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.
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.