what.)
> I do mourn a little, that people feel they can't be open about their views. If we talked to each other more, I think we'd find we agree about more than we disagree. (Then again, the things we do openly talk about seem to be highly polarising topics; I know not what causes what.)
I agree, and have often said the same thing. As the old saying goes, people tend to judge others by their actions, and themselves by their intentions. What the vast majority of us really want is happiness and health for ourselves, our families, and our communities. It's easy to have a civil disagreement with somebody when you keep in mind that they really do mean the best, but cynicism has taken over a lot of peoples' mental images of each other.
Or, maybe people just aren't good at scope-limiting their cynicism.
The people physically close to you probably want what's best for themselves and those around them. They're good people. You could probably trust them with your life, provided your emergency is happening right in front of them (and they know what to do about it). The people you talk to online, the people who produce mass media, and the people who write your school textbooks? Never. Drop. Your. Guard. The average person doesn't want to hurt you, but these aren't the average person.
Heck, the mass-media people don't even need to want to hurt you to hurt you, as Michael Crichton once said:
> Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. […] You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
> That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say.
> rather than anything that'd get you kicked out of a fur con
I guess I have a distorted view of what would get you kicked out.
I would have thought that things like saying that "people should be free to use the pronouns they feel apply to the person they are talking about, they shouldnt be forced to lie", "most kids who think they are trans, aren't and will grow out of it" and "transwomen should not be allowed to compete in women's sports or be in women's shelters or prisons, even if they're on hormones" would get you kicked out. And all three are very common, particularly amongst older people but also often with the early 20s crowd.
Let alone views on things like consent (e.g. "being very drunk does not mean sex is rape" or the jaw dropping "if you keep teasing a man you shouldn't be surprised if he decides to take matters into his own hands" said by a women in her 90s) or race ("there could be/probably are intelligence differences between races" are fairly common, as is "be careful around the [insert ethnic group here]s around here, they're dangerous/thieves") or abortion (everything from "life begins at conception" to "infanticide should be legal", in the UK!).
>but pretty much all of them agree with the idea that everyone should be entitled to basic decency.
This is begging the question. Disagreement over what "basic decency" means is the heart of the LGBTIAP+ debate, just like disagreement over when life begins and what that means is at the heart of the abortion issue.
Some think "basic decency" means transitioning schoolchildren behind their parents' backs, providing them with hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones without parental knowledge or consent, and removing kids from their homes if the parents object. Others see all that as an attack on parental rights and children's well-being driven by authoritarian pseudoscience. The first group holds power in public education, HR departments, academia, and the federal government (at least in the USA), making that second group the counterculture.
> Disagreement over what "basic decency" means is the heart of the LGBTIAP+ debate,
Okay, let's put it another way. Pretty much all of them agreed with me about the entitlement to basic decency. From this, I conclude that my views about basic decency probably aren't all that controversial, after all.
This disagreement exists online, and in the press. I haven't seen it in the real world. If "the heart of the […] debate" is fictional, maybe the debate itself is artificial.
> Some think
Literally who? I will share with you two anecdotes:
• I know some parents whose children, questioning their gender, thought they were trans for a few months. The worried parents advised caution, while doing their best to educate themselves about trans people: the kids (as everyone suspected) turned out not to be trans.¹
• Those parents of trans friends of mine who object to their transition? Also shitty (bordering on abusive) parents in other ways. (When you're holding something else at a much higher priority than your kids, you're probably a shit parent,² and I've yet to see a counterexample.)
So, yeah, I'm somebody who would agree with the letter of your first "basic decency" example. I would likely³ punch somebody who actually supported it in spirit. I mean, seriously. Who the actual [minced oath] is that arrogant, that they know what's right for some kid they've never met, based on a checklist? Arrogant enough to kidnap them from their (presumably loving) family? That's Oliver Twist-style child-rearing morality.
> Others see all that as an attack on parental rights and children's well-being driven by authoritarian pseudoscience.
They're right to.⁴ Except, that "authoritarian pseudoscience" they're fighting against doesn't exist, and nobody in the world (with any power) is actually a proponent of it. The closest thing we've got is overworked and understaffed medical gatekeepers (one clinic for an entire country, in some cases) who make bad calls because they can't make good ones – to the point that only the law really listens to them any more. The solution to that problem is obvious.
> The first group holds power
Please show me an actual example of a member of this group.
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¹: And yes, professionals usually can tell the difference. Not that a few months of blockers would actually have caused any real issues. (I currently lean towards the "radical autonomy" end of the spectrum, in case you haven't picked up on that; my reasons are many, and probably out of scope of this comment.)
²: Or your kid is in danger of significantly harming somebody else, or something like that. Children are people, after all: some are capable of evil. In these cases, though? Shitty parents.
³: Don't know for sure, though. I've never been in a position to punch one. (I'd like to think I'd try talking, first.)
⁴: In the jurisdictions I'm aware of, there's no such thing as "parental rights". There's children's rights – and in the vast majority of cases, a child's interests are best served by being with their parents. For example, in divorce cases, it's the child's right to have time with their parents, not the parent's right to have time with their child. That distinction can be significant, but only in edge-cases.
I have family and friends in K-12 education. If you question LGBTQIAP+ or fail to affirm a kids' gender self-identification, you are out of a job. Wesley Yang has covered this topic extensively, and is a good one to follow on Twitter:
>I currently lean towards the "radical autonomy" end of the spectrum, in case you haven't picked up on that
I believe you. That approach endangers children, has no scientific basis, and will be stopped in the courts. Kids do not have the capacity to make permanent, life-altering decisions about fertility or sexuality. They do not and cannot understand the implications and consequences of their actions. Responsible adults must safeguard them into adulthood.
Small question: In the name of preventing children from transitioning, there are laws in place in some states to investigate supportive parents for child abuse and separate children from their parents should their parents support their child's transition. How does this correspond with parental autonomy?
There are other laws in place in some states that force that a teacher is not allowed to mention gender identity at all in the classroom, and must report any gender nonconforming behavior to authorities. How does this correspond with teachers having control?
Edit to your additional edit: How do you match that there's no scientific basis for transitioning when the American Association of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association both oppose preventing access to transitioning?
Your very comment dodged every major point of my original post, which you continue to evade. I won't be sidetracked into debating the actions of some Governor I don't control in a state I've never visited. It is classic "whatabouting," not relevant to the topic nor the main point.
[Edited: I'm not contributing to this conversation since this is just culture war nonsense to someone who obviously opposes with no interest in mutual understanding, so I'm removing my post here and will cease conversing along this manner.]
Is not really a real person.¹ But if you think he's an example, he'll suffice for this. Please, state his position, and explain why you disagree with it.
> If you question LGBTQIAP+ or fail to affirm a kids' gender self-identification, you are out of a job.
I mean, yeah. That kind of power over children comes with a responsibility to keep your politics out of school – or, out of your position as authority figure, anyway. (A few, very few, teachers at my school managed the latter – and they only used this talent to rant a little about budget cuts to education, during times where we weren't obliged to listen.)
If a kid thinks she's a prophet of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it is not for a teacher to tell her otherwise. If a kid thinks he fancies his best friend, it is not for a teacher to tell him that's wrong. If a kid says they're a fairy princess from Mars? To insist otherwise² is not the role or purpose of a schoolteacher.
> That approach
I didn't describe an approach, there: just a vague philosophy. I think you're reading too much into my words. What do you think the problems with my position are?
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¹: At least, not while he's acting in his position as head of state. I elaborated on this in a sibling post: real-life people will tell you what they believe, but public figures (especially politicians) often tell you what they think will make you believe something. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34616318
²: A teacher could mention that no life, nor evidence of civilisation, has been found on Mars. Using this as a rebuttal of the child's claim to Martian fairy royalty would be overstepping.
They definitely do not. The majority do, but there are plenty of weirdly conservative and almost traditionalist furry sects.
> besides most people have the same political view about LGBTQI+ anyway.
Most people do not. Even among people who openly say the same thing, their internal private views can vary a whole lot. I know plenty of people who are openly pro LGBTQI+, but have more ambivalent feelings about popular narratives that they don't publicize for fear of public shaming and ostricization. They aren't internally against it, but their opinions are more nuanced than they feel people will tolerate.
Indeed, but for counter culture, I think the artifacts are kind of important, as it communicates your involvement inside that culture. It is kind of hard to imagine punk without the music, the cloths, the hairstyles, the graffiti, etc. Sure it is also hard to imagine punk without the Anarchy, but if you think of early punks, with their heavy drinking and male dominant behavior, and compare it to modern punk which thoroughly reject these early cultural behaviors, you’ll find that they still share the aesthetics even though their attitude has changed.
Sure, monarchists literally have the monarchy, prison abolitionists have a wide variety of songs/books/icons, etc. I don't understand what you're trying to differentiate.
First of all, I’d like to make a distinction between monarchists and royalists. Monarchists is a political group with certain believes around the structure of the government. Royalists on the other hand is a cultural group that enjoys certain events.
If you look at the cultural artifacts of royalists you’ll find they enjoy and attend events around, for example royal weddings, they gather in forums where they share gossip around, e.g. the Romanovs. It doesn’t matter if they like to keep Putin as president, or if they would like to re-inaugurate the Romanovs as tsars, as political believes are orthogonal to the culture (although I do admit it would be kind of weird to find an anarchist royalist). To that extent I think of royalists more like Eurovision fans.
Likewise if you look at the quintessential prison abolitionist Angela Davis. Now describe her speech, her hairstyle, her public events, etc. You’ll find many prison abolitionists that don’t share any of it, however if you’ll look for people that share these cultural artifacts, you’ll find a bunch of radicals. Radicals is exactly the cultural group which I would ascribe Angela Davis as belonging to.
I think there never was stronger counterculture than today - but the platforms for this changed. A few decades ago an avant-garde film or student project could make ripples in the film industry and gain a cult following. However, I think that anyone under 20 (possibly under 30) sees cinema as far less important than the previous generation. YouTube (and TikTok) stars became bigger than movie stars, and more young people can tell you who the top streamer is for Valorant than who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.
The "criteria" mentioned in that post assumes the importance of cinema, radio and television is static, but in fact all of traditional content mediums are just a small detail in the peripheral vision of a younger audience, and they are pushing their values and ideas harder than it was ever possible before. There's culture and counterculture online. It's just not taking place in the same space as before, leaving the old mediums to corporations trying to maximize profits.
Kids and teens don't dream about changing the world through cinema anymore, but rather Twitch, YouTube or TikTok, or if they're really ambitious, a game.
I think there never was stronger counterculture than today
I disagree. Can you expand on your claim?
YouTube and TikTok are not countercultural, even if some users are using those platforms for genuine countercultural creative acts. By definition, a social media "influencer" with millions of followers is not countercultural.
" they are the platforms where counterculture happens"
And where exactly can I find them?
Trough the corporate algorithm, that doesn't even let me rewind a video?
Counterculture exists and sone of those expose their lifestyle and projects on these plattforms for fame and money, but that culture surely does not "live" on those plattforms.
> Trough the corporate algorithm, that doesn't even let me rewind a video?
It's worse than that. You used to have to "sell out" to corporate interests before your countercultural cache evaporated. Most YouTube creators "sell out" to advertisers the second they start their channel because getting any revenue on YouTube requires following YouTube's rules. And these rules are getting increasingly draconian with swearing now being sort-of banned. Also forget remixing existing cultural artifacts like older countercultural movements because that's just asking for an automated DMCA strike.
If you stick with the comparison they were making to cinema this is like saying a movie star is not countercultural and you'd be right. The influencers with millions of followers are not countercultural, they've broken into the mainstream and are busily selling out for money and fame. At the same time you can have countercultural activities happening on those platforms and the "true" revolutionaries will actively eschew money from sponsors and ads and will sabotage any mainstream attempts to make them famous by trolling the normies that jump on the band wagon or by intentionally poisoning their content with things that go far beyond the pale.
Is culture music or is it composed of individual songs and artists? Is culture literature or is it some set of books and authors? Is culture film or is it the movies and directors? Is culture the internet or is it the content and creators?
The hippies weren't tiny and they were the quintessential counter culture. You can have millions of followers and the average cat on the street wouldn't know who you are.
It's an interesting question, but way too simplistic.
In his great book "the myth of digital democracy", Matthew Hindman pointed out what most people don't get: The web is becoming more centralized AND more spread out at the same time. Popularity is a scale-free distribution that gets more extreme over time.
So we have counterculture, it's just not the large homogenous blobs that we were used to.
Maybe that's today's true counter culture; anti-consumerism and switching offline. Thousands of people do it daily - delete their Social Media accounts, stop sharing everything online, stop watching endless video streams, stop playing meaningless games, and just escape the marketers trying to make a quick buck from their identity. You're not worth targeting if they can't sell you anything. It's the first "silent" counter culture.
It's not that it doesn't exist. There is no "dark corner of the room" dynamic like you had between punk and the nuclear family; more like, it's a different room altogether, and the other cultures don't get to see what's in that room. It's a society where the culture and the counter-culture don't share the "town square" together like they used to as much.
Alternatively, like you mention, it's existing in a different digital sphere to the mainstream. This can be intentional; using alternative forums like Mastodon instead of Twitter, Discord instead of Facebook, or whatever alternative it might be. IRC chats and email threads are still going to this day. It could also be unintentional; two people can be using YouTube but have completely and utterly different feeds and comments that they interact with due to an algorithm.
These alternate realities never really existed to the degree they do today. Previous cultures had the ruling and working classes, or ruling, working, and slave if you go back far enough. Stricter class boundaries, but within those classes things were more homogenous culturally. Less people, that meet in the same forum, pub, feast hall, or religious center. Now, the lines between classes are blurred and the classes themselves less homogenous. More people, more meeting places. More things to build an identity and culture around. That dilutes the predominant counter-culture enough for people to ask whether it exists at all.
In the present moment, the counterculture is always hard to find and identify. That's what makes it the counterculture.
Now you can read and listen to the Beat poets anywhere, but that would have been challenging in the early '50s. You had to go to the right coffee shop on the right night and if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
You can still have that experience today, probably easier than ever.
> if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
To be fair, a lot of people still have this question about the Beat Generation.
The hippies were the counterculture, weren't they? Yet they weren't hard to find or identify. I guess it can get muddy, but what you're describing sounds more like underground culture to me. It can be happily compatible with the mainstream culture, it's not oppositional, it's just obscure and hidden because of it.
I would argue that a counterculture has to be oppositional and can't be happily compatible.
The hippies who were burning their draft cards, dropping out of school, and living as mendicants were a counterculture that could not truly coexist with the mainstream.
These dramatic characters inspired a youth culture that adopted more moderate signifiers (long hair, folk/rock music, nonviolent protest, maybe vegetarianism/meditation/yoga) that could coexist with the mainstream.
An argument could be made that there is a lot of ideological overlap between current far right GOP/Qanon people and the tenants of Nazism. Considering the number of elections won by the GOP you cannot tell me they're not mainstream.
There's a lot of overlap between the Nazis and both major parties in the US. That said, I don't think it is fair to say that being a Nazi is mainstream because there is some ideological overlap.
It just means that some parts of their platform have become mainstreamed. A simple and non-controversial example is that the Nazis were extremely Progressive on animal rights. Just because modern political parties also endorse animal rights, that does not make them Nazis
Another example is that Nazi rhetoric relied heavily on utilitarian analysis of the greater good. I don't think it's reasonable to say that any party that promotes the greater good over individual freedoms is a Nazi party.
There is a mis-perception in your statement, in that :
1. "techies" are some uniform block of people.
2. "techies" as a whole were at any point an anti-mainstream counterculture.
Many/most techies throughout history have been employed by the rich and powerful - individuals, private corporations, government institutions, religious institutions (if we go back far enough). So, the extent to which they are part of a counter-culture is through a critical evaluation of their own roles. There are also "independent" techies, of course - but those too often from well-off social strata and do not have much of a mind to subvert dominant culture on the social level (as opposed to in their personal habits).
... and I personally can't read the article since the corporate firewall I'm behind is blocking it, so that's kind of ironic :-(
In my time hanging out on Mastodon, I feel like I’m seeing this play out.
Many people who openly identify as “tech” people asking for new features, more or less complaining about the resistance to such new features and arguing that the cultural resistance doesn’t make sense.
Now these tech people tend to also be new to mastodon. But they also seem pretty oblivious to the fact that they are the mainstream which many on the platform tried to avoid or establish a counter culture from. They don’t seem to realise that leaving Twitter in 2022 was a comparatively mainstream thing to do, and that the resistance they meet often has a point or perspective that they haven’t even thought of and is coming from people who are just as technically inclined and informed but just don’t tie that to their identity so tightly or openly.
Broad generalisations, but I think it’s definitely playing out to some extent.
Exactly my reaction. The article made me think of the Gemini/Gopher/Smolnet space I like so much as a counter-culture.
But then it defines "counter-culture" has having a significant impact. This is a bit of a paradox to me: either you are mainstrean, either you are counter-culture. You can’t be both at the same time. Only history made us realize that a counter-culture movement had a strong impact when it became… mainstream! (and is not counter-culture anymore)
Yet, on the individual level, it would be nice if people could realize: "hey, I’m mainly consuming mainstream stuff. I should try to diversify."
You use Gopher, use an "alternative" OS, get your news from longform nuanced podcasts? Great, but 99% of people don't.
Contrast that with the counter culture of the 60s, or even 90s, where people were at least _aware_ that something else existed, even if they were violently against it.
This article misunderstands what a "culture" is. Specific activities do not constitute a culture. Niche interests within a single domain do not constitute a culture. "Interest in Marvel movies" or some other figment of pop culture is not itself a culture, not by a long shot. This is why we can speak of a "pop culture" in the first place, because we sense that many things - nominally unrelated products situated within different domains though they may be - are all related in some important way, contained within a broader popular culture that transcends any of its manifestations. Perhaps the defining mark of popular culture is that the people who consume it and participate in it tend to overlap, or resemble one another. This way of thinking means that cultures are defined more by their participants than anything else.
Culture is broad, it is cohesive, and it extends and influences across many domains. There are absolutely countercultures out there, but most people aren't aware of them given how dominant the dominant culture is, which is generally the case but especially true today.
"Counterculture" is a very US- and Anglo-centric term to begin with. It implies that there is a "mainstream" culture to be opposed. In this view there are nerds with eyeglasses and specific interests and normies with a better chance of reproduction. The mainstream culture is the post-WW2 consumer culture that grew around commercial TV shows, blockbuster movies and advertising and household consumption through items like washing machines and vacuum cleaners.
Today, YouTube and TikTok are channels which multiply and amplify this kind of culture worldwide.
Culture and Counterculture have always existed. What you're describing is just the most recent instance of the Culture/Counterculture dichotomy. That doesn't mean the entire concept is inapplicable to other places or times.
I’m going to get flamed for this but at this point the closest we’re getting to counter culture is the exact opposite…
“Trads”. Young people with super traditional values doing exactly the opposite of most of what you just listed.
No one would seriously suggest the trendiest most mainstream supported or glorified lifestyles (van life, queerness, gig work) are counter culture…that IS the culture; there’s very little cultural risk in living those glorified identities.
But say you’re an 18 year old with radically traditional values…that’s counter cultural now.
What you’re observing isn’t a lack of counter-culture, it’s a lack of monolithic culture, though. In different parts of the country, or even different parts of the same city, the dominant culture is different. Living a “glorified lifestyle,” as you put it, in NY of SF? Sure, no one bats an eye. In the rural south? Different story. On the other hand — white man with “radically traditional values“, whatever that means, in suburban SLC? You’ll fit right in. In the Castro? Sure, you might feel out of place.
Unlike the US of the 1950s, there is no apparent single pervasive monolithic culture — and thus there is no real “counterculture” that can exist in universal opposition to that dominant culture across the US.
But rest assured that to the people living lives incongruent with their communities — including perhaps any “trads” in SF, NYC, etc. — their lives will feel pretty countercultural.
I live in the rural south and went to a private Christian university. They painted the statue of the school mascot a rainbow on pride month. My biblical ethics classes taught the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The students couldn't care less about the traditional aspects of Christianity. My friends at other Christian private universities had similar experiences.
You don't have to be in NY, SF, or wherever to experience the trendy culture. It is pervasive everywhere.
> You don't have to be in NY, SF, or wherever to experience the trendy culture. It is pervasive everywhere.
You don’t, which is why I said:
> or even different parts of the same city
But while it is present almost everywhere, it is not pervasive everywhere. Surely at your private Christian university there are many who hold traditional views — just as there are some at Berkeley, near me — and I’d be pretty surprised to learn that the kids painting your school’s mascot represent a majority perspective there.
Not sure why that would be surprising. Most get all their info from the internet where reactions to speech about traditional values ranges from mass disapproval to outright censorship.
In our culture, almost any values from prior generations are treated as suspect. We live in an extremely progressive time when compared against historical periods.
My particular gripe with this is how religion is viewed in popular culture. Despite our supposed multicultural values, much of the discussion on religion remains focused on Western/Abrahamic religions. Psychology/psychiatry is the new religion which is supposed to be able to guide our mental/spiritual health journey, but I'm of the opinion that it is failing miserably in this area, and we should be doing more to integrate ideas that have survived for thousands of years for a reason.
Just because the culture isn't accepted by every single person on planet earth doesn't mean it's not pervasive. There were plenty of pockets of communities in the early 20th century and late 19th century that didn't follow the traditional norms of Christianity that existed in the west. But I think we would both agree that Christianity/catholicism was pervasive in the west in those time periods.
After all, Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Darwin, Marx, Bertrand Russell and more were popular with different communities at the time, even though they were definitely counter to the pervasive culture of Christianity/catholicism then.
And I agree with you about how it's surprising that even at a Christian university, the traditional values of Christianity aren't taught! The example I gave was just one of the things I thought of off the top of my head. There were several other examples that gave me the feeling that the majority of the students weren't interested in traditional values. Chapel was a running joke among the students, nobody really cared and just went since the credit was required. People in positions of leadership that didn't align with the trendy culture slowly got replaced throughout my time there. We routinely got lectured on diversity and equity and how the university was devoted to it. I have friends who are gay that let me know how widespread the lgbt+ community at the university was (among professors and students).
I could go on, but my point was that even in the rural south, plenty of people are afraid to go against the trendy culture. My experience was simply some anecdata to your presumption that the rural South does not have a significant majority of people also following the trends of liberal cities. It's definitely less pronounced, but it's also definitely pervasive.
Not to get into an argument about "pervasive" (and thus whether "pervasive everywhere" as you originally termed it means anything different from "pervasive", I read it as "dominant everywhere") -- but I think we're talking about slightly different things.
College kids on a university campus being fearful of speaking out against "trendy culture" is not evidence of "a significant majority of people also following the trends of liberal cities" -- not least because that is a very small population in the rural south. Even merely attending college is something only half of 18-22 year olds do.
Universities are also one of the specific geographic concentrations I was alluding to in my earlier post, that can exist within an area that is otherwise culturally distinct. A culture being dominant on a university campus does not necessarily make it dominant elsewhere in town -- and it does not mean that folks holding traditional values constitute a counterculture. But do they on a college campus? Sure.
> My biblical ethics classes taught the opposite of what the Bible teaches.
Nothing more biblical than that, since the bible is polyvocal and therefore contains positions that are in tension and even on occasion outright opposition with one another.
> The students couldn't care less about the traditional aspects of Christianity.
Which/whose tradition?
And the youths are sometimes less invested in tradition you say?
> trendy culture
"Trendy" isn't an insight, it's a dismissal, and it's one that misses the insight that the parent tried to offer you.
I would argue that drawing conclusions directly from the Gospel and facts of Jesus’ life has been a Christian counterculture since at least the 70s. Jesus Christ Superstar could not find a venue; it was rejected by the culture of musical theater.
But would you really assert that 1950s in the US was a complete monolith? I think the reason we might intuitively see it that way is because, ironically, we're outsiders. But of course I'm sure you'd agree that there were countless little cultures going on at the time there as well, even within the same cities.
So it seems clear that "mainstream" culture is not monolithic, merely dominant. You can always find bubbles everywhere, but if outside of those bubbles you find one concept being preached endlessly - it's pretty safe to say that that concept is the "mainstream" culture, and those that run contrary to such would inherently be counter-culture.
[Caveat: I'm not an expert here, so ignore all this.]
Well, yes and no. The mainstream culture was far more dominant in the 50s than even 20 years later. And of course there were countless little (and often not-at-all-little!) cultures going on at the time -- and still going on.
But "counterculture" is not merely "alternative culture" -- and no one would write a post describing America today as lacking "alternative culture" because it's both false and also meaningless.
In the 1950s, regular church attendance was over 50%, union membership was at 35% of private sector workers, there were 3 channels on TV, and they predominantly espoused a particular leave-it-to-beaver culture that typified what was perceived as mainstream culture. The fact that it was not actually mainstream in the sense that fewer than half of Americans actually lived that way, is mostly irrelevant.
The '60s counterculture was not merely an "alternative culture"; it was powerful because it made it appear that the progeny of mainstream culture were condemning it; they questioned the power structure of that mainstream culture, despite being its plausible beneficiaries, and they were much more threatening to it than any other alternative cultures at the time (or, maybe, since) exactly because they were perceived as products of that monolithic mainstream culture.
In the US, there is currently no single monolithic culture being preached endlessly in the same way 1950s culture commanded media attention, it's not clear there ever will be one again without a dramatic turn towards the authoritarian, and so it's not at all clear what a national-level counterculture would even look like anymore?
Three channels (at least 3 networks) on TV. Perhaps more than one local paper, but all the out-of-town news came from UPI or AP. Time and Life. Maybe the New York Times. And that was about it. Those eight organizations defined mainstream culture. And their positions were not very far apart.
Nothing has that level of control today. There are more major organizations, and they have much more divergent positions. As a result, the culture has fragmented, becoming multiple cultures. There is no "mainstream" any more. There are multiple major streams, but no one mainstream.
There's one really common fallacy you're engaging in here, largely because our media perpetuates it endlessly. The hippy movement itself was strongly apolitical. I think to many that would be surprising, so I'm going to link to a search [1] instead of any given article. Because this is not an opinion. Okay I can't resist linking to one especially interesting article though [2]. I recall The History Channel on TV turning into complete crap, but they have an oddly great selection of online articles!
Of course people in a movement about freedom, finding yourself, and spirituality would generally respond one way if asked, "Hey should we go get involved in a war on the other side of the world, to try to imperil the reach and influence of a geopolitical competitor?" but the core philosophy was not only apolitical, but largely anti-political: "Do what you want... man." Everything was largely based on a loose interpretation of Eastern philosophy which is similarly much more about the pursuit (and search) for the betterment of one's inner self.
The culture you're describing sounds much more like the Yippie [3] culture, which is something extremely different than hippy. As for authoritarianism - I'd argue that the lack of authoritarianism is precisely what enables counter-cultures. You're not going to see a counter-culture movement in places like Saudi Arabia. And I think something similar is happening in the US. Had the Occupy Movement been treated similarly to the hippies, I think there's a strong argument to be made that it would still exist.
I think you're putting words in my mouth: I didn't make any claims of the '60s counterculture being hippies or any other specific movement, let alone being political. Further, the '60s counterculture was a bunch of groups with often very different goals.
Beyond that, I was not claiming the mainstream culture as authoritarian, only that reconsolidating media control could perhaps be a result of a resurgence of authoritarianism.
I wonder how much of this is due to there not being a majority in many large cities anymore? I'm in LA and there's no white majority. It is a "majority minority" city.
Hard agree. It’s ironic how tone deaf the article comes off, but I suppose that’s another observation for another time.
Another point on trads being a counter culture: You can tell a counterculture is real by the presence of posers and wannabes. Trad culture has this too. Ex: men who hide behind marble statue pfps and are actually single dudes living in a big city.
I think also that “trad” is an umbrella to which many hands hold.
Tradcath: traditional lifestyle Catholics
Trad homeschoolers: arguably some of the most steadfast and longest holding countercultures. They literally have children and raise them opposite or tangential to the current culture norms.
Trad Christian theonomist: complimentarian views on marriage, anti secular government, often homesteaders.
Trad chads: men pursuing lives of purity at any social cost. Staunchly opposed to todays hookup culture and LGBT influences.
>Trad chads: men pursuing lives of purity at any social cost. Staunchly opposed to todays hookup culture and LGBT influences.
I see this becoming the norm in the future. Hook up culture is simply too dangerous (for both men and women) to be sustainable long term. It's a cultural hangover from the days of "free love" that simply does not map to the modern world anymore.
IMO Incels tend to be people who would (if they could), at the first chance, jump at the opportunity to become sexually active. Additionally, incels tend to not value monogamy nor are strictly heterosexual. The inherent value of the individual they're pursuing is also different. This group tends to have a very low view of women (and men too, to some degree) as individuals with meaning, purpose, thoughts and emotions. There is a notable lack of care for personhood.
TC would be different in that the premise is opposite, that they're pursuing heterosexual monogamy and are voluntarily foregoing a life of sexual promiscuity in light of that pursuit. This group highly values the person they're pursuing and places a high degree of respect on the opposite gender.
I've always taken issue with that term. Any guy who bathes, doesn't say mean things, tries to make himself more attractive, doesn't consider a woman unattractive because she isn't an 8+, and learns to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex will find someone sooner or later.
I don't know much about them, but people presented as incels generally seem unwilling to put much effort into any of that. If I had sat at home all day, played video games and really let myself go, does that make it involuntary or just lazy?
Originally it was a label they chose for themselves because they couldn't figure out why they kept getting rejected. It was only later outsiders caught on, then turned it into an insult. Beyond that I also don't know very much.
> Any guy who bathes, doesn't say mean things, tries to make himself more attractive, doesn't consider a woman unattractive because she isn't an 8+, and learns to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex will find someone sooner or later.
And if he doesn't, clearly it must be because he isn't trying hard enough amirite?
There are plenty of guys out there who listen to what they're being told (which is hard, because there's a lot of contradictions), try as hard as they can, and yet can't find anyone.
I'm not familiar with this, but your last point was curious to me. Can you not have "radically traditional values" and be a single man living in a big city? Or at any rate, it's not respected, so these people you are talking about are pretending to not be single and not live in a big city?
Yeah that was probably confusing because I had a specific part of this culture in mind (trad homesteader). My point was that countercultures are often marked by the presence of posers, tagalongs, and idealists who don’t practice.
> queerness ... there’s very little cultural risk in living those glorified identities
Several US states are trying to make it illegal to be trans or even dress in a gender nonconfirming way. Queerness still carries a certain amount of real, physical risk; Norway Pride 2022 was cancelled because somebody shot up a gay bar and murdered two people.
Don't forget the bomb threats at hospitals providing trans care, or the actual shootings that took place at drag & gay clubs, Florida's "dont say gay" bill, you could go on and on.
People are scared to say this, because they quickly get labeled a Christofascist or alt-right something or other, but it's true. Trads are definitely the counter culture now. Tim Dillon made a joke recently, something along the lines of "The most radical non-conformist thing you can do now is wear rosary beads". I thought it was kind of funny, but also because it's true.
I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not. Catholics make up 23% of the US population. How can wearing rosary beads be non-conformist when Catholics are the single largest denomination in America?
An astonishing SIX Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Was there ever a time a countercultural group had that kind of representation in government? Were there ever six justices who were hippies, or beatniks, or hobos? If you sincerely believe that
> Trads are definitely the counter culture now.
may I invite you to name another counter culture that comprised a majority of the US Supreme Court?
The problem is that people conflate feeling aggrieved with being marginalized. The reality is that "trads" have plenty of representation and power, up to the governor or multiple states (like Desantis) and a former president. Self-identified trads may feel like they're exploited, or something. But the reality is they are a huge part of the population with ample political power.
Yes you are right that there are a lot of catholic people, we are talking about _culture_.
How many TV shows, movies, or songs have come out in the last 10 years that featured Catholics in any way or catholic imagery, or even just general traditional values? Like maybe 1?
How many TV shows, movies, and songs have come out featuring gay people or gay culture?
A huge number.
Compare this state to the 60's when the hippies were the counterculture, how many mainstream movies and shows came out featuring them? Were they the cultural mainstream? The answer is obviously no. Movies of that day were being made by the then-mainstream trads.
We were never talking about representation in government. If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
There is no contradiction in what I'm saying. It's the norm for media, especially film, to be produced about marginal groups. How many movies are made about mercenaries or hit men or fathers with "a certain set of skills" whose daughters are Taken? A huge number.
The opposite is also true. How may TV shows, movies, or songs have come out in the last 10 years that featured a guy working in a cubicle making Excel spreadsheets all day? Were they the cultural mainstream? The answer is obviously no.
> We were never talking about representation in government
Who wasn't? Culture isn't just what's streaming on Netflix. It's what people live every day of their lives. Hippies in the 60s weren't counterculture because they were making memes. They were counterculture because they were creating communities that were counter to the mainstream culture of the rest of the country -- communal rather than individualistic, based on chosen family rather than biological family, in pursuit of enlightenment rather than material success, etc.
>If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
There it is! The anti-semitic dog whistle that is the foundation of so much "trad" identity. Literally 100% of US presidents are Christian but somehow it's the Jews who are in control of everything. And if everything is degenerate and wrong, then Jews are the ones promoting a conspiracy to undermine and destroy America.
This is literally the same underpinnings as Nazi Germany. No wonder there is so much overlap between "Trads" and white supremacy.
idk I never said anything about Jews, but calling people a Nazi is a great way to shut down conversation.
I love Jewish people, I have many friends who are Jewish, I have no problem with their representation anywhere. In fact, I have seriously considered joining the Jewish faith.
I am just saying if you go down the path of comparing religious representation in government, you are literally not allowed to have an honest conversation without doing exactly what you just did. All you have to say is "I found the dog whistle, this conversation is over".
> It's what people live every day of their lives.
I see Pride stickers and representation in all forms of media every single day for the LGBT community. How is that not what we are all living every day of our lives?
At this point we're just trying to define what culture actually is.
> If you want to have an honest conversation about religious representation in government you will very quickly be labeled an anti-semite.
You literally said that you can't talk about how Jews (allegedly) have too much power in government. This is a classic anti-semitic trope. To say so and then respond with
> idk I never said anything about Jews, but calling people a Nazi is a great way to shut down conversation.
is dishonest and cowardly.
> I see Pride stickers and representation in all forms of media every single day for the LGBT community. How is that not what we are all living every day of our lives?
What is your conclusion? That pride stickers give people power of some sort? If that were true, transgender people wouldn't be 4x more likely to be victims of violent crimes.
Representation in pop culture is not power. Power is the ability to create and enforce laws, or the ability to not be shot and killed for your religious beliefs, as happened when 11 Jews were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue -- killed by a man who followed neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Their killer would no doubt agree with you that "traditional" values were under attack, and that you couldn't even talk about it without being labeled an anti-semite.
Alright well I was genuinely trying to engage in good faith discussion here, but you seem angry.
I really don't believe that we can have any kind of productive outcome here. As I said, I don't hate anyone, I don't even have a problem with any of the representation that I'm talking about.
I was simply pointing out that the fact that I see these symbols plastered everywhere, including at Target, means that this is no longer an underground counterculture kind of thing. It's very mainstream.
If you want to insist on projecting your ideas that the world is filled with secret Nazis do it with someone else.
Even this is wrong. The Hallmark channel makes 40 Christmas movies a year, all of them with Christian families, obviously. (Some allow for a character who is Jewish.) These movies attract millions of viewers.
The idea that an underserved market is able to be farmed by a niche cable network supports my thesis. The hallmark channel kind of explicitly Christian entertainment is counter cultural rather than mainstream.
It’s not a surprise to anyone who has studied show business at all. The Boscht belt and its associated Jewish entertainment circuit was a critical incubator of talent for our nations popular music.
No one is hiding any of this, and it’s trivial to read a memoir from many musicians and see a story about how they wanted to feel more included in the increasingly secularized holidays so they wrote music that was about the stuff that included in them.
There's a difference between people "doing what they've always done" or coasting on cultural inertia e.g. people who are Catholic and that means they go to a Catholic church but otherwise has a very small effect on their life and people intentionally choosing to join a subculture, e.g. convert to Catholicism or rededicate themselves to a religion after being one of the folks "doing what they've always done".
The norm these days is for people to fall away from their religion, not to join one. I think this is obvious for anyone to see, but Pew has done lots of surveys on the decline of Christianity in America: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the...
Grew up catholic with a devout saint of a grandfather and the only people who I have seen wearing rosary beads were horrible, horrible cartel guys in prison.
I grew up with a number of rosaries. I would have to bring them into my Catholic grade school and then we'd walk to the church on campus and spend the next hour reciting rote verses and trying to keep track of where I was on the rosary.
Wearing rosary beads sounds like a counter culture move against the church if you ask me. Rosaries are almost sacred.
> Wearing rosary beads sounds like a counter culture move against the church if you ask me.
Wearing a rosary around the neck is common and accepted in some Catholic cultures and frowned upon in others. There is no general Catholic religious objection to it, it is just a matter of local cultural practice. (Publicly flaunting it while engaging in scandalous behavior is more generally frowned upon, of course, as heaping hypocrisy on top of the already-bad behavior.)
Wearing a 15-decade rosary on the hip, in the same place a soldier would wear a sword, is traditional for the Dominican order.
I'm not objecting to wearing them, my old biases object to them being worn as a fashion element. They are a tool, not a sign of your personal faith. The only people I ever saw with Rosaries every day were the Nuns who used them every day, even the priests would dress down on occasion.
Not sure why you're getting the down votes. I attended a Catholic school and wearing a rosary was certainly frowned upon for the exact reason you state.
I think you are right. The US kinda feels like Asimov’s foundation, especially in the west coast. Fewer people acting like adults and more people chasing dopamine and letting entropy do its damage.
Maybe I just need to stop taking public transportation and walking the city. Perhaps suburbs feel further from the precipice.
I've been wondering lately if it's down to the lack of agency on the part of average people.
Like I see that America is in decline and has a decent chance of falling apart in my lifetime (I'm 34), but what exactly am I going to do about it? Nobody in charge cares, they're too busy fiddling. If you can't stop the decline and have to live it, why not try to enjoy what you have while you have it?
I’m 37 so we’re pretty much the same cohort. And I’ve also reached that conclusion - I get out of the city and ski and hike, spend time with SO, etc. I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
However, my daily commutes through seattle runs me right into the Pioneer square station and I swear it’s like something from “the Wire”. It feels like hamsterdam, a hell on earth. So while I generally resolve to do whats best for myself I still run into the effects of the society I live in everyday and it’s depressing/demoralizing. This city is diseased with an aggressive malignancy.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
The thing that's interesting about this is that human beings in acute distress are less adept at planning ahead and being creative. Which means that people in the doom cycle can't start building new institutions to challenge the old ones that are decaying and pillaging. The perverse incentives that got us to this point are also disincentivizing fixing the problems.
I don't even want to think about what Pioneer Square is like now. It was sketchy when I lived in Seattle and that was 10 years ago. I agree that even with some healthy distance/putting on your own oxygen mask first, it's very demoralizing. My trust in people is much lower than it used to be.
I'm not sure rural or suburban areas are much better. Most of the malignancy just happens in private.
You may be right about the suburban areas, I just don't know. I haven't lived there since I was a kid.
The area around Pioneer square is all boarded up now, even the court house! During the summer/fall it was much worse with indigent drug use and florid psychotics but now that it's cold and wet there's less. The station is still used as a toilet though.
Funny enough the stairs at exit A in Pioneer Square have inscribed on them as you walk up "Why are you not afraid?". And I always say to myself, "I fuckin am!"
Seattle needs some chemotherapy but that would require its citizens to recognize they have a disease and actually seek treatment. Instead they put on their airpods and stare at their phones and completely live in a parallel reality.
The most recent elections clearly demonstrate that Seattle voters are fed up and are ready to try something else. Of the seven city council members whose terms are up in 2023 only one has announced a re-election campaign and four of them have said they won't be running. It's a mess right now but I don't think it's fair to accuse the electorate of living in a parallel reality.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to
I was part of this so-called doomerism group when I worked in a more traditional 9-5 job in IT about 8-10 years ago. Now I'm solidly in the homesteader/freelancer/homeschooler counterculture.
Maybe there's a natural progression where you begin to question your life/the system/who you're serving and then you do something about it. I'm sure many people get stuck and never make that transition because of the perceived risk in doing so.
You realize that "America is in decline" has been alive and well since the 60s. Not sure anything right now points to it being any different back then. If anything militarily and intelligence wise the US proved the dominance globally by tipping off Ukraine and stopping a full Russian incursion.
The main problems America has are internal. I agree that nobody could realistically invade us or wage war against us, but that doesn't mean we can't have civil conflicts or a period like the Troubles. In those cases, our overwhelming military superiority might be a drawback since everybody and their cousin is armed.
This observation, for me is a rationale for supporting efforts that shift power down. From federal to state, from state to county, from county to local gov, from local gov to individuals.
Public policy discussions that start with the assumption that the only possible solution is for the federal/state/county/local government to dictate policies from above are almost always non-starters for me. The higher up in the hierarchy the more evidence I need to support a solution at that level.
I'm not absolutist on this matter, there are concerns that are best addressed at all those various levels but I prefer to get there through bottom-up policy experimentation and iteration rather than top-down diktats. There are also ample lessons from history about the dangers of expansive government powers.
That debate has been ongoing since before the founding of the country. You are in good company and our system is designed with the idea of distributing power. The key is for people to recognize and exercise their power.
I'm actually very locally active and came to the same conclusion in that I think building local institutions is the best thing that I can do right now.
These decline stories are universal, and probably no more true than 400 years ago: I am French and live in Hong Kong, do you think decline is not what everyone is talking about in BOTH places ? What is a place not in decline in the eyes of its inhabitants ?
It says more about how we view the past than how the present is: we remember only the glorious good times, and forget nobody could read 200 years ago, or nobody could eat 400 years ago. They all said they were in decline, the values of their grandfathers diluted by a constant change.
But while I sit on my toilets, on the 44th floor of my hyper tower, writing to americans in a language nobody in my ascending family can speak, before tucking my trilingual kid to bed, well, I think the decline isn't so bad, if you zoom out a few decades.
Doesn’t look like decline to me. I could cite dozens more examples and not just around technology.
Russia is a good example of a nation in decline: hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
We do have a lot of dumb problems like a homelessness epidemic that are due more to lack of political will than inability to fix them.
Some are also due to the high priority we place on individual freedom. We’d rather have freedom from detention and to move about than round up the homeless and force them into institutions. We’d rather have shootings than remove the individual right to bear arms. We’d rather have strong property rights than eminent domain people to build infrastructure. Etc.
> hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
So which of those is missing from the US? I see fewer and fewer young people, the corruption may not be at the level of handing over banknotes but the distrust is just as real, and everything else on your list is much th esame.
I don't think it's bad in the long run either. I think sometimes we need to get rid of old things to make way for new things. It still kind of sucks for those of us who live through it, though. A lot of my frustration is with the current system's inertia as the current decaying institutions do their best to keep alternatives from taking root so all we can do is wait until they're finally weak enough to be ignored. In the meantime, what should we do?
I can only speak to the American (and somewhat the Canadian) situation. I don't know what on the ground sentiment looks like in France or Hong Kong.
I think your social standing has a lot more to do with money than behavior. If you're rich and live in a van you're interesting, otherwise you're just homeless. If your gig is a successful business you're independent, if it's Uber you're barely surviving.
Disagree. I think your social status has more to do with your conformity to neoliberal values than it does money. Sure, money can buy nice things and attract friends. Just look at Kanye.
The richer you are the broader the range of behavior you can get away with. But the spectrum of all behavior in which this acceptable range lives moves.
Warren Buffet can't have a side gig running scrap in an unregistered truck with a Newport hanging out of his mouth.
This comment is totally off topic. The theme of the article is pop culture and whether it's possible for alternative types of pop culture to gain traction anymore given the fact that most of the outlets are governed by algorithms that prioritize engagement - you're referring to toxic culture war politics. Did you even read the article?
The truth is that countercultures often had political bents to them. Recuperation as defined literally included denaturing the political content of something, preserving the artistic or aesthetic quality only.
Here's one small "trad" expression I've seen that got some people riled up in the kind of way I would expect a counterculture to: the sqlite code of ethics https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
Most people in the US at least do not slot into any particular subculture. They are "normies" for lack of a better term: they don't intentionally curate their cultural selves -- they may have picked up some "trad" trappings (wearing a cross necklace, possessing handwavy religious beliefs like "believing in God"), and they may have "woke/queer" trappings (flying a rainbow flag on their house, possessing handwavy political beliefs like "supporting trans rights").
There are literal state laws being passed increasingly criminalizing the existence of being trans, right now especially any kind of trans healthcare for kids (some legislatures are looking to extend it to adults). There have been mass killings specifically targeting LGBT+ individuals. Even merely informing someone of the pronouns you go by is almost guaranteed to bring flaming and harassment on most online platforms, often including right here on HN.
I want to be charitable but it's hard to interpret this attitude as anything other than willful ignorance of very obvious facts.
Another hard agree. I always get a good laugh when people in queer culture claim to be living a counter culture lifestyle. Meanwhile the US state department is flying the queer flag at its embassies around the world and using it to agitate foreign conservative cultures.
I nominate being an unapologetic white male as the counter culture of our current time. Just watch how many downvotes you'll get on any social media platform for having this position.
It's not that it's an unpopular position, it's that the argument is flawed and the point you're trying to make falls flat. First, you lump all of queer culture into one group, a false categorization without which your augment fails. Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group.
So if you get downvotes, it may be because you made a bad argument, not just because you come off as having an axe to grind.
> First, you lump all of queer culture into one group, a false categorization without which your augment fails.
In fact, I do lump them onto one group. Many subgroups inside a group. You know who I am referring to when I say queer culture. The group exists, it isn't false. Colors keep getting added to the flag. Rather than engage with reality you prefer to have useless rhetorical debates. Let's move past that.
>Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group.
Culture is often not aligned with majority opinions, majority positions or majority orientations. The culture of the 60s was hippies. Most people were not hippies. Your premise is false here that culture is the same as majority, or political empowerment.
I guess I just have the view that if I am turning on the radio, the TV, watching a movie, a tv show, celebrity voices, the state department, etc - and I am seeing the counterculture, then I am actually just seeing the culture.
Seeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live, which varies WILDLY from the norm thus making it counter cultural.
In fact, many queer people force themselves out of the community by living within the norm to feel more acceptance from the majority (counter-counter culture).
Your perception is also very obviously specific to where you live on this planet.
> Seeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live
The same thing goes for anything that could be described as "queer culture". Plenty of queer people have, and want, nothing to do with the groups and spaces that present themselves as "the community".
A given queer person's level of identification with the broader community is of no relevance to the question of whether the broader culture of the community is countercultural. When the culture itself is used as a political tool by a state actor, I no longer classify the culture as countercultural. Rather, I see it as a weaponized mechanism of cultural subversion.
Sure, the hippie movement was branded countercultural. But to what purpose? Note that during the period, the US government was engaged in a large scale remaking of America both domestically and internationally. Domestically, we saw the remaking of immigration policies to no longer bias towards those of European descent, and instead towards what favored macro capitalism (the import of cheaper and low skilled labor). Internationally the US was scaling up engagement in hot and cold wars and no longer considering itself bound to the constitutional provisions for war. Low and behold, during this period, a "counterculture" arises which glorifies drug use, the dissolution of the nuclear family and pushes forward the vapid strain of hyper individualism that we see today. Suddenly the anti-war movement is associated with drug use and degeneracy, whilst the nation's racial consciousness is broken in time to welcome a new wave of immigrants to help improve the margins of big business.
Note that the current "woke" counterculture follows the same pattern. Increased individualism, sublimated racial awareness, dissolution of family, and rampant degeneracy. Meanwhile the state continues its hegemonic march of constant international agitation.
You most certainly were not seeing hippies endorsed by the state department in the 60s. (Though, that we look back on the hippies of the 60s fondly does say something about the direction we've charted since then.)
There is no "mainstream" culture anymore to counter. Everyone is living in their own little cultural bubble that they believe to be a counterculture to a non-existent mainstream culture.
The hysterical thing is the OP said what they said exactly because everyone knows someone would respond with your exact rhetorical devices like an automaton or a bot.
> Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted at "counterculture" even though the group that fits that definition is numerically larger, wealthier, and politically empowered than any other group.
And yet, it's remarkably unpopular to announce the simple truism that "white lives matter", or that "it's ok to be white", and our top universities interrogate "whiteness" as problematic, so evidently much further nuance is required between numerical size and cultural sway.
If minority groups are "in charge", why is most of the wealth, corporate power and political power in the hands of majority groups?
Obviously cultural norms change over time, and many ideas that were once fringe are now mainstream. But that doesn't mean that the majority white, straight, Christian(ish) majority in America doesn't still wield most of the power.
Cultural power is different from political and capital power. The influence of an musician, a political candidate, and a wealthy CEO can all be different in their scope, message, and the audience that they reach.
The WASPy power structure is still dominant in the corporate landscape and disproportionately high in the political one. But it has been losing ground on the cultural front for a while now.
There's a reason WASPy individuals complain about "the culture war" - it's the one they are losing. The slogan, "get woke, go broke" suggests they have started losing ground on the corporate front as well.
If you are unsure of what he meant, try and explicitly advocate for "majority white, straight, Christian(ish)" people in the same way every other group gets to do in america and see how it goes. And if your knee jerk reaction is to say "well only a racist white nationalist would do that", you have proved my point, and you are using the same fallacious reasoning that leads to people thinking that all gay rights advocates are pedophiles or all criminal justice reform advocates are thugs.
Advocating for those in power doesn't carry the same reasoning as advocating for those who are not in power so it is not the same type of fallacious reasoning you claim.
Edit: I removed my second sentence since it appears to be confusing others of my tone and intention.
>Advocating for those in power doesn't carry the same reasoning as advocating for those who are not in power
Anybody could be in power at any given time. If your argument for why your group should be in power depends on who is currently in power then it isn’t valid because it stops being true as soon as you win. No idea what you are saying about stupid people.
> my argument [“Advocating for those in power”] has nothing to do with who should be in power
Saying what kinds of arguments are acceptable in support of the group in power has a lot to do with who should be in power.
I'll say it again since you edited your previous message to reply to the message following it, I wasn't arguing about who should be in power, or placing my chips in any direction. I was plainly stating that people will have different reasons for supporting the class in power vs supporting outside of that class.
Parent comment was stating that people who support the minority are using the same fallacious reasoning those who support the majority do and that is not true.
In the event the power changes, the people who supported the previous majority class might be the same or use the same reasoning but that has nothing to do with how both groups reason separately.
As an example, imagine it's The Great Depression, The Majority would say something like "Wow I really wish we had more food, I'm going to vote for this candidate who says that we'll get more food". In this instance the Majority is not tied to the ruling class, do you see how implying everyone is knee-jerk reacting is misleading?
>If minority groups are "in charge", why is most of the wealth, corporate power and political power in the hands of majority groups?
Because there is no one majority group. The only way you get a majority group is by drawing dumb lines around non-adjacent cultural groups because they happen to be of the same economic means or vote the same way.
> ... mean that the majority white, straight, Christian(ish) majority in America doesn't still wield most of the power.
yeah, except for finance, media, academia and politics. I do agree that straight white christian(ish) males do wield the most power in the other intuitions that matter (thought I'm drawing a blank on which those might be).
Case in point—-Name one recent president that didn’t need go pander to christians to get elected. I’ve always found this tiring being a non-christian myself. Christians are not oppressed no matter what the terminally online right-wing on HN seems to think.
I have never heard a republican say something positive about white people. Can you give me an example? For the amount of dog whistling the GOP has done over the years the complete dearth of any explicit pandering to white Americans is actually shocking and deserving of a proper explanation.
Great explanation. Very proper. Much explanation. Thanks for the example /s
Arguments you cant argue against are not a “dishonest script” what does that even mean? Just give an example of what you say Republicans do a good job of.
You are being dishonest because examples of the GOP pandering to white voters are well-documented and easily accessible. Either you never looked, in which case arguing at all is dishonest since you don't know what you're talking about, or you looked and ignored the mountain of evidence denying your view. The "script" part is likely about you shifting the goalposts. Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans? That isn't to say the GOP are always subtle, either. All in all, it seems pretty clear you're sealioning.
For the benefit of other readers though, I'll bite.
For instance, former congressman for Iowa Steve King tweeting about slavery [0] is pretty explicit. How about the slightly more abstruse but still pretty glaring white supremacist dog whistle [1] in response to a random Dutch guy complaining about muslims. He was in congress 2003-2021.
Of course Great Replacement rhetoric is also pushed pretty openly to rally white voters, with Tucker Carlson saying things like "demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions", and congresswoman for New York Elise Stefanik running ads saying "[Democrats'] plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington".
Do you accept these examples or do you need the GOP leadership to issue a letter signed by all party members stating they like white people?
> Why doesn't dog-whistling count as explicit pandering to white Americans?
Because why do they have to dog whistle about it? Why do they have to resort to subtlety at all?
It's forbidden from public discourse to such an extent that can only be found between the lines, hidden in vague allusions, or more likely, asserted as baseless accusations slandering conservative politicians, while the GOP explicitly tries everything it can to promote their non-white figures.
If you read the examples I gave above, they're not vague. Dog-whistles are more for plausible deniability than subtlety, and it's because (shocker) white supremacy is frowned upon. If you think liking white people requires openly advocating white supremacy, and anything else is an implicit statement that you don't like white people, then that really says more about you than anything else.
They try to promote their non-white figures because their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.
This is like the Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter debacle. Minorities are brought into the spotlight because there are systems and large groups of people actively working against them. Meanwhile, you don't need to "promote" whiteness, because that's seen as the default in America.
But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?
> their agenda and campaigning for the most part is so overwhelmingly targeted toward white voters that they have horrible reach into other demographics.
Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.
> But why? If this is really the majority sentiment, why on earth leave any room for plausible deniability?
If you read the comment you're replying to, it answers that question immediately.
> Not really, though. Voting levels are low enough that they could conceivably focus their energies simply on getting more non-voting whites to vote.
They could, but their agenda fits white people better, for reasons that are evident to anyone with critical thinking skills. Hint: think about the dog-whistling some more.
> Culture is not required to take subterfuge in dog whistles. Only counterculture is.
> Culture is what's uncontroversially and fearlessly blasted on front pages, and on mainstream TV.
My comments on dog-whistling were specifically targeted toward the one commenter talking about how politicians don't seem to care about white people.
If you want to go back to the broader discussion, on culture, then yes I agree. And what is blasted on front pages and mainstream TV is overwhelmingly white, with tiny pockets dedicated to other groups. To say that "whiteness" is a counterculture is absurd.
As an aside:
> the millions of white Democrats
The Democrat agenda also fits white people better than non-white people, though they make more effort than Republicans to acknowledge minorities.
As for why non-white Republicans vote that way, maybe they miss the dog-whistles, or maybe they think the racism of the party isn't directed at them (e.g., since they're "one of the good ones") or that it's outweighed by other factors (i.e., they hate taxes), or maybe they think the Republicans are the better of two evils. Not really relevant, since they aren't in this discussion. Do you have the critical thinking skills?
No, I’m not engaging with the dishonest script you’re trying to run me through, and looking at your short post history it’s obvious what you’re trying to do. Have a nice day.
lasftr: those are examples of dog whistles. They dont use the word “white” anywhere. The GOP has dog whistled for decades and the whole point of a dog whistle is that it DOESN’T explicitly pander to white people. Dog whistles are IMPLICIT by definition. I hope that clears up what I was saying. Thanks for trying to provide an answer my question: “Why do you think politicians never explicitly pander to white people?“
Edit: Not needing to do something is not a reason for not doing it. Do you have a hypothesis for why they wouldn't explicitly pander? It seems you adamantly refuse to address this monumental question.
Ok fine, here's my answer then: they don't need to, because their voters know the GOP doesn't work against white people. I suspect it's different from your answer.
But they explicitly don’t wield that power as a group and attack people who suggest that they do. Powerful white men are all liberals who defer to the group interests of minorities and attack the group interest of the majority.
Yeah this is all making me wonder why we're looking for a singular dominant culture to which there are one or more counter-cultures.
Pretty sure one of the canonized characteristics of post-modernity (or the post-cold war era if you dont like pretentious art terms) is pluralism.
This spicy thread seems to reinforce the feeling that the dominant culture has (and maybe always was) some horrifying unknowable ever-changing organic mass of competing counter-cultures.
Paraphrasing some dead social philosopher, history and cultures aren't bedtime stories or cartoon characters and we create dangerous false narratives, policies and hierarchies when we indulge the impulse to reduce them into these.
Really confused by this statement. I think queer culture can be countercultural depending. For example legislation is currently up in some states to ban dressing in a way outside your sex because drag queens exist, but even though drag queens have a tv show and a movie and stuff I'm sure it'll also probably scoop a butch lesbian or two or just a regular tomboy woman.
Legal status is terrible standard for whether something is counter culture. Outlawing something is neither necessary nor sufficient to be counterculture. Some legal and cultural boundaries overlap, some are orthogonal.
There are a great many subcultures that would like legal boundaries shifted, and when they care enough they become interest groups participating in the democratic process.
Even the blandest bland blandy that ever blanded is not going to agree with all the laws and societal boundaries being set exactly the way they are. Either that means there's no such thing as a mainstream culture, or we have to understand noisy clashes between subcultures don't make one or the other a counter culture.
I think the way we're discussing that something obviously SUBculture is being confused for a COUNTERculture is an argument in OPs favor that we don't have much (highly visible) counterculture right now.
Subculture vs counterculture makes sense. I'd be curious what counterculture is and how it differentiates from subculture then, if we're not going to measure if institutions exist that are actively trying to outlaw a culture.
A subculture is generally hidden from the mainstream culture. Few are those who display their BDSM subculture in obvious public fashion.
A counterculture is in the face of the mainstream culture, trying to change the cult. It is countering the mainstream. It is activist or, at the least, unabashed with the intention of normalization.
To expand on this, in a democracy-ish country law pretty much ALWAYS lags the cultural reality because legislatures basically never speculatively do things when it comes to cultural issues, they wait for enough people to want something for it to be an issue worth of the political platform. You might get some extremists pushing the envelope by catering to an extreme minority but even then they won't really be far out in front of the pack.
I mean I'm talking about current laws on proposal to ban people from dressing differently without saying "only drag queens". The letter of the law bans butch lesbians and tomboys. These are adults.
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It might get downvotes because you've just said it in a very ridiculous way that indicates you're angry about it.
I think there's a valid point lurking there, but you botched it. Surely you appreciate that multiple things can be true at the same time, and there are numerous ways that white men have advantages still.
Why is it okay for one side to be angry, but not the other? This is such a commonly used accusation to deflate someone else's point. Making them seem emotional, and therefore illogical.
FWIW, I don't think the person you're replying to looks even a little bit angry in that post. The point of view seems well considered.
I think the anger is coming out in over the top descriptions of white males as targets of some kind of cultural conspiracy, or talking about laughing at queer folk because they're not persecuted like unapologetic straight white men ... Those are some pretty odd conclusions that he seems to have wandered into emotionally, and it's hard to think there isn't some hostility there, otherwise why bother saying all this?
If you think he sounds neutral, unaffected, rational, I wonder if it's just that you already agree with him.
Your whole argument is based on the premise that statements made in anger cannot be true. And the focus on emotional state is typical ad hominem attack. You did not refute the content in any way.
In order to put white men in their place, they must understand that their opinion doesn't matter because they are white men. They cannot know adversity, they cannot have any opinion on minority issues. Therefore, if you want to participate in a discussion today your best bet is to try not to appear obviously white or male, and if you must concede that fact you ought to apologize for having an opinion in the first place, since nobody asked for it.
Being an unapologetic white male would imply that you felt like you could give your opinion freely without having someone immediately attack it as invalid because of your race and gender.
But I guarantee that every time a term like this gets used, the replies will imply that anyone identifying as an unapologetic white male is in fact racist.
It's a great demonstration of how the counter culture has in fact become culture. Anybody who really doubts this probably doesn't have kids or spend much time around younger adults.
This is geographic and doesn't address any of the specific demographic claims made, much less the assertion that those who hold power are "unapologetically white."
>Meanwhile the US state department is flying the queer flag at its embassies around the world and using it to agitate foreign conservative cultures.
Oh come on, that is not their main goal. Its all a scam to cover up things like unchecked military spending/war, unchecked government corruption at the corporate level among many other things.
There is a reason why this meme continues to float around the web.
I guess the question here is what does the words, "mainstream supported" mean? Most corporate brands and media try to appeal to certain minorities. Is this what you mean?
The thing is despite the media focus, it still is the actual case that such minorities do not have actual power in society in terms of actual statistics, but the media is just a mirage, the reality is that certain disparities still exist, despite media representation. This might be the slightly different aspect of modern culture, that it does not amplify the already existing power group explicitly.
Interesting point. I guess the question is: is power inherently related to culture? And if so, to what degree? If culture is the outline of the dominant group in a society, perhaps the counterculture are those who occupy and inhabit its shadow.
So, I'm not sure this is obvious, but the current "progressive[0]" culture is pushed by the dominant group that does have power. By raw statistics, white men still wield most power in American society (and thus the world), and so the progressive culture that is dominant in media is the culture being written and put into vogue by people who are white men if you merely draw on the statistics. If you've ever observed twitter, a good chance is someone bleeting about "white people be like X" it is a white person doing it. A good meme on housing twitter is nimbys doing land acknowledgements while no Native Americans (or POC really) are actually present since they are economically excluded from said community.
The thing is the statistics still speak for themselves. Despite the media, the PR campaigns, for example, software development still skews largely male. The spoken culture extols DEI, but the actual reality is still what is it by statistics.
On some level, this might just be recuperation in action, but the point is that it still is ironically the culture of the majority. It isn't being "pushed" by the minority because the minority is by definition, the minority. It is being adopted (even recuperated) by the majority, often into a form that is acceptable for it. The difference is that the majority isn't really centering itself in that media. Except that on some level, if you listen to Slavoj Zizek, it actually is.
Anyway, whether media or external culture really makes a difference materially (like minority representation in workplaces of high paying careers matching that of the population) it at least clear at this point that it either would take a lot of time to take effect, or possibly (probably even likely at this point) it has no real effect on actual power relations in society.
[0] putting this in quotes because progressive encompasses more than what is accepted by the mainstream culture.
> By raw statistics, white men still wield most power in American society (and thus the world), and so the progressive culture that is dominant in media is the culture being written and put into vogue by people who are white men if you merely draw on the statistics.
Those would primarily be "progressive" white men though, which still gets to the in-group/out-group dynamic where they will more closely associate with a racial or sexual minority then they would to a conservative white male (a value match vs a skin color match). So the effect is the same, is it not?
I think this is ridiculous, LGBTQ is a minority. Trads are part of a waning majority.
All evidence points towards LGBTQ always existing but just becoming more open.
Trads being Counter Culture? That's the same double speak that gets us Citizens United and Right to Work. Where did these trads get their radically traditional values? From the majority.
It is a minority, but if I go into work and announce that I am trans and will now be transitioning and my name is now X, people will fall all over themselves be supportive and congratulating me. It literally happened recently when Chris became Christina at my work. But, if I come in and announce that I have decided to become Catholic or Evangelical or Mormon there will be a lot of awkward silence with maybe some "okaaaaayyy, anyway, let's continue with the planning for the next project..."
Because no one needs to change the way they act around you. Christianity and Catholicism are strongly majority groups in the US. You were already treated as a Christian because that's what the majority of our society is based on.
Or no one feels like it's a change worth celebrating, whereas there's a strong streak of culture (particularly in more liberal areas) that makes congratulating trans people on their transition/gay people coming out of the closet a social obligation even if you're neither trans nor gay. It's almost gotten to the level of congratulating a couple for having an infant. If you don't think it's worth celebrating you're seen as an asshole.
My wife and I are fairly traditional in that I work full time and she's a housewife/mother. Most people are mildly surprised that she doesn't work, and there's definitely been the occasional awkward social interaction where she was clearly being judged by other women (notably non-parents) for that decision. This is in an extremely blue city, I imagine if we moved out even into the suburbs things would shift.
No, where I live you are considered to be a freak if you are religious. Announcing that you have joined a religion is like announcing you are trans in Alabama 50 years ago.
Agree with the sibling you would have a much higher chance of being discriminated against. Particularly in an interview. If you were wearing a cross necklace or some other visible indicator of your membership in Christianity, you would be way more likely to be turned down for a job in the Bay Area.
Same as you would have been discriminated against for being trans, gay, or black 30 years ago.
What's worse?
Not getting a job or getting murdered?
Not trying to minimize the discrimination of the religious but can't you see why most would try to minimize discrimination against a class who has a history of discriminating? Additionally, the severity is not comparable. Maybe if we were in the Crusades things would be different...do you see what I'm saying?
Having worked in the Bay for ~9 years I never met anyone that cared what religion a fellow employee was. So if we're just running off anecdotes and impressions, there's mine.
This is such a known situation that HBO's Silicon Valley did a whole bit on it in the show. Be thankful you've managed to avoid it in your 9 years in the valley!
I'm using to prove that the allegation, that people are careful being 'out' as a Christian' exists, not to prove that the religious discrimination, which would be illegal, exists. Your point is that it couldn't possibly exist because you've never even heard of such a thing. I'm saying that it's entirely possible for it to exist, because everyone else seems to have heard of it to the point that a popular TV chose to lampoon it.
> Your point is that it couldn't possibly exist because you've never even heard of such a thing.
Oh, sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. The point I was trying to make was not that it doesn't exist, but that it's not widespread and not significant enough to worry about. It exists, but I don't believe being Christian today is like being gay or black in 1990. You're more likely to be discriminated against for your height than your religion at this point.
No, but you would be discriminated against. Announcing you are religious would be the quickest way to be sidelined on projects and slowly forced out of the company. Announcing that your are LGBTQ is the quickest way to advance in the company and receive accolades. And this is a Fortune 100 company that nearly everyone on the planet has heard of. Where I live, LGBTQ is very much the mainstream and the most acceptable lifestyle.
That doesn't mean anything. Discrimination is a matter of degree. Everyone gets discriminated against pretty often to lesser degrees. If you tell me about your horoscope I'll roll my eyes and probably not want to hang out with you very much because of your spiritual beliefs.
Are people refusing to sell you good and services? Calling you names? Throwing bricks through your windows?
Is it putting more of a damper on you living a happy life than the occasional moment of discomfort because someone thinks something you think is dumb? People think lots of my beliefs are dumb, and that's fine, as long as I can go about my day.
> Announcing that your are LGBTQ is the quickest way to advance in the company and receive accolades.
First, I doubt a gay new hire can reach C suite with nothing but a couple of rainbows and dildos for qualifications.
Second, office politics are crappy, but you either cope or move on, with maybe a lawsuit if you have a legal leg to stand on.
I don't think likelihood of violence from a belief has much to do with counterculture status, moreso that the people that don't like queer people are more violent than the other way around.
This is patently absurd. I'm neither trans nor religious but hypothetically I'd much rather announce that I joined a religion anywhere in the US than announce being trans in the small town where my grandparents live today. Let alone Alabama 50 years ago.
Yes in very progressive environments you will get more support for announcing the later but that's because being in the later group is actually a challenge while religion has built up a reputation for maligning groups of people for things out of their control and for generally anti-scientific beliefs. Being part of a group that largely denies evolution and climate change is obviously not going to grant you any favors in groups with an academic (especially STEM) background.
No, what you experience is people who personally aren't pro-religion, often for reasons of personal experience. It's nothing like the brave people hosting home churches in China, or an even better example, the people telling their stories in the bible, where the entire culture/government and it's moral basis is against your religion.
> no one needs to change the way they act around you.
This is only because Catholics and Christians often don’t mention when workplace behaviors make them uncomfortable. I’ve been in multiple situations where coworkers have used names of God as expletives or made jokes about things I consider holy.
And if you’re a Catholic and “trad” and planning lunch with colleagues, things like “is it Friday” or “is it a Friday in Lent” would affect others (except that, today, there’s a lot of vegetarian options for independent reasons).
Abstinence is a form of penance. Frankly if the office doesn't bend over backwards for your self-flagellation every week I'm OK with it. Are you demanding that the entire office fast with you if they can't find a pescatarian option?
You missed the point: if I’m planning lunch with my friends and they want to go to barbecue on Friday, I’m going to be suggesting an alternative so I can get something to eat too. Just like we had to plan lunches around my Jain, Jewish and Muslim coworkers dietary restrictions.
So, in fact, some people will have to do something different to include me in some of their activities.
Queer people also don't mention workplace behavior that makes them uncomfortable all the time...I'm sure it's easy for you to think that queer people don't let transgressions slide, but many times they do so for their own safety or livelihood.
You are not made unsafe because I said the fuck word...
Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful. Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.
I'm not catholic so please help me out here. If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23? Is it okay to say someone's cat is cute even if you don't really care for cats? What do you do if your partner asks if they look good or bad in something?
These are all reasonable questions. I'll answer as best as I can, but please understand that I'm not any kind of formal authority.
> If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23?
I don't know of any Catholic doctrine that says people can't use pseudonyms, nicknames, or even change their name altogether.
> Is it okay to say someone's cat is cute even if you don't really care for cats? What do you do if your partner asks if they look good or bad in something?
Is it a lie, which is to say a falsehood told with the intent to deceive? Then yes it's wrong. Wouldn't you want to be told the truth if you in fact looked bad? Wouldn't you want to know that when you're told that you look good that you really do?
Personally, supposing I didn't think the cat was cute, I wouldn't say I thought it was. I would most likely treat it as a good opportunity to say nothing on the subject. Some theologians put forth a doctrine of "mental reservation"[1] which somehow makes lying OK, but I have to admit I'm not capable of the necessary mental gymnastics in any but the most clear cut cases.
Is it possible to say nothing about a trans co-workers transition then? If Jessica is now Kevin, what's the difference between that and Jacob going "nah call me Jake"? Is it just that you can't call Kevin he/him pronouns? Can you call Kevin as Kevin?
I'm unwilling by act or omission to knowingly indicate that I believe something that the Church teaches to be false. Thus, it depends on whether or not I'm being asked to participate in a deception, which I will not do. On the other hand, unlikely though it may be, if it's somehow clear that "Kevin" has no intent to deceive and is not deceiving anyone about her sex then I don't have an absolute moral objection to calling her that. This scenario is contrived and unrealistic, but it is largely a matter of prudence. Thus if I did surprisingly find myself in a similar circumstance, my actions would depend on the details.
As another Catholic commenter said, we owe Christian charity to all other human beings, including those affected by gender dysphoria. However, charity doesn't mean being "nice" or "accommodating," but it does require respecting the dignity of the human person. One way to respect that dignity is by not encouraging or condoning disordered behaviors or beliefs. I wouldn't offer a recovering alcoholic a drink, even if it was really great stuff.
That leads to another pragmatic matter. No matter what disordered beliefs or behaviors a person has (and I have my own share), we should want to help that person come to a rightly ordered place. There's really no one size fits all approach to that.
To your first point, pronouns and nicknames are not the same thing. Pronouns indicate that a man can become a woman or vise versa which is not what the Catechism teaches. Additionally, calling a cat cute if you don't care for them is lying which is a venial sin (meaning you probably won't be damned to Hell for it but one should confess if they sin regardless).
Catholics are called to Love (God is Love) and to love all sinners but hate the sins. We know that Church is a place for imperfect humans and thus we do seek to purify our souls with prayer, works of mercy and the Sacraments.
So with all the above in mind, we usually tend to avoid pronouns and refer to transgenders by their name instead. However, out of basic respect and good manners we can all call them what they want if they insist.
Jesus commands us that we must be known as his disciples by our love. Christian love begins with basic respect and good manners. Selfless love does not begin with requiring others to conform to our doctrine.
St. Paul said that he became all things for all people so that he may save some. We should do the same.
1 Peter 3:15-16 be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence,
I know several Catholics who have no problem using a transgender person's pronouns. Trying to use a religion as a cover for bigotry is disrespectful to both the transgender person and other members of the religion.
But who determines what is "OK by the Bible?" A plain reading of it shows a number of clear contradictions, so we naturally can't rely on the verbatim text. Not to mention there is more than one version of the Bible itself.
That leaves it up to personal interpretation and opinion. Considering that the overall message of Christianity is supposedly something about "love and grace" the not transphobic opinions are a lot more compelling.
> Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men.
People (including Catholics) supporting trans rights agree with that.
Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing but being something radically different because of its innate essence.
> Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful.
Catholic teaching is that lying consists of objectively false statements told with intent to deceive. (CCC 2482)
> Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.
But this is not something that the Catholic faith teaches is lying, even if some Catholics may see it as lying or some other offense against truth. Why?
(1) As Catholic traditionalists and trans rights activists agree, “gender identity” is not the same thing that Catholics see as binary sex. Acknowledging that a persons gender identity is this or that is not a fact claim about the construct of sex, but also
(2) Preferred pronouns are a distinct (though sometimes correlated) issue to gender identity (people with different gender identity can have the same oreferred pronouns, and vice versa), so even if acknowledging the validity of gender identity waa making a claim about sex, and even if such a claim would be false, respecting preferred pronouns isn’t acknowledging gender identity, its just respecting preferred pronouns.
(3) On top of all of the above, the purpose of use of a person's preferred pronouns by a Catholic in a work environment would, presumably, not be convince anyone of some false claim about the subject's sex, and without intent to deceive, it would not be a lie even if its content were an objectively false claim. (Which, for the reasons discussed previously, it is not.)
If you wanted to make an argument against respecting preferred pronouns that was grounded in Catholic doctrine, you would do better to argue that it is adulation (CCC 2480) from the view that transgenderism is inherently wrongful and doing so, lacking the intent to deceive required for lying, is a form of encouragement; OTOH, you could equally argue that failure to do so, in many circumstances, is detraction (CCC 2477) on the same assumption and calumny (also CCC 2477) without it.
This is some very solid casuistry. Father James Martin, S.J. would be proud.
> Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing but being something radically different because of its innate essence.
I'd love to know where you found the teaching that God miraculously transubstantiates people into a body of the wrong sex.
> Catholic teaching is that lying consists of objectively false statements told with intent to deceive. (CCC 2482).
My conscience tells me that it's objectively false and if I say it isn't I'm intentionally deceiving. (CCC 1778)
> (1) As Catholic traditionalists and trans rights activists agree, “gender identity” is not the same thing that Catholics see as binary sex. Acknowledging that a persons gender identity is this or that is not a fact claim about the construct of sex, but also
Motte and bailey.
As an aside what Doctor of the Church has anything to say about "gender identity?" Presumably if this is part of tradition one of them must have had something to say on the subject. In fact, where are you finding any Catholic traditionalist who is leaning on 1970s era radical feminist linguistic novelties?[1]
> (2) Preferred pronouns are a distinct (though sometimes correlated) issue to gender identity (people with different gender identity can have the same oreferred pronouns, and vice versa), so even if acknowledging the validity of gender identity waa making a claim about sex, and even if such a claim would be false, respecting preferred pronouns isn’t acknowledging gender identity, its just respecting preferred pronouns.
More equivocating. Everyone knows the confusion is intentional.
> (3) On top of all of the above, the purpose of use of a person's preferred pronouns by a Catholic in a work environment would, presumably, not be convince anyone of some false claim about the subject's sex, and without intent to deceive, it would not be a lie even if its content were an objectively false claim. (Which, for the reasons discussed previously, it is not.)
Then why would he care when I use pronouns appropriate to his sex?
Do you cast judgement on people that color their hair when it gets gray? Do you cast judgement on people that try and change their body by dieting/exercising?
I've never had random people on the street threaten to beat my ass or make violent threats towards me before my transition, and now it happens a couple times a year. I also way to many trans friends that are homeless because their conservative parents disagreed.
Across every single metric, trans people, especially trans POC face disproportionate adversity. i.e. income, murder rate, housing insecurity, education etc...
At our haircut place there was a husband and wife that worked there, the husband became the wife and the wife became the husband!
And I think the traditional people are doing so in much more subversive ways now - plenty of our friends are going private and Catholic school to get their kids out of the public schools, which are getting pretty wild in the indoctrination.
In a society that actually respected women, people would be falling over themselves to call out his misogynistic delusion that being a woman can amount to a thought in a man's head. But sadly not. That's male privilege for you.
Context: Am LGBTQ person who also has traditional religious views.
Big disagree. You carry a pride flag in the wrong parts of town where I am, you'll get beat up.
Walk around preaching hellfire and damnation and at most you'll get a lot of annoyed looks and at best you'll get people cheering you on.
> In schools these days it's trendy to be anything but straight.
In high schools in my town people get beat up for coming out. A friend who went to college out of state was mocked because people thought he was gay, despite him being straight.
Also, you appear to have a misconception of what the LGBTQ acronym includes.
LGBA - these are related to attraction.
TI - These are for Trans/Intersex individuals and have nothing to do with attraction.
Q - Questioning/Queer. Can be used by those who don't feel as though they are properly described by the above descriptions, or who are opposed to them for some reason.
There are other letters, but for the most part they are subsets/synonyms of the above labels, at least as far as the use case here is concerned.
Yeah it seems you can have wildly different experiences depending on where you live in the US. Probably why we are so politically divided, at this point we're living in different societies.
Anywhere in California you would not experience any of that. In fact it really is as OP describes. Look at polls of kids in elementary schools where 50%+ of young kids are identifying as non-binary because it is trendy.
the people beating up anyone are the cultural underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites.
Physical violence (and any indicator of physical needs- shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'power structure' you mentally choose to sketch it out, it's there churning, by whatever name you like)
you seem to confuse elite signaling and countersignaling with personal sufferings when in reality, both are exactly how it's supposed to go
The cultural machinery works thru contradiction and desperate elite mimicry, people trying to aspirationally sound like the class right above them, leading to tragedy of the commons, for example:
Rich women support bail reform/ islamic immigration/ transgender craze/ porn-culture that gets poorer women raped/ scared/ fired / cheapened, and that's the new feminism
Pragmatic feminists/terfs/lesbians/mom groups/anti-vaccers are the new witches to be burned as the purity test for desperate psuedo-middle-class aspirational women, supplying the cultural fodder content mill, while Republican women/Christian evangelicals make popcorn...
Abortion rights are a cheap voting lever, the more passionate you are the more the machine knows how to use you, people are putting their carrots and sticks in their bios, announcing the best ways to control them with a smile lol
Women in Iran and Afghanistan not allowed to go to school, that is defacto no longer a feminist issue but something something 'why not both' meme-mumbles by nonbinary mental illness connoisseurs.
Gays getting beat up by rural whites so they move to metropolis and work for the rainbow utopia of corporate America is exactly how the machine eats :)
Let's try to disentagle this gish gallop shall we :) ?
> the people beating up anyone are the underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites.
But they do make up the culture of the parts of society people actually live in.
> Physical violence (and physical needs, shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'power structure' you mentally choose to sketch it out, it's there churning, by whatever name you like)
"People who have needs are manipulated by people who have money". Shocking.
> Rich women support bail reform/ islamic immigration/ transgender craze/ porn-culture that gets poorer women raped/ scared/ fired / cheapened, and that's the new feminism
> (Pragmatic feminists/terfs/lesbians/mom groups/anti-vaccers are the new witches to be burned as the purity test for desperate psuedo-middle-class aspirational women, supplying the cultural fodder content mill, while Republican women/Christian evangelicals make popcorn...)
You uh... might want to back of the OAN/Fox
> Abortion rights are a cheap voting lever, the more passionate you are the more the machine knows how to use you, people are putting their carrots and sticks in their bios, announcing the best ways to control them with a smile lol
No machine cares enough about an individual to look through their bio.
> Women in Iran and Afghanistan not allowed to go to school, that is defacto no longer a feminist issue but something something 'why not both' meme-mumbles by nonbinary mental illness connoisseurs.
"People put the most focus on issues directly impacting themselves". What a shocking discovery you've made.
In my church, there's a frequent saying "you can't help others until you've helped yourself". You have to have yourself on a stable base before you can lift others. In addition, there's a conversation to be had about interventionism in there, it's bit off topic but clearly didn't go so well last time.
> Gays getting beat up by rural whites so they move to metropolis and work for the rainbow utopia of corporate America is exactly how the machine eats :)
I'll admit this part confuses me. You go drop all the right wing talking points up above, and then go "All the right wing people are being manipulated to make educated lgbt people go to cities and work"... and instead of the solution being to help educate more people, it's to make things worse for LGBT people everywhere?
sorry but discussions of culture trends can't be easily parsed by people who can only think so ...literally
why not just get stuck on 'what IS culture even', 'what is a trend Really??', and other forms of useless filler-think that magically only crop up when a middle class smart-and-friendly-smile type person is made uncomfortable by working class people actually 'noticing things' with their eyes and ears...
Policy-wonks aren't gonna be in the family rooms where people say things that matter to them, where populism and/or prejudice brews.
Get to know some immigrant communities, they don't understand english to watch fox or cnn. Black folks didn't make vaccine decisions based on what channel you think they should watch. Wealthy white people buying property or voting with their feet/dollars aren't going to tell all the friends they went to college with exactly why, revealed preferences and all that.
I'm a radical feminist, if american conservatives/rep have common cause then all the better
Imagine understanding capitalism, the state, warfare, or the history of any nation at all.... and still having party loyalties??? sad :)
Indeed, I now hear acquaintances on the right referring to them derisively as the 'alphabet mafia.' I wonder if maybe it's gotten meaningless when there are so many letters. Sometimes I see "+" used instead, after the first few letters. In that case, do the members of the groups that come after feel marginalized compared to the big ones that make up the first few letters?
And what about the people who self-identify as one of the groups but don't want to advertise it as their defining characteristic? What do they do? That's a hard one, I think there are quite a lot of people that are in that situation.
I suppose the holy grail will be if/when we just decide that such labels don't matter.
For me, it's nice to see the full acronym in places where it makes sense or are already LGBTQ focused.
Outside of those spaces, I generally prefer LGBTQ or LGBTQ+ for that reason.
That holy grail would be nice to reach some day.
For those looking on and saying "well, you're doing it to yourselves":
The answer is that currently we _have_ to do it because any many parts of the USA/world people who fall under that umbrella aren't able to live in a way that brings them joy.
As such, they need a banner to organize under and belong with. Once that need passes eventually so will the labels.
> Indeed, I now hear acquaintances on the right referring to them derisively as the 'alphabet mafia.' I wonder if maybe it's gotten meaningless when there are so many letters.
Despite the number of letters increasing, it's still a minority. Additionally, the rate of popularity is slowing.
I am still on the fence whether or not this is a left-handedness situation. (The number of people who are left-handed sharply increased within 1-2 generations once we stopped beating children for primarily using their left hands. But this was generally not considered a social contagion or some grooming behavior from left-handed teachers or something.) If it is, then we should see identification level out within a generation or two.
The actual traits described are not a choice, but identifying as part of the LGBTQ culture absolutely is. Not everyone is comfortable advertising their sexuality to strangers.
Do you think only the 'traditional dominant culture' has a desire for personal privacy? I tend to view privacy as more fundamental, and in my experience most people want a good amount of it. I do not feel unique when I say that regardless of who I am attracted to and/or having sexual relations with (or nobody at all), this is only my business (and my partner, if they exist).
I can name a number of people in my family who are openly gay but not politically active. If you asked them if they identified as LGBTQ+ they would probably say "sure" but they don't wave flags, have stickers, clothes, or anything else proclaiming their sexuality. They're not trying to hide it (as if that were possible, they're all married to partners of the same sex), but it isn't a fundamental part of how they interact with the world.
And I know people in my family who are quietly bisexual or gay, too. Plenty of folks would accuse them of being in the closet, as if that were bad (because they should want to advertise it, right?). It must be fear of bigotry that keeps them in the closet, right? In my experience, no, they aren't actively hiding anything, not using subterfuge to make people think they are straight, they just keep their sexuality to themselves.
I've heard a good part of younger generations think differently. I get the impression the pride thing represents more than sexuality to kids who don't share the same context as older generations. They almost treat it like a brand.
I agree 100%. I have two middle school-age kids, only one of whom has entered puberty but both have extensive thoughts on what LGBT(+) means. I do a lot of smiling and nodding, and just listening, because they really see it quite differently than any adult I have met. It's very much become an entire culture that is only loosely related to actual sexuality.
I am very interested to see how it plays out with my kids as they mature, and as their cohort matures into adulthood. It's fascinating, a little overwhelming perhaps, but not particularly threatening. They aren't at all militant, and I don't know if that's an age thing, or if the culture is evolving away from it.
Sexuality seems to not be a choice, but gender expression (which people sort of mentally lump in) can be a choice (obviously gender dysphoria is not a choice, but not all gender expression decisions are made due to the presence of absence of dysphoria).
In my social mileu (highly and elite educated, coastal, etc) that's not accurate at all. I am literally the only one of my friends who adheres even partially to a traditional organized religion and believes in traditional values. My friends don't quite know what to do with this. Some are gay themselves, none of us think twice about it.
I mean yes, physically they are a minority. Culturally, they are incredibly mainstream. There are examples everywhere.
There are tons of big movies and TV shows featuring gay people coming out.
_Every_ company changes their logo during pride month.
Look at the Apple Watch or iPhone, they come preloaded with Pride wallpapers and watch faces, they produce pride bands for the watch, which sell very well.
Disneyland has Gay Days.
Defcon has a massive attached event called Queercon that dwarfs all other subcons.
Googlers who are gay are called Gayglers.
So many famous actors and politicians are openly gay.
Biden literally just did a major interview in the Whitehouse with a TikToker who's only claim to fame was making videos about becoming trans.
I could list SO many more examples of this everywhere in our culture, and these are random things I could think of off the top of my head, but they are decent examples of culture I think.
I don't have a problem with any of this, I think it's great.
But there is absolutely no way you can claim that this is not the mainstream now.
It sounds like you consider talking about trads that way to be dangerous, like it might bring them back or something.
You're confusing the fact that the existence of LGBTQ people is being acknowledged finally in the mainstream with some sort of shift of what the 'dominant culture' is.
All of these things you listed merely acknowledge that non-cis gendered people exist, that's it. There is no massive shift in the mainstream culture. In fact, there are legions of reactionaries incredibly aggrieved by having this existence "shoved in their faces" such that they will push for laws banning discussion of sexuality in schools, call bomb threats in to hospitals, or lose their shit when gay people kiss in a movie.
The dominance of queer culture goes much farther than simply existing.
Criticize it in even the most mild way at most companies and expect to be fired from your job.
The dominance goes even further. Direct criticism isn't necessary. Try to promote straight culture and you'll also get dogpiled and fired. (Brandon Eich)
How many Christians do you know who fast, or pray the daily hours? How many who are devout enough to respond when someone takes the name of the Lord in vain? As a cultural stream "Trads" are definitely distinct from Conservative Protestantism or the evangelical movement.
Before making such an effort in thought were you even aware of such a subculture?
I get why you might not want to participate in the those things but the point that Trads as a counterculture phenomenon are new and distinct from the previous mainline Protestant or evangelical Christian cultural movements.
That is an interesting point. What do you do when your minority position goes mainstream? When so much of your identity is based on assumed oppression, what does it look like when that oppression vanishes? Do you oppress those who oppressed you in the past in retaliation?
That just drives home the point that we need clear, universally accepted terminology for when we are referring to mental identity versus physical attributes. I feel like a large part of the disagreement on policies towards transgender people today are manifestations of this ambiguity. Other languages do a better job than English, for certain.
I would argue LGBTQ stuff is being shoved into the mainstream because trying to fit in didn't work for them. If we just granted gay people gay marriage when they asked politely for it then they wouldn't have needed to build such an in-your-face political movement. We can see this in early documents during the gay equality movement and the AIDS crisis. There were gay people trying to say "we're just like you, but gay, please help us, we're dying", and nothing got done about the mass death and suffering until they started protesting en-masse and throwing the ashes of their community members on white house grounds.
Obviously, if an entire community needed to be loud to survive, that community is going to retain its loudness into the next generation. The "original sin" as it were was ignoring their suffering in the first place.
That's a little disingenuous. A lot of people are pushing for trans rights that goes well beyond being recognized as an equal member of society. There are 100% legitimate discussions to be had which get shouted down with accusations of bigotry.
An easy example is insisting that trans people be allowed to play in sports based only on their identified gender. We have separation between mens' and women's teams because in many cases men have a biological advantage that would mean women did not ever win.
Insisting that an MTF woman be permitted to compete on equal footing somehow feels like offering equality to the trans person, but it does so at the expense of everyone else she competes against.
A perfect example is the MMF fighter who as a man was decidedly mediocre, but absolutely dominated when fighting as a woman. That is grossly unfair to the women she was competing against.
Trans supporters are fond of loudly, but falsely proclaiming anybody that holds this position is some kind of bigot. Except that biology is real and it is distinct from gender identification. Conflating them isn't helpful.
I disagree that "trads" are counter-culture, just looking at the numbers that is pretty ridiculous. But you could consider the more extreme groups counter culture, like alt-right, q-anon, incels, 8-chan or wherever they are now. They are the worst of course, but I think they fit the description.
It's always been "radical" to have "radically traditional values". Just look at the Amish or Orthodox Jews. It's just that the definition of "radically traditional" shifts in our own lifetimes, making cultural ideas that were normal when we were teenagers seem appalling 30 years later, and continued adherence to those views becomes radical.
I agree with you and I'm definitely not a trad person.
Specifically I think the counter-cultural part in terms of the rise of like...young trad Catholics/religious people is the idea of not partaking in the world. Our current attention economy spends a lot of time trying to get people (including adolescents) to spend their time watching/consuming/interacting, be constantly available, etc. The idea that you don't have to participate is the counter-cultural part.
Do these Trads have long standing institutions in their local communities for support of their culture? Why yes, they are called Churches, which don't have to operate underground in the USA like they do in China (expect when they are strange polygamy cults that often skew towards multiple underage wives), and they receive special state recognized privilege such as tax exemptions, within a society and government unabashedly based on 'judeo-christian' values. So, in line with the government under which they live, supported by longstanding cultural institutions well established in the community. Super counter culture.
But it's not more a problem than the LSD-heavy semi hoboes partying in woodstock in the 70s: both interrogate us on how far we should go in our ways, propose ridiculously extreme alternatives we have to compromise with.
Letting the trads speak a bit more might shock us just as much as the past minorities shocked our forefathers, but look where are: we evolved have't we ? Maybe we can ditch some dictat we imposed on ourselves in our chase for ever deeper reactionary counter-traditionalism.
I don’t think trads are counter culture because they are the vast, vast majority outside of major cities anyways. It’s about as normative as you can get.
IDK. Maybe “radically” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, but I live in the upper Midwest and what you’re describing is the dominant culture.
I think you're onto something, but you're missing a really key point of what makes a counterculture.
Consider the 'culture'. Whose side is the balance of power really behind? There are massive influences and money behind traditional christian and conservative values - they have a practical stranglehold on the politics of roughly half of America (by landmass). Is it really 'counter' the culture to embody those values in areas where they are the norm?
I think we don't have 'a' counterculture because we don't have 'a' culture, a unified one, in this country. Trad is as counterculture in California as radical queer/left ideology is in Alabama, and it gets muddier when you look at individual pockets of the opposite in rural areas or cities respectively.
If anything, this cultural split over core values would make anything else - 'radical centrism' for instance - a counterculture in and of itself; except, that tends to be the tack taken by a lot of media (NPR, Meet the Press, etc.). Can that be counterculture?
Alternatively, consider outside of mainstream politics. Co-op organizations, hacker/DIY circles, and protest movements are all certainly 'counter' the norm, but do they all have their own 'culture?' At best they have shared memes, no real ideological unity or even goddang clothing preferences.
It was wake up call around 2015 when Comic-con started having banners that say "celebrating the popular arts". In 2006 and earlier, this sign used to say something along the lines of "celebrating counter culture."
> At no point in history have people created so much with so few channels for consuming their work. Most consumers get their content through a narrow straw — TikTok’s “For You” page, the first page of Google’s search results, Instagram’s explore tab, miscellaneous streaming sites, and so on. Many lifetimes worth of creation get aggressively filtered down into a (very optimized) stream of content.
Every person's TikTok feed is different, the first page of search results for every query is different, etc. Never have there been so many channels for consuming content.
In fact, the complaint I hear more often from people is that society has too many countercultures. Of course they don't call them that -- they call them "filter bubbles," "extremist groups," or more derogatory terms, but aren't they the same thing?
I can't think of a counter culture that wasn't somehow absorbed by the economy and sold back to the masses. It all ends up getting commodified which makes it part of "culture" without the "counter".
I've watched the trend accelerate in my life and I wonder if we're reaching some sort of point (because of social media?) where there is very nearly no culture (counter or otherwise) unless it is commodified. Everything has been reproduced and divorced from it's meaning so we have this neutered insipid idea of culture that inspires nothing.
If you're interested in going down the rabbit hole, as far as I'm aware the concept first came up in Guy Debord's The Society of Spectacle. It's a bit of a weird read though.
The term did take on a wider meaning in political philosophy and critical theory since, however.
Now that I think about it, Embrace Extend Extinguish can be understood as the explicit application of the process recuperation to the free software counterculture.
A counterculture requires privacy, and we're increasingly becoming a society of constant surveillance and permanent records shared between authorities, a society that is very suspicious when people speak to each other without an intermediary escalating anything interesting being said to their manager.
Exactly. A counter culture needs some room to take risks. You can’t do that with the Damocles’ sword of visibility/virality hanging over you 24x7. The other comment about being offline is right. You’ll find some cool pseudonymous writers online too.
100%. I see a lot of originality in web serials and fiction by indie authors. I've more or less stopped reading books that were curated by the Big Five publishing houses.
Juggalos and your immediate, visceral reaction to that word proves their counter-cultural legitimacy. both articles seem to be under the assumption that a counter-culture must "break through" and have impact on the mainstream, but that's completely contrary to the existences of counter-cultures-- they reject mainstream culture and in fact "breaking through" to the mainstream represents the death of the counter-culture.
We live in a time without major trials or struggle. It’s lead by and large to people that have little to say. Most people’s lives are by the measure of any other generation in history more-or-less perfect. The average persons quality of life surpass that of Royalty not that long ago - access to exotic fruits in off seasons, all the nations libraries in your pocket, lack of any kind of physical labor.
We are all princes of our own kingdoms.
Our gripes today are so minor previous generations would have largely found them laughable. It’s why so much of our decent media depicts the past. It’s hard to make a compelling story about social media addiction. It’s been done, but it’s difficult.
We’re approaching Brave New World much more quickly than I’d ever anticipated reading it in the 90s.
I live in a city with a lot of Ukrainian refugees. I have a chance to see a lot of art and music from young people fleeing the war. It is POWERFUL. Paradise lost.
> we have a counterculture — many of them, in fact — but they are systematically excluded from seeping into the mainstream
I don't understand this and by extension the entire article. Counterculture is by definition outside of mainstream. It would just be culture and not anti otherwise. This sounds like semantics but then that is what I think the entire article is, and imho it is wrong.
Ya. My noob understanding of these things is that there is no culture without counterculture. Because we can only understand things, like culture, identity, and self, in contrast to other things.
From Gioia's OC:
> A sense of sameness pervades the creative world ...
aka "Kids these days..."
I've been hearing this exact same criticism for as long as I remember.
One observation (McLuhan? Warhol?), using the example of da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which made some sense to me:
Modern tech makes reproduction trivial. So any original content quickly becomes ubiquitous. Separating content from original creator. Thereby mooting any of original intention or meaning or esthetic or whatever.
In other words, everything popular becomes banal.
My example, from the 90s era new age fads, I always thought of the yin-yang symbol showing up every where. Especially as tattoos. Oh so original.
Further, I think this also helps explain the disappointment about "selling out". It's a rare thing for a creator to become popular, not wear out their welcome, and retain their original fan base.
>> they are systematically excluded from seeping into the mainstream
> I don't understand this and by extension the entire article. Counterculture is by definition outside of mainstream.
Yes, that's what they said. The danger they are going on about is how heavily it is buried so that it never seeps into mainstream.
Your not understanding is confusing to me, especially since you quoted the bit "we have a counterculture", and then replied as if they said "we have no counterculture".
Feels that way. Inside metro areas in the US there is very little difference of opinion on most issues. It was not always this way. People seems mostly content to consume content and ‘raise awareness’ online, and repeat.
You can't have non-standard opinions anymore. All opinions are now politics. If I say I like guns people instantly categorize me as Right-Wing-Nut or Alt-Right-Nut. If you express any kind of differing opinion publicly you will be associated with everything and anything the person hates.
There are differing opinions, but those need to be kept private for fear of retaliation.
Thank god that I live in a country with more than two political parties. And where gun control isn't part of a culture war. Gun ownership is no different to car ownership and isn't tied to any political opinions.
This is very true. Honest opinions are expressed privately with trusted partners only. In public, only the current, local, mainstream is what you’ll hear. “If you’re going to fight a war over nothing, it’s best to join the side that’s gonna win” - Bright Eyes
The people jumping to conclusions about your politics due to your views on guns are just playing the odds. There are a lot more conservatives defending gun rights than there are moderate democrats doing so, and there are a lot more of those than there are far-left people (like myself).
Basically, if someone says they support gun control, it's a very safe bet they're in the center-right political band that the Democrats cater to. If someone opposes gun control, while there's a chance they're a " “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary” -Marx "--type socialist, by sheer numbers it's far more likely they're supportive of the conservative regime.
Wait what? You adopt some right wing ideas and some leftist ideas? You are "modernist"?, you are just a right/left winger!!!(depending on their enemy)/s
Don’t know why you are downvoted. It is common to be called a “fence sitter” if you aren’t completely aligned with views of one of the US parties.
Like everyone says I like to form my own opinions, but sometimes life is just simpler when I don’t voice those opinions publicly. Most of the time whatever shit storm was brewing is already forgotten by lunchtime anyway.
The counterculture I was part of seems to have died, or gone mainstream, which is basically the same thing; but I don't feel any more like part of the mainstream than I ever did. Which leads me to wonder: do we live in a society at all? I see an overwhelmingly dominant economy, with a gigantic political-corporate machine operating it and setting the terms for all forms of non-local communication - but outside of all those transactions and legislations, are there still any gaps large enough to hide a society in?
Is it any wonder that the artistic scene is curiously conformist?
"Wiens brood men eet diens woord men spreekt".
Ah Dutch language has so many great sayings involving money- like Eskimos and the snow.
Artists are clowns hired by a small elite that has the disposable income to spend.
Ofcourse we live in a society that idolises the arts for some reason but most people never go to ballet or buy a sculpture. In Europe the government has subsidized theatre productions for a hundred years and it hasn't made a dent.
So maybe this is because I wasn't raised in the US or in what would be described as the suburbs but why isn't Rap / Urban culture considered counterculture?
Just because a lot of acts have been turned mainstream and whitewashed doesn't mean they don't represent a radical departure from the status quo. And this isn't just in the US, in latin america you have reggaeton, in UK you have Grime and the rest of EU also have their own underground street culture marked by Violence, Crime, Drugs, Sex, and social issues which is very similar to Rock and Punk from back in the day.
Just like previous movements they are born from a sense of resentment and ostracism from "normal" society and a lot of the music tell tales that are often ignored had they not been made into a catchy tune that kids around the world listen to.
The highest grossing tour of 2022 was Bad Bunny's world tour [1] beating out well established acts and pretty much all his songs are in Spanish which is very surprising considering you see a lot of bilingual artists on the list.
>Just because a lot of acts have been turned mainstream and whitewashed
Rap han't become "whitewashed," just mainstream. And that does make it non-counterculture. The truth is that counterculture died after 1960, to the extent monoculture ever even existed in the first place (in the US). The 60's eepresent the death of monoculture, and we never moved back to one (in the US). What you are reffering to is more like hipsterism.
Seems to be conflating the distribution of culture (via social media, google and the internet at large) with the culture itself.
But then, if a counterculture falls in a forest and nobody was around to hear it, did the counterculture really exist? Could be a valid argument too. Maybe
There are plenty of active counter cultures. Even in America you have evangelicals, fundamentalist LDS, Amish & Quakers, "off-grid / preppers", Orthodox Jews & Conservative Islam, atheistic/materialistic guru cult communities, pseudo-religious "leadership" seminar cults, etc. In Europe you have traditionalist and nationalistic groups, farming communities, monastic communities, communes and more (about which i'm less familiar).
Contemporary society is distinct for having a global mainstream monoculture propagated by a universal media enterprise, which gives the impression of a uniform global culture. Former bastions of counter culture like universities, museums , art galleries, local theaters now parrot the mainstream cultural zeitgeist. Moreover, mainstream adherents denigrate any counter cultural movement as "extremism".
In the past we cultivated a diffused & distributed society with localized communities that were capable of sustaining & highlighting distinct cultural trends. Often
I think the counter culture can be sought out, but too many people find it convenient to tap into the mainstream culture and believe counterculture has been snuffed out.
Having the median beliefs and political opinions of your grandparents is counter culture enough that you will be banned from pretty much any social media website.
I'd like to import an idea via Gibson of the "coolhunters": since the beginning of the mass media age, there have been people looking to commoditize "cool" by importing it into the mainstream. This process dissolves it; it ceases to be "counter", but also loses its distinctiveness and meaning. Rebellious music gets used for adverts. Revolutionary slogans used to sell tshirts. That sort of thing.
Technology has made us a lot better at that, and therefore the process of incorporating and destroying counterculture has accelerated. It's like trawlers finding smaller and smaller fish every year - which they take anyway, even if they're not mature, because they want to meet quota. Even if this further destroys the stock.
Over the past couple of years lockdowns must have done damage to offline-only cultural spaces. This is difficult to quantify.
Another observation hinted elsethread is that of "dark" spaces. One way to protect your culture against commoditization is to make it spiky or poisonous, like an animal that doesn't want to be eaten. Culture that contains elements that are both toxic to the mainstream and hard to separate out can exist as a subculture.
It seems to me that there are (at least) two such "left" and "right" subcultures. One left one is too queer-NSFW to be mainstream; another is too tankie-communist to be mainstream. Similarly there's a "right" culture that exists between the "banned from Twitter, had to use Gab" and "arrested on Jan 6" zones.
I'd also add a "gentrification" angle. For subcultures to have a physical presence, it needs to be really cheap. The stock of cheap-central-but-nasty (dilapidated, crime infested) property in cool cities has largely been re-absorbed.
There's a compelling argument to be made that the furries constitute a counterculture: they certainly fall outside the mainstream, with most external perceptions of them range from see them as "weird" to "degenerates". They create plenty of their own cultural artifacts in the form of art and writing. And they have a disproportionate impact on the tech world relative to their numbers.
On the other hand they are a very small group relative to, say, the hippies, and aren't really framed a being in direct opposition of the status quo. But I don't think the status quo has much support in popular culture. Our current state of affairs is the result of a stalemated tug of war between many different groups who all oppose the status quo.
IMHO, this is simply born of the new age of surveillance: an internet that never forgets, tracks you unless you take excessive inconveniences to avoid it, and cheap cameras everywhere. Not only is creating counterculture hard to do for fear of reprisal, but also consuming it.
Most definitions of a counterculture are about the entry of an alternative culture into the mainstream. Those conditions only exist when widespread cultural change is about to happen. Before, the mainstream culture is not opposed by a single large countercultural bloc; after, the mainstream culture has integrated the counterculture.
The slow centralisation of the reins of culture into a handful of institutions goes beyond counterculture. You don't need to have a big countercultural movement to have culturally relevant movies from companies that aren't Disney, or popular songs that aren't by Ed Sheeran. It's a bigger problem than just "we don't have a 21st century hippy equivalent".
Today's counter-culture won't be identified somewhere on the left-right spectrum, or be found in the struggle for mass media attention. Which was basically the hippies.
The truly dominating force today is the weight of our technological environment. The actual physical things. The actual algorithms of the bureaucracies. The world doesn't "feel" the same. It actual "is" the same. To our senses.
The counter cultural movements are the ones that reject submission to technology. Cyclists stand up to the car (the actual thing). Homeschoolers threaten the processes of the school district (the actual bureaucracy). In the mainstream, the driver submits to the car, the redshirter submits to the bureaucracy.
All the rest; music you listen to, political opinions you hold, movies you see, books you read, sexual disposition. It is completely irrelevant because they do not challenge technological foundations. For the hippies, those were anchors since culture still attached much value to say e.g. artistic expression. But today, culture is not defined by those.
That is also why much of this discussion is actually about the premise, we can't even recognize counterculture. We're looking in the wrong places. A boomer certainly won't recognize it. Music is more diverse than ever, and the big networks don't define culture.
But to be sure: death metal is not counterculture. That just gets co-opted in a headphone ad or whatever. Instead, those cyclists who are now doing critical mass events, they are laying the foundations of a future in which the past will be unrecognizable. Death metal hobbyist lay the foundation for nothing but more niche consumption.
I'm somewhat joking with that last example, but even so. Look at dominant technology (physical or procedural), as concrete and specific as you can make it. What is in opposition of _that_, that is counter culture.
We still have counterculture - but boy is it ever harder to participate in:
Private trackers
Special interest forums
Not using Mc-Social Media
Off-grid.
What's dwindled - due to media consumption habits is the "appearance" of a counterculture. When huge popstars appropriate every square inch of wierdness - what's wierd/different now? Nothing really...
In the 90s, Reznor and Manson sold "edge by the pound"...that was a commonly consumed form of counter culture.
Life getting too expensive is killing real counterculture - specialised stores, quirky cafes which attract fringe dwellers and so on. Depending on where you live - this is either less or more sad.
Not at all. Silicon Valley tech companies crushed all dissenting opinions online to a comical level. The only place you’re allowed to have a dissenting opinion is in real life
You can find dissenting opinions online. The major hubs are of course the places that the mainstream will claim are full of terrorists and other miscreants, e.g. the *chans and now the fediverse instances that more mainstream ones refuse to federate with. But there are many smaller spaces online, not run by big tech and small enough to fall under the radar of the mob. HN itself does still tolerate plenty alternate opinions.
So, I work in tech and I may pattern-fit too much, but I feel some of it is due to PM culture in modern business and product development. In short, product teams in companies look for the best performing variant of products and once it determines it, it doubles down there. It only makes sense in terms of ROI for a business. In the grand scheme of things when whole industries do it, we as a society converge toward something, whatever category of product we're talking about (TV, suburbs, content algorithms, etc.).
Art today is definitely and absolutely still made with love and passion. Films like Everything Everywhere All At Once (or the recent episode of The Last Of Us) take a popular concept or franchise and make it their own. Fanfiction is still at crazy levels, thanks to websites like AO3. The book industry still has outstanding popular modern works which stand on their own and refuse to let genre define them. (Becky Chambers is my favourite for this, with her hygge scifi). There's also a whole host of internet culture - lots of tumblr tags and subreddits - that are actively filled with sharing, passion and community, not for good art that sells, but something that lifts the spirit in its own weird way.
Anecdotes aside, at least for independent artists it may be economical effects that constrain passion and make projects feel so for-profit. Which have always been a thing, unfortunately. Given technology, maybe there is so much art to consume that making art requires forgoing distraction and the general worry that the art will be bad (which is nonsense, because some art simply has a limited audience).
In today's era, stuff like EU art grants [0] can do some good, although I have the feeling that patronage-per-capita is considerably lower than it was in the past; it would be an interesting metric to look at and try best to increase.
Taking established media and making it a LGBT story is has been pretty much mainstream for long time. We live in a world where all major corporations put rainbows on their logos for a month every year, just to meet the expectations of general audience.
I do think Daniels are a great example of actual counterculture like this article is talking about. Swiss Army Man is weird as shit, and deeply affecting. EEAO has very much broken into the mainstream while preserving a lot of their style and sensibility. I think there will probably be a set of filmmakers in the future who saw their movies at a young age and thought "you can do that?"
No, the counterculture is actually thriving. But many people just don't understand it yet, because of how, well, counter it is to their ideas about culture: its roots are now in conservatism. It currently seems to be cool and edgy amongst the kids to be alt right in pretty much exactly the same way that it was cool and edgy to be very liberal in the 60s.
I'm not saying I agree with or subscribe to the tenets of conservatism (I don't). But it's a natural process for the pendulum to swing as society advances. Liberal counterculture "won" and went completely mainstream. Which is great! Gay marriage is legal, we care about sustainability, and so on. But every system has gaps and blind spots, and movements which oppose the incumbent mainstream are, by definition, not liberal counterculture.
Some touchpoints - President Obama's failure to penalize banks in the Great Recession. One percenters and the new cathedral. Joe Rogan. The intellectual dark web (Jordan Peterson et al). The red pill. The alt right.
I feel many of the above are often stupid, but in the same way that there were a lot of stupid 60s counterculture movements. It doesn't invalidate the fact that valid ideas exist within both. Also, they aren't using your signaling channels. For example, music doesn't seem to be a relevant cultural rallying point any more.
90% of the people that would identify with those touchpoints listed above wouldn't and didn't vote for Trump. I think they get lumped in with die hard Trump supporters because they weren't buying in to the same paranoia and delusions that the rest of society was imbibing while Trump was in office.
I think we might still consider this counterculture as long as its norms are not mainstream culture. And I think it's fair to say the dominant culture of many cultural institutions in the US currently has a distinct leftward lean - Hollywood, news, education, research, social media, advertising, other large swathes of industry. (Which again, I'm not saying is a bad thing)
Also, Trump represented many things to many people, as opposed to just this emerging alt-right counterculture idea cloud. And by the numbers, most voters soundly rejected him in 2020.
Hah, kids today. I’m half expecting cigarettes to make a comeback. Imagine the reaction millennials would have to a handful of teens smoking in front of drop off at a high school.
Here is a thesis/thesis-question: the US has (primarily) one economic dominant culture/model, and resistance to that dominant economic culture/model is what constitutes a more hardcore/impactful/not surface/valuable (?) counter-culture.
I'm not a big crypto fan, but I would have said previously before FTX that crypto was maybe our contemporary counter-culture. Unlike the solidarity economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_economy, which I also think is a counter culture, it was more impactful/hyper-generating/getting people thinking, etc. I wish that the solidarity economy was as talked about. I think both the far left and far right (trads and LGBTQIA+) people are kind of counter-cultural in terms of their reaction to different large strains of culture in the US (I don't think there's one culture in this country, anymore, on the social and cultural level). Maybe I'm talking about being revolutionary, and not counter-cultural?
Well, it seems that hacker culture and open source software would be the antidote to all these.
Web2 and Web3 have been captured by the profit motive. Web2 with professional VCs and Web3 with everyone playing VC. Web1 was very much a countercultural movement.
It's hard to have a counterculture when the dominant tools are all owned by huge corporations and governments. Here is some open source software to get you started if you're interested:
> It's hard to have a counterculture when the dominant tools are all owned by huge corporations and governments.
Yes, that is one of the problems (it is not only things that can be problems, though).
> Well, it seems that hacker culture and open source software would be the antidote to all these.
I think it will not cure everything, but I think that it will help. However, in addition to the software being FOSS, it also needs to be good. (Fortunately, FOSS can help a bit since it makes it possible to make improvements, but that doesn't automatically make it good.)
> But it’s especially surprising given how much creative work today exists outside the mainstream.
See, the issue here may simply be that the author isn't aware of the central limit theorem. It is not at all strange that as you increase the number of independent estimates of what culture is (using content creation as a proxy) you see less "counterculture" (proportionally) because there's a smoothish variation between the two extremes with a peak near "mainstream" simply because that's how statistics work. A few scores of people on TV will invariably have more obviously different (and known) opinions.
But I'm also staring at this essay in quite a bit of confusion generally. There's all sorts of stuff that's counterculture being pushed into law by the extremist right, the extremist right is also a "counterculture", that's not slang for "the left". Outlawing teaching kids about LGBT people's existence and banning books is counterculture.
With so much talk of hippies, nobody has mentioned the Yippies [1] (Youth International Party (YIP)) who, on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in 1970, tried to take over Disneyland [2]:
>The Yippies planned to hold a Black Panther breakfast at Aunt Jemima's Pancake House, followed by a feminist liberation of Minnie Mouse, a barbecue of Porky Pig and the capture of Tom Sawyer Island in order to protest the American war in Vietnam.
The Yippies seem a bit like the ANTIFA and autonomous zone folks, but with a better sense of humor and optics.
There is absolutely a counterculture, but you won't really see it in the usual "public spaces." Even if the members of it are there, the spaces dont allow expression of it, so it's not there. You won't find ot on Facebook and TV, what you'll find are caricatures of a previous counterculture expressed by the establishment, posing as a counterculture.
The real counterculture is on the edges and in the shadows, as it always has been, but it's cultural form does not take the form you'd expect if you're looking for it that way. It's not wearing all black, it doesn't have nose rings, it doesnt listen to edgy music, there is no consumerist element to it being exploited by corporations yet, that's actually a cultural cornerstone of it. It looks a lot like business as usual from the outside, but it isn't.
We live in a society without a single distinct unitary “counterculture” and where the title of “counterculture” is coveted so that each competing subculture tries to claim that it is both a counterculture and the most significantly “counter” one (even the strongest contenders for being the dominant subculture do this.)
This comment thread is fascinating as there are so many people who are obviously in totally different bubbles even though they are all commenting on the same HN item.
Please supply some context! You (We) all live in bubbles and you have to be clear about where you are coming from before you spout off your observations and thoughts.
> It’s possible that ChatGPT is the beginning of artificial general intelligence or that it will upend Google’s search business despite Google’s considerable moats.
ChatGPT can never wander past its training data. If anything, chatGPT encourages a convergent monoculture. It has no creativity or problem solving skills.
> Why do so many Youtubers have that annoying open-mouthed smile in all their thumbnails? Or similarly exaggerated facial expressions? There are plenty that don’t, but your metrics look better if you have an exaggerated facial expression in the thumbnail. As a result, your video gets shown to users frequently.
Vs back in the good old days of movies where hollywood cast all types of actors and not just young hot ones /s
I feel this is mostly just glamourizing the past. Kids these days, etc. The defining feature of counter culture is that it is not mainstream.
If you only consume mainstream media you won't consume non-mainstream media is as tautologically true now as it was in the past.
There are many countercultures that are alive and well.
One example: People who deliberately avoid social media, tape over webcams, use non-android, non-ios phones, who value their privacy. These people scrub the internet of their info, make aggressive use of GDPR/CCPA deletion requests. They do not want to be part of mainstream society for whatever reason. They are routinely marginalized by people around them, labelled as "weird", unjustly suspected (and accused) of all sorts of criminal activity under the premise that "privacy is for people with something to hide" - a train of thought that is concerningly common among younger generations.
Another example is anticonsumerism. People who do not use any streaming services nor purchase media. They don't blow money like there's no tomorrow on fast fashion, pointless trinkets from Amazon, exorbitant vacations that will be forgotten as quickly as they happened, or routinely eating out. These are the people with high 6 and low 7 figure net worths in their 30's driving cars that they paid $5k cash for that look like trash. These people avoid conspicuous consumption like the plague - why throw away so much money while painting a target on your back for criminals just for the approval of others, most of whom you don't even know? Screw a gym membership, exercise is free. These people are relentlessly mocked as cheapskates in spite of the fact that it's more about values than financial concerns.
Look for the hated, the despised, the mocked, and the belittled in mainstream culture to find counterculture. The counterculture movements of the 1960s went with those labels like peanut butter goes with jelly when described by the prevailing culture of the time.
Totally agree with your last paragraph. If something is being praised in the mainstream media, for example, then I don't think it really is a counterculture.
You give two good examples of counterculture. Both of those go against the values of most people these days, especially most young people.
When it comes to avoiding social media or excessive use of "smart" technology for example, many people still seem to associate this with some crazy religious people who think that the TV was invented by satan himself. While in reality, some people have entirely different and even rational reasons for it.
Interestingly, of the on-line crowd I'd even put Qanon up there with the other countercultures. Being counterculture doesn't mean you aren't older or being grifted.
Counterculture also doesn't inherently mean just / moral / admirable, just that it stands in juxtaposition against the mainstream culture, which itself could be just or unjust, moral or immoral, admirable or detestable.
I see the counter culture over the last few years as the less obnoxious elements of the alt-right/conservative and centrist/"classic liberal" in their opposition to the overreach and oppression by the "liberal"/left especially in their domination of big tech and classic media.
However, as the recognition of that unpleasant latter tendency has become mainstream and everybody and her grandma now knows what "woke" means, I can see a new counter, hopefully genuinely less partisan and not tipped the other (ie right wing) way as the old guard is kicked out (as we have seen with Twitter etc).
What are the great creative works you identify with the alt-right? I know lots of great leftist artists, musicians, etc. but I don't see alt-righters making a lot of daring indie cinema for instance.
Thousands of sad frogs, wojaks and other memes. The fringe fashwave music videos. Greentext stories with their weird rules as whole new literary genre. It's obvious there are real artists spending days and hours making them, but posting any of these things on mainstream cultural outlets gets you banned. How this is any different from independent filmmaker being shunned out of cinemas for his extreme take on coprophilia in the 80'?
I'm strictly considering the definition as "an alternative to dominant [as opposed to popular] opinion and social mores".
I'd probably agree the bulk of indier-than-thou creations are produced by people on the left (not all of whom demand we also bow to their political interpretation of the world); some of the work excellent, most of it perhaps not.
That's not what the article is about. The article is about creative content, and how YouTube content is aesthetically all the same. Jordan Peterson videos have the same stupid thumbnails as all other clickbait.
People have said it in the thread, but counter-culture is really defined retrospectively. You look at the movements that existed on the periphery but later inspired the mainstream. Velvet Underground wasn't selling millions of records, but everyone who started a band listened to them. Lou Reed is pretty indier than thou.
> The article is about creative content, and how YouTube content is aesthetically all the same.
Yeah, but Youtube is mainstream now; it comes installed on almost every single consumer TV available for sale right now. You don't get more mainstream than that.
If you wanted to see counterculture, you'd have to use the youtube alternatives.
Well, it's no wonder since you're looking at YouTube which is basically a curated experience. Take a look at Rumble and other YT alternatives and you'll see plenty of counter-cultural video content. Plus there's other media like image macros, real-world social stunts etc. The counter-culture is quite real.
Like gays in the 50s, conservatives in Hollywood (and at big tech) are careful not to out themselves. Given that Hollywood has lots of wealthy, business oriented people much of the media you like was made by conservatives without you knowing.
The alt right is essentially some 'stronger' people giving themselves permission to (try to) hurt 'weaker' people. Not sure that can be called a culture, counter or otherwise.
In Germany they had the Green party, once upon a time that was a gathering point of those who were against 'the establishment'. Now the Green party is a major political party, and pretty much part of that same establishment.
I guess that something similar happened with the techies. Some of those weird nerds became very rich - and that's quite popular with the general public.
And then came twitter, that one killed both the radio star and the TV presenter. And than came Elon - the king of the nerds - and he is killing twitter :-)
The purpose of 'counterculture' is an outlet for dissatisfaction, allowing the neo-colonial system to continue operating smoothly. Preferably getting the dissatisfied to buy things and serve their function among the colonized.
The only true counterculture would be about changing the circumstances enabling the neo-colonial system, and this is the fear of the neo-colonialists and their enablers who benefit from status-quo. Everything else is window-dressing, distraction, and detours, made up to look like change.
I don’t think it makes sense to reduce culture, counter- or mainstream, to neocolonialism. Sure, it can be a tool of neocolonialism, but that’s hardly the extent.
> You can see this shift even in the rise of the word “content” itself. From Ted Gioia’s article: “The banal word ‘content’ is used to describe every type of creative work, implying that artistry is generic and interchangeable.”
Just one of a number of things wrong with the overuse of this word. I can’t be the only one who gags everytime someone mentions “content” or worse, the phrase “consuming content” which is just gross and stupid
This author must have missed the 2017-2021 presidential term in the US. There are some very strong differences of opinion out there, and they have a significant impact on the nature and direction of creative work. There is without doubt a strong counter-cultural push brewing up from the world of podcasts too which will probably herald a golden age of intelligent mass political debate (clearing a truly low historical bar).
"back in my times", you had a bunch of different people with a bunch of different outlooks, wishes and views on the world... from anarchist punks to skinheads, peaceful "modern...ier" hippies, "the left", "the right", the what-would-now-be-called "libertarians", from people in schools, to adults at work, to people having kids at 20s, to adult swingers in their 60s... and all of them were represented as somehow 'special' but existing here.
Now it seems that we have a mainstream "culture", which doesnt actually exist, atleast noone identifies by it, then we have a mainstream "counterculture", which considers themselves as "alternative", but (atleast with younger people) is a majority, which occupies themselves by issues such as racism, sexism, trans-, and other -isms and more recently ecology.
It has gone so far, that you have "protests" for equal rights for some of those groups, or other 'mainstrea' issues where people actually in charge of laws are parading next to the "protesters"/"paraders" (in our, slovenian case, our prime minister at a protest for a healthcare reform).
And the rest? Those are invisible. Hippies and anti-war people? Nope.. now we have everyone cheering for more weapons and a longer war in ukraine. People complaining about housing prices... sure, a lot of them... people actually wanting more housing to be built.. a minority. Preppers? Just weirdos... even after quite a few events where prepping actually helped people.
Ok, i might be exaggerating a bit, but there really seems to be a lot of overlap between the current "counterculture" and what is being served from the people/groups/organizations that historically would have been seen as the "bad guys" by those counterculture groups. But again.. stuff like this is talked in "conspiracy circles", and again, shunned by the mainstream counterculture - eg https://i.redd.it/yj3vs93bi7691.jpg
> in our, slovenian case, our prime minister at a protest for a healthcare reform
I think it's happened a few times already, I'd say it's mostly a PR move & nothing more. Meanwhile I think there have happened a few protests at the very same place (Trg republike) yet the "mainstream" media didn't cover it.
Well sure, but he's the one who should make the changes needed for people to get the healthcare they pay a lot of money for... and instead he's "protesting" against.. himself?
The protests, activism, and other stuff, that was once a sign of counter culture has become so mainstream that even the politicians do it... go out, wave some flags, take some photos, pat themselves on their backs, and go home and change nothing.
I miss the old times, when the establishment was actually afraid of countercultures, of people going against the mainstream... the current state, where the mainstream is acting as if it's against itself is bad for society, because it never changes anything.
At first glance, this article seems somewhat parochial. I'm honestly not aware of any explicit counter-culture earlier than, say, the Bohemians in 19th century Europe. Maybe the Renaissance counts. But both of those are European.
It's a question I've been interested in for a while but never explored. How common is it, historically, to have significant cultural shifts from one generation to the next?
There are countercultures aplenty, but many employ strict gatekeeping measures to exclude anyone they find unsavory for whatever reason. So if you see people refusing to throw you pearls, it may be pertinent to ask yourself "Am I the swine here?".
Case in point, it's time to log back out of HN and ignore it for another few months.
Say what you will about Dang and their moderation style, but whatever is causing this thread to stay up for 7+ hours (and climb the front page) is very intriguing.
I wonder what the logic is for this 'flamewar bait' being unmoderated (is there anything more primed for a 'flamewar' than arguing about which cultures are mainstream and which are not?)
It's increasingly the case. Web countercultures died in the 2010s, and what has replaced them is rather fringes within or coveting the mainstream. Streaming has broken the backs of a lot of music counterculture and overrun it with scene tourists who don't really participate in the culture.
The mainstream culture has been pretty adamant about stamping out counter cultures, so it's merely hidden. I think the algorithms and filters are not blindly homogenizing culture but are rather used as tools by humans knowingly to connect to and persuade each other.
Perhaps we have far too many people producing very diverse counterculture however our brains are too small to absorb it all. We become numb and overwhelmed by trying to take it all in.
This leaves us in a state of utter confusion about what is important, what isn't and what it all means.
A major factor here is that social networks rely on advertisers interspersing their content in between user-generated content. For business reasons, the networks can't have their ads placed near anything controversial.
So the networks systematically demote controversial content.
> Because social media services are now the promoters of mainstream culture, that culture is effectively fueled and guarded by metric-driven algorithms
And political and cultural biases, that's something not really mentioned enough when talking about algorithmic goals.
Given the accessibility to like minded groups of people made possible by the Internet I’d say we’re all the counter culture. Which I suppose implies no counter culture.
Edit: after reading another comment I think digital disconnection is the new counter culture
Digital disconnection will fizzle out, they go too far by completely isolating themselves. Even the hippies with all their back to nature zeal had their own circulations, pamphlets, and recordings of talks and music. My guess is that the next major cultural shift will be disciplined use of modern media and a subversion of technology that simultaneously circumvents censorship and removes the algorithmic control over content.
I was really confused by "the animals asking for help compilation" referenced in the blog post. What animals compile? I was disappointed, but I'm sure a near future AI will be able to generate what I was looking for.
There's still a counterculture, of course, but the current mainstream culture has become the liberal culture: Embrace counterculture, say you're on their site, and then stab it in the back so it shuts up.
Honestly I think that this article is just stupid. The writer basically complains that he can't find counterculture in mainstream media outlets and mainstream social media. Is that really surprising?
The feeling of not having a counter culture is probably exacerbated by the fact that "progressive" and "countercultural" have become somewhat conflated terms or concepts in the last decade. And almost all major corporations involve themselves in whatever the latest progressive social movement is. When every major corporation is doing something "countercultural" then it isn't really countercultural at all. It's mainstream.
The counterculture of the day is the MAGA movement they have their own reality and is begging for a fight, until someone shows up to give them one and is basically an text book example on an co-dependent counterculture that cannot exist without the mainstream culture existing as something to counter.
I know it's kind of tipping the debate on the head to suggest that the counterculture is not the "future left" but the "3rd way right" but there is nothing in the mechanics of mainstream to counterculture that suggest that the challenge to the mainstream have to come from the traditional left.
And like the Hippies of the(mostly post civil rights movement) counterculture the maga trumpets are only tangentially linked to any concrete actionable goals as it's about a return to the past that never was without any real clear idea of what that's supposed to look like only that they personally will be bigshots once it happens.
What is however increasingly clear is that the traditional left have been hunted into extinction by both the radical centrist mainstream and the right-wing counterculture as neither of those movement's have any real appetite for the old optimistic "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" values of the enlightenment, but prefers stability through authority as a response to an world they mostly don't understand.
I’ve definitely been part of a musical counterculture my entire adult life (maybe you might omit the last 3 years though). I’ve easily seen more than 1000 performances in that time, from cave shows to pickle factories to stadiums. You’d probably identify it as punk/garage/indie, but there is a subculture there. I’m usually amazed that it’s larger than I expect, at least in the bay area.
I also worked in physics most of that time, which is probably a subculture there as well (some overlap I suppose with a broader subculture of non-profits workers).
I also lived in Utah (Salt Lake City), where you are effective a subculture (counter culture) almost by virtue of living there and not being LDS.
None of those are homogenous, but all are counter to the prevailing culture - which is the much harder thing to define.
Which is my point - we don’t even have a prevailing culture, and we never really did, not a universal one anyway.
That said, it’s likely that white/christian/suburban/nuclear family was considered the prevailing culture though. That’s a subculture today - albeit an unusually powerful one.
Most likely if you are reading this you hate the counterculture and wouldn’t recognize it as such. Just like how most people today if they lived in nazi germany would’ve been a nazi and went along with it.
MAGA is the major counterculture at the moment (in the USA). It is different from others of the past (punk, hippies, the beats, racist, socialists, populists) but has the key markers such as rejecting the dominant paradigm, being big enough to write about but not big enough to be a movement, pulls largely from the dominant population group, has some but limited influence on the dominant culture, has its own “literature” and belief system, etc.
Note that what isn’t different is its dependence on telecommunications. I tried to think of legitimate countercultures before the late 1880s US populism but couldn’t. Regency fops didn’t count, nor did know-nothings.
Isn't the counterculture now just anyone who's questioning the narrative? And I don't mean following right-wing media -- that's a counter-narrative for sure, but it's still just another narrative, which still needs to be thoroughly(!) questioned.
Maybe the counterculture today is the few people left who practice critical thinking and make up their own minds about things. Who congregate at places like here on HN?
Using a throwaway for this, because I know this topic is sensitive. Hello fellow HN'er :)
I'm not sharp on the definition of counter culture, but just by the feeling of "counter", I'd argue that the pickup artist community has some aspects of it. I think about game obsessively for both genders, though mostly my own (male). The following that I'm writing is true for both, but in the pickup artist community it seems that almost exclusively men are practicing it (but women could too).
A few things that feel counter:
1. You can take pro-active charge of your dating life by consciously/intentionally approaching people: on the street, in a book store, on the train, in a club, in a night club, in a bar, more or less anywhere. Especially the first 10 seconds to 2 minutes need to be scripted as you're basically talking to the autopilot of a person and not the actual person (my opinion). In normal culture, you just "naturally" meet people through friends or "it just happens". When I'm on the street and approach someone, it doesn't just happen. When I'm on Tinder even, it's optimized. The way I approach people is pre-meditated, the improv side comes out after 10 seconds to 2 minutes (there are also schools of seduction that use a fully scripted approach, I've never done that, can't talk about that. I started out with improv all the way and came to the sad conclusion that you can't do that for the first seconds to few minutes).
2. Sex with tens to hundreds to thousands of people is fine. There are a few other cultures that do this, but not the mainstream one. Note, it's not fully counter cultural here as having a GF as a goal is almost as admirable (I say almost because everyone says it is just as admirable, but the high lay count seduction guys don't care about what you have to say if your lay count isn't high because they believe you lack experience).
3. A fairly strong belief [1] that men should be dominant, leading, winning and powerful. Women are inherently submissive, caring, supporting and seen as weaker. This "seen as weaker" is even true when it comes to cognitive abilities. I don't think anyone would say it that way, but I can see it in the behavior. Such as the phrase a "girl is shit testing you." I've thought deeply about it and realized that men test as well and some tests by women are actually quite good (and others indeed utter nonsense, but that goes for both genders IMO). The thing is, I've met quite a few very appealing looking women in the US that come across as dumb, I can't put it any other way. I'm from Europe and it makes the dumb women from Europe look sophisticated (for example, they are aware of other European countries so know more about language than their US counter parts). But I personally find this whole view nonsense as my strategy is focused on finding intelligent women that are amazingly attractive as well (discussing the Bhagavad Gita on minute 3 in Florida? Yep, been there, done that :) Or what about Austrian politics and geopolitics on minute 1 in Vienna? Definitely). People exist on a distribution, but the strong polar image that the seduction community tries to create, it feels counter.
I'm a hardcore fan of 1. I'm a fan of 2, no one should be slut shamed but slut celebrated. I disagree with 3, but I'm one of the few or so it seems. With that said, all these 3 things feel "counter" to the current culture (with perhaps not 2, in a sense because when you think about it, any form of sexual expression that doesn't harm others is worthy of celebration according to feminism).
[1] Not by all, not by me anyway but I'm a complicated cookie in general for many cultures :) Careful with mapping the seduction community to me 1 to 1, it doesn't work.
In a sense I agree with you. What the person you are responding to is trying to say, I assume, is the new status quo is liberalism. As in lgbt, blm, van life, cannabis culture, casual dating, multiculturalism, secularism, etc.
I labelled the above idea space “liberalism” but I’m not convinced it’s the right term. I am just lacking a better one. In any case, if we assume the to be the status quo, which I think we mostly can, people trying to preserve these values and bolster them are conservative. They enjoy the status quo, wish to keep it and wish to reinforce it. They wish to prevent progress ( as in movement ) towards a different direction.
There is also another idea space, generally associated with christian identity, belief in God, the existence of two biological sexes with clear roles to fulfil, european heritage, abortion is murder, sex strictly within marriage, no homosexuality, gun rights, etc
This would be called conservatism. But, as in the “liberalism” mentioned above, it’s not really the best term. If we just take it as an idea space and assume liberalism to be the status quo, this would definitely be a counter culture.
It dislikes the current status quo, wishes to undermine it and shift it in a different direction.
And, in this sense, I agree with the person you responded too. “Conservative” is the new counter culture.
You’re mistaken if you think “liberalism” is the status quo. It might be in the internet, but real life is not the same as Twitter. Just look at the push against abortion, or the massive incarcerated population, or the constant killing of poor people by the police. Or the raising of the interest rate to freeze salaries in detriment of bigger unemployment which won’t target the rich people?
Honestly saying that being conservative is a counter-culture just shows how alienated conservatives are.
> In any case, if we assume the to be the status quo, which I think we mostly can, people trying to preserve these values and bolster them are conservative. They enjoy the status quo, wish to keep it and wish to reinforce it. They wish to prevent progress ( as in movement ) towards a different direction.
It is true, but there is not only one or two directions, and it must be necessary to consider that there is no only one or two directions.
People can believe in God or not as they wish, and might or might not be Christian (and there is many different Christians anyways, as well as many different non-Christians, and you need not only necessarily one religion, also). Either way can result people do good things and bad things.
Furthermore, "God exist" is not even very clearly defined. They shouldn't shame people for believe in God, although to say that it is right or wrong to believe in God can be mistaken because many people fail to consider that it is not really well defined.
Although two biological sexes do have clear roles to fulfil (specifically, mother vs father), that is a simplification and also is sometimes expanded too much (especially in the past, more often than today). That fails to consider intersex, and also people who do things differently from each other, you can do such things which are not part of biological sex.
Some people have some European heritage but not necessarily all. However, "European" is not very specific compared with e.g. "Italian", I think.
Homosexuality is not such a bad thing and even if you do not like it, it is not what should be illegal. (But, they should not force you to like it or to hate it.)
About gun rights, I think that you should need right to have weapons (especially unpowered and improvised weapons, rather than guns, but guns too) and other devices (including clothing, pencil/paper for writing, etc), and the right to not have weapons and other devices (including clothing) in case you do not want it, but that they should not just sell guns to everyone without proper safety training, etc. Proper safety training is important. However, if you make up your own weapons and other devices then you can do that; the government should not get in the way of everything. However, such a thing should not mean that you can just shoot everyone or bring guns everywhere; the law would still need to prevent against such a thing, which they already do anyways.
There are some Canadian laws relating to guns. Some of these things seems like good ideas but should not be mandatory, and are often more restrictive than they should be.
Furthermore, even if guns are legal should not mean that they should be encouraged. Use of weapons should normally be discouraged, not encouraged.
(I do not want any guns and I do not like guns, but that is just my opinion.)
Too often they say they either want gun rights or gun restrictions, either yes or no, and fail to consider a more nuanced possibility.
Cannabis, also, they fail to consider a more nuanced possibility. Now, smoking marijuana is legal, and I also do not think they should make the drugs illegal, but unfortunately they can still harm the air outside, and make smell even inside someone else's house right next to it too, so there still need to be the restriction of that. But, usually the people just consider yes or no instead of the more complicated possibility like I have described.
Abortion also is complicated, often both side they fail to consider the nuance. Ideally, I think it should be something to be avoided (it is better to start to not be pregnant, if possible), but conditions are not ideal and never are ideal. If it is your body then you will have the right to do with it (although you should still consider whether or not it is a good idea; just because something is or should be legal does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea), and can be self-defense from your own body (in case you would die otherwise), but the government should not make it difficult by getting in the way.
And then, there are some things that neither "liberal" nor "conservative" governments tend to consider, or that both do.
I'm sure there are communities where stating this would be controversial, but the US public has never elected an openly atheist president. It's ridiculous to claim that believing in God is somehow countercultural.
Society didn't use to be "conservative". Like, the romans and the greeks were a lot more sexually free than we are right now. What they also had in their time is conservative people, as in, people that were against the changes in the society they were living in (like accepting Christianism during the Roman Empire, etc).
Being conservative can't be counter-culture because by definition it is preseving the CURRENT culture (which is not the "woke" one, even if boomers like to think different. All the people with power are conservatives). Being downvoted in HN doesn't mean anything, same as Twitter and Reddit. You can be "cancelled" in Twitter and still sell out the Madison Square Garden, like Louis CK. The real power is outside the social media, and that part is definitely conservative.
> Like, the romans and the greeks were a lot more sexually free than we are right now.
Not really, unless maybe we count their elites' exploitation of enslaved folks as a kind of "sexual freedom" but that's not something we would ever want to endorse. We know from ancient sources that their sexual behavior was highly constrained otherwise, and people who transgressed prevailing norms were widely seen as weak and lacking in self-control.
I didn’t use any adjectives to describe their society. Only commented that you can’t think that “conservatism” is always about believing in God, in monogamy, etc.
This in itself was the counterculture within conservatism. It used to be much more diverse before the goofball contingent took over. Uncle Phil on Fresh Prince was a conservative, and he would throw someone out of his house for this garbage. That was as recent as the 90s.
> Someone expressing the above sentiments in a non-sarcastic way anywhere on HN or Reddit would be downvoted to hell.
You'd be surprised. The only comments I get downvoted to Hell on are either explicitly anto-communist or are just dumb comments. Even comments where I evangelize about God are typically well received, with maybe a few triggered atheists in the replies.
If I lead with facts cutting against Bay Area Received Values narrative or highlight some of the inconsistencies of BARV themselves, I usually get quite a few upvotes.
> And I didn't even dare venture into the racial views of conservatives.
What views are these? The debate seems to be between those who think blacks, other non-whites and immigrants are typically inherently socially conservative; and those who believe these minority groups are irrevocably allied with the Democrat machine. A typical conservative view today is that non-whites have agency just as much as whites, but face constraints such as bad government programs and social pressures to conform. Ben Carson, for example, used to be hailed as a hero, a regular staple of Black History Month. But when he "came out" as a conservative, he's been belittled and seen his stature crumble, even to the point of schools removing his name.[0]
The mainstream can't tolerate a likable conservative or a non-white one, and has a lot of funny ideas about what conservatives in particular think. Most of it is projection based on a deranged (but consistent!) interpretation of Trump's presidency.
Conservatism can never be counter-cultural because it is concerned with enforcing pre-existing social hierarchies. If you are looking for an example of anti "degeneracy" counter-culture, one might be the DC hardcore bands of the early 80s.
Not really. Youth tend to gravitate toward counter-culture naturally as a form of rebellion against their parents growing up. Having kids going toward traditional values is exactly what this society needs to begin the healing process.
Genuine question from a gay person in a conservative country: What sort of healing would traditional values do? Is it the nuclear family sort of thing? I'm not familiar with those theories.
They are values which promote the functioning of a healthy and balanced society with people less inclined and/or enthusiastically supported for being inherently self-centered and self-destructive. Endless drug epidemics are a very prominent and visual symptom of the damage rampant degeneracy has inflicted upon society and that in general, things as they are currently are NOT alright.
This argument is contingent on things actually getting worse, whereas most social indicators like crime rates or life expectancy seem to indicate that things have improved over the last half century. I would not want to go back to the society of the 1980s, for example, because I'd be more likely to be robbed.
Also, what about the role that greed has played in the latest drug epidemic? The Sacklers were not driven by degeneracy but by the lust for money.
So do you believe gay people for example, are a threat to a healthy and balanced society?
edit:
Oh and conservative culture in my land means mostly lots of alcohol. The first time I vomitted from alcohol was as a teenager on a catholic wine fest, by wine gifted to us from the church. There might be conservatives, that are free from drugs, but mostly they just like other drugs. Drugs are a big problem in todays society, but conservatives as a whole are not a prime example if living sober. Puritans might be, but they are a subclass of "conservatives".
I think a lot of anti-gay thoughts today are more anti gay culture, such as many of the things people do and display in the pride parade that has nothing to do with liking people of the same sex.
So... by that argument isn't "gay culture" actually counter-cultural? As in it goes against the mainstream opinions held by a fairly conservative society?
Oh, that makes sense. I have other gay friends that express the same concern privately. In my country (no gay rights yet; it just got decriminalised) I tend to say that "the best gay pride protest is no gay pride protest", because if we have equal rights, there's no need to protest, and we just want equal rights.
Well, it's a simple equation from a societal health perspective.
As things are currently, society is well below the minimum and ideal birth replacement rates (scarily low in fact). So from that perspective, promotion of homosexuality runs directly counter to what is best for society as a whole versus what is currently seen as best for any one individual.
> Your opinion and the actual growth rates do not seem to be in agreement.
Believe me or not, it makes no difference to me. I know I'm right.
Even the resident HN golden boy Elon Musk has been very outspoken recently about his significant concerns regarding the forthcoming population collapse. So it's happening whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
Human society survived just fine with one quarter the current population 70 years ago. Why can't it survive with that again? Especially now that we have better technology that makes each human much more productive? Unless you can only look at the world through the lens of capitalism (which requires infinite growth)... but capitalism is definitely not required for humanity in general (human society existed before capitalism and will continue to exist after it).
It is a bit telling, that you perceive it as "promoting of homosexuality". I am not gay and I don't see anything like it. What I see, is promoting of a idea, that people are free to live their (consented) sexuality, whatever that might be, instead of forcing them to live an unhappy life not fitting to them. That is not really good, if you want stable people. And without stable people you won't have a stable society.
And about birth rates in general, that is a way longer debate. I would start with world population and limited ressources, but rather leave it at that.
Stop gay people from being treated as beneath the "normal" people.
Of course, this is "real" traditional values; not surface-value "traditional values" co-opted by people: who aren't in-tune with their emotions; people with a void a that needs filling; people who need to feel better about themselves; those who would use it as a banner to gain more power for themselves; and true believers without an ounce of introspection.
With the looming bans and restrictions on social media, and the current atomization of social interactions: it's possible we're beginning a period of great isolation, where man will finally have to deal with sitting in a room all by himself.
Maybe this will spur some self-reflection in a few, leading to a resurgence in deep traditional values and beliefs; rather than the shallow, surface-level stuff, such as the nuclear family or some made-up duty to one's abstract family or some frothingly and puritanically mad ideas about sex.
> This is a very offensive question for someone from my counter culture, Christianity.
Which recent US president was not Christian again? Is the correct answer "none of them"? It's very counter-cultural when the "leader of the free world" consistently shares (or has to pretend to share) your faith.
I think it's inaccurate to call a group that has large political parties in essentially every democratic country "counterculture". To me that seems like calling the moderate left counterculture. Maybe neo-nazis and other radicals are, but that's because nobody likes them except for themselves.
Referring to everyone as a nazi or radical that holds a different opinion from one's own is a huge reason why conservatism is growing so quickly as the new counter-culture, especially amongst youth. Societies simply cannot grow and thrive with degenerate movements which are inherently built on being immoral, self-centered, and self-destructive to both one's self and society as a whole.
When the difference of opinion involves the minimization to the point of eradication of specific groups within society, most of which are predisposed to oppose the political views you hold, then there is No Other Term for it than Naziism.
Not everyone I disagree with is a nazi, but everyone who wants all queer people to stop being publicly visible, everyone who would rather immigrants, muslims, and jews to stop coming to the country or become invisible in daily life, anyone who would think about the problems that disabled people have and come to the 'solution' that they should not reproduce? They're Nazis. To call them anything else would do the memories of those already lost a disservice.
And those who buck at being called Nazis should genuinely detach and reexamine their views to see whether they resemble those of the Nazi party. If they don't, if the people calling them Nazis are simply being reactionary, then fine. But to ignore it without giving the most basic consideration to one's own views is deeply foolhardy at best.
Consider for yourself what you term as 'degenerate', and whether those things have any material impact on your life. Consider what solutions that are non-authoritarian for that degeneracy may look like. Is it offering better mental health services? Is it providing community that doesn't shun, but helps rehabilitate maladaptive practices? Is it allowing general differences of opinion on what counts and doesn't count as degenerate behavior? Is it minding your own goddamn business?
All these people being pissed off from these comments just shows it's the counter culture. I'm not wrong. The more downvotes I get the more I know it's on the target.
The thing that really shocked me was watching an episode of South Park.
The boys all got into airsoft, and really enjoyed it (in contrast to a bunch of older jaded teens that used drugs and were largely miserable.)
The dads weren't sure about letting their boys play, but when they saw the teens picking on their kids, went and bought a bunch of tactical gear and airsoft guns and went on the field with their kids.
Oh, and the kid that didn't have a dad? They got an uncle to stand in for him.
This is the show that my parents warned me about as a kid for how sacrilegious and profane they were. It came out like it was directed by Jordan Peterson. I mentioned this to a friend, and he responded... "Well, that show has always been counter culture."
South Park isn't really counterculture. It takes low-effort shots at everyone regardless of the merits of the target's position. Rarely, they have a moment where the unique naivety of the targeting falls just right and you get a decent episode.
That shown has been around for a long time and has changed a lot. When they folded and censored their own episode criticizing extremest Islam they lost a lot of edge/credibility.
> Complete protection against infection has long been hailed as the holy grail of vaccination. It might simply be unachievable.
> No infection means no disease, no death, and no transmission, the absolute immunological trifecta. It’s why sterilizing immunity has often been framed as a “holy grail,”
> COVID-19 vaccines were never going to give us sterilizing immunity; it’s possible they never will. But the reason isn’t just their design, or the wily nature of the virus, or heavy and frequent exposures, though those factors all play a role. It’s that sterilizing immunity itself might be a biological myth.
This is a bit of a mischaracterization of what he was trying to say I think. The immunizations we’re all used to like the TDAP, MMR, and Hep B are so effective that if you have the shot your immune system will react very well and prevent symptomatic and communicable disease. Yes some infections slip through the cracks for various circumstances (immune compromise, waning immunity, simple chance).
The seasonal flu vaccine I understand at least. Influenza is a difficult virus to target and regular antigenic shift/drift make effective vaccines really tough to make.
The covid vaccine doesn’t provide enough protection to prevent infection and communicable disease. It’s not great it’s not even good. I was infected with it right after my first pfizer shot. I’m 5 shots deep and most of my colleagues at work have been infected multiple times and they’re mostly 4 shots deep. Coronaviruses are difficult viruses to target for vaccines, they’re enveloped and mutate. Why are these particular vaccines which are pretty mediocre being pushed so hard? The mRNA strategy targeting them is intellectually interesting however not good enough. Maybe they should try a different route or just give it a God damn rest.
Can also show you that the dominant medical narrative around vaccines was that they provide immunity (except in the case of immune compromised individuals).
To this day I'm actually astonished watching the entire medical consensus shift as a direct result for the failure of the COVID vaccines. Absolute objective failure.
What's even more surprising to me is watching the entire narrative move around instead of acknowledging this. Instead of acknowledging the truth, the definitions move around so that the truth is redefined.
The definition of vaccine (provides immunity), recession (two quarters of contraction), woman (female with XX chromosomes), election, freedom (from doing what you want to "the ability to choose"), family (husband, wife and kids), democracy, peaceful ("protests"), racism (treating someone differently because of race, now you're racist for not giving preferential treatment to some1). Global warming became climate change. I've watched how in very few years the entire world has been reprogrammed with new definitions for these like ChatGPT. They kept getting bombarded with new definitions, so that lies will be redefined to be truths.
It is absolutely ridiculous to watch and realize how the media could train people like some neural network to lose the meanings of words and the relation to reality. It is watching people being reprogrammed into newspeak where they literally can't understand what's wrong because the meaning of all words have been replaced in their minds, so they can't have controversial thoughts.
It has become impossible to communicate. It's like talking to ChatGPT trained on some corrupt input, they are writing the same letters and speaking the same syllables but they have a different mental model. There are no other words describing the concepts they have lost, so at this point it's like speaking in two different languages. You'll say they don't have freedom and they will reply that they can choose what they want to do. In 10 years they will own nothing and be happy, because they will redefine rented property to be "yours".
The excuses made for flu vaccines (there are many strains of flu after generations of different strains circulating and diverging), don't apply to COVID.
It's pretty obvious they started to redefine what vaccine does right around the time the COVID vaccine failed. The tests used to authorize the vaccines supposedly showed 95% efficiency doing just that.
There were so many narrative shifts during COVID-19 I lost count. I dunno where the blame is due. But the most disturbing thing was the stigmatization of countrarians even though "the facts" shifted left and right.
"That technical coarseness might help explain why several historical vaccines have been assumed to be sterilizing. With measles, for instance, scientists initially lacked the tests needed to show them otherwise" (from the Atlantic article)
> recession (two quarters of contraction),
"Is Recession Staring Us Down? Already Upon Us? Here’s Why It’s Hard to Say. The U.S. may register a second straight quarter of economic contraction, one benchmark of a recession. But that won’t be the last word. Most economists still don’t think the United States meets the formal definition, which is based on a broader set of indicators, including measures of income, spending and job growth." (New York Times)
> woman (female with XX chromosomes),
"Gender is a complex interaction of underlying biological difference and social norms, not a simplistic either/or" (The Atlantic)
> freedom (from doing what you want to "the ability to choose")
"Freedom Means Doing Whatever You Want?"
"Before getting to the debate, we have to mention two key ideas about what freedom means. The first is that no one has absolute freedom in the sense of having the power to disengage completely from societal norms and values. The second idea is related to the fact that freedom doesn’t just entail the choice between one action or another. It extends to thoughts and emotions as well. All of us have some freedom to choose what we think and feel. We also have to consider the responsibility that is attached to the willingness and ability to choose." https://exploringyourmind.com/freedom-mean-doing-whatever-yo...
> family (husband, wife and kids),
"What is a “family”? Statistically, it is no longer a mother, a father and their biological children living together under one roof (and certainly not with Dad going off to work and Mom staying home). Although perception and acceptance often lag behind reality, there is evidence that a new definition of family — while far from universally accepted — is emerging." (New York Times)
Thanks for citing all those mainstream media news. Too bad I don't shape my perception of reality on their nonsense. They are literally just other humans. You have no common sense firewall or consistency if you allow these people to reprogram you. You're just proving my point that these deconstruction of language and values come from the media.
Get some common sense anti virus for your brain. You're being fed bad training input to get the desired output. The desired output is having a dumb society of wage slaves who get to choose between two options and think they are free.
Society of people where you can keep suggesting terrible "choices" to people like self genital mutilation (the real choice being self-acceptance), killing fetuses (the real choice was making the fetus in the first place), and picking between two equally corrupt parties, or losing your job and taking a worthless vaccine. And those sheep in that society will reprogram themselves to only act on the choices presented and never think for themselves.
Society where the only non-binary choice you get to make, is quite ironically, "your gender", which is literally the most binary non-choice you're ever given. But of course the maximum false choices presented will be where you don't really have a choice at all.
At least, vaccine providing immunity (or, at least, protection, even if complete immunity is difficult) is the intention; but they are not 100% effective, and sometimes may have side effects. However, they are usually better than nothing. (But, sometimes the companies that make them will even be dishonest, to try to earn more money; this possibility should not be ignored.)
I suspect that the COVID-19 vaccines have not been properly tested for side effects that do not occur until many years have passed, because they did not have enough time to make these tests. (Only side effects that occur quickly would have been tested.)
I cannot comment properly about "recession" because it is not something that I am familiar with.
Not everyone's chromosomes are XX and XY, and while this usually makes you female or male sometimes there are exceptions, and then there is intersex, also. However, this is not the same as "gender identity" and "gender expression" (which I think are unnecessary, since you can just do how you like to do regardless of that; but if people want to do it anyways I do not intend to stop them, since they have freedom to do what they like), although they are usually correlated to the biological sex. Really, it isn't so simple, as they say it is (such things are like abbreviations to explain common circumstances; like an other words (in any other context, explaining about something entirely unrelated, even), they cannot possibly explain everything).
Sometimes words are not used so clearly, but that was true in the past and is true today too. Meaning of words often are shifted due to many reasons, and sometimes some meaning becomes more common than other meaning of the words. Describing clearly what you mean, would be a good idea; unfortunately, too often they instead want to avoid being offended instead of being clearly what you mean. I think that clearly what you mean is more important, although if you can also avoid being offensive at the same time then it should usually be good to do both, isn't it?
(I don't say always, because there are so many things that you cannot predict and many things can be all difference from each other. Only if you do mathematics can you potentially prove that some property of a number will be "always".)
The ability to choose is not the same as the freedom to choose (and to do what you want); you should need both. Freedom of speech definitely is important (including opposing views than each other, and also the third way, and even the fourth way and fifth way, too).
As other comment mention, also you will need freedom to think and to feel, too, as well as freedom to do something. However, just because something is freedom, you should still consider if it is a good idea or not, in this circumstances. Whatever your position is, you should be prepared to argument, whether it is a common opinion, or if it is against the common opinion, or both or neither (such consideration as both/neither is often ignored too much, I think).
Unfortunately, the Conspiracy tries to hide many things that you are trying to be freedom, and are trying to control you.
For example, many people actually were opposed to copyright (and other things, too), but the Conspiracy would not show that study (people have made such a thing, but they refused to pay for it) to others. When the Conspiracy made their own study, they would say the methods are secret. Well, the methods are secret is not the proper way to make a scientific experiment, isn't it?
Other ways this trying to change the freedom, are done includes by peer pressure, by claiming to being "offensive", etc.
However, the true freedom is not only the freedom to speak but also the freedom that others are allowed to speak against you (you can choose to listen or not).
Husband/wife/kids is not the only family, it is just one of them. Family is they are related. This includes also grandparents/aunt/uncle/siblings/etc. People who are married are usually not so closely related to each other. However, really everyone are going to be related even distantly, even the trees are your distant relatives too. And then, there is also such thing as adoptive families, and married without children, orphans, etc; so, there is many more complicated than the simplified description only.
Some protests are more or less peaceful than others, and some things that are peaceful may be protest and some aren't.
Unfortunately, many people think that, if you are good then the opposite is bad, if you are one kind of thing then the opposite is the opposite kind of thing, etc. But, that is no good. Things have to be properly considered and nuanced.
Racism is no good, but that should not mean you have to give preferential treatment to someone. It also should not mean that you have to make "diversity" hiring, etc. If you are hiring, you can hire anyone (black people, white people, men, women, Christian, Hindu, atheists, height, etc) but to do by if they are competent at that job (or can learn), and not by skin colours, etc. Depending what people are in this area, you might or might not get many black people there; but, as long as whoever they are, is good at this work, then that is good.
In some businesses (e.g. movies) it may be helpful to have many different "diversity" of people, although this still does not mean that they should not be hiring based on if you are good actors. They are good actors for movies that are needing, more importantly. However, sometimes people with specific visual appearance or voice (or other things such as languages) may be helpful for some kinds of roles in a movie, but they need not appear in every movie; they can make many different ones.
However, if they make a lot of different movies (which can actually be difference, rather than just making too many similar things) then it can hopefully be made better (although, some will be no good, but that is, you have to try).
Global warming became climate change presumably to show that there are changes other than only the heat. However, while it does that, it also fails to indicate some of the kind of changes (although, it is inevitable, unless you use too many words).
Yes, it really is difficult to communicate.
And, unfortunately, many things considered are not considered nuanced very well, either, it seems like to me too.
Generally, being clearly and precisely is good, but sometimes some things may be unnecessary, too many words, or unknown, etc, that you might indicate otherwise. Words are inherently usually not always precision. (For example, my mention of "the Conspiracy" is not precise but it is good enough for the reasons I was trying to communicate.)
And then, sometimes they think that things are same or similar things that use the same words, even though they do not match, and the words/phrases can have different meanings by the context. (One example, is word such as "Aries", "Gemini", etc are the names of constellations but also the names of astrological signs; however, constellations and astrological signs are not the same thing. Astrological signs are the measure of ecliptic longitude, each one 30 degrees. Although good arguments could be made against astrology, many people make bad arguments instead, because they do not understand what I had just mentioned.)
I don't really expect them to "redefine rented property to be yours", although it does seem likely that it will try to be hidden that it "isn't yours", in an attempt for the Conspiracy to control you in this way. In some contexts it might be useful to say it is "yours" temporarily, but that should not be confused for what it is, despite whatever word you might use; and unfortunately such confusion is common.
People can still have controversial thoughts, although often it is difficult to communicate and/or is often ignored. However, this isn't really new; it happens in the past too, but usually in different ways.
Nevertheless, freedom of speech is important, regardless of what your opinion is. Someone else must have the freedom to argue against it too, because that is also freedom of speech.
No, but the counter culture is usually a reflection of what could have been, and we have really powerful technologies for suppressing these regrets now.
I do have to admit there are effectively no "dark corners" anymore. The percentage of the population that can be involved in a new cultural movement without its details becoming common knowledge is getting smaller and smaller.
There are more dark corners than ever... and they are as dark as it gets. You just don't want/know how to look for them and they are also as private as it gets.
There's a lot more fragmentation.
The few common grounds, the most popular music, 'content creators', ideas and current events get amplified by news sites relying on ads, algorithms seeking maximum engagement.
It's hard to promote a fringe issue in a wide content channel and there's a lack of everything in between fringe and mainstream.
Yeah sure, but saying that there are no "dark corners" is just naive. Counterculture in the 70s or 90s weren't massive movements at all. I don't see how it has changed looking at teens at the school of my children. It's mostly the problem of getting older can centering more with the mainstream yourself.
> I do have to admit there are effectively no "dark corners" anymore.
This is the problem. As soon as a counter-culture gets any amount of steam going a million marketers swoop in to sell it as an identity to anyone with a credit card. Marketers are constantly searching for the undiscovered cool or subversive thing. They have undercover agents infiltrate hobbies, movements, and cliques. They collect endless amounts of data so that they can fine tune their pitch to every individual person's most obscure interests. Whatever you identify as or stand for, there's a marketer willing to sell you something so that you can signal who you are to those around you. Marketers then slowly start to manipulate and change the counter-culture so that it sells better too.
There is no counter-culture because everyone is busy being a part of their preferred culture-bubbles only all of it is mainstream now. It's all so easily accessible that everything esoteric has become exoteric. No matter what it is, you can buy your starter pack right off the rack. Eventually it all gets watered down to capture as many dollars as possible and we're left with all these options, but still wondering where the counter-culture went.
You strike up a conversation with the girl picking mushrooms in the middle of nowhere or you go to an underground death metal concert or spend a bit of time on 4chan and you'll find countercultures alive and well that you're just not part of.
If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then you must be looking at a woefully tiny portion of the creative world. It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness.