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The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

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Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#81

In 2023 counterculture is right wing but that's a hard to swallow pill for a lot

The billionaire right has funneled gobs of money into mirroring racist, fundamentalist, nationalistic loons as a troop rally for tax breaks downstream at the ballot box. It's only counter-cultural if you fail to see through it.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#82
post #66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the biggest argument against deplatforming: it actually makes them cool. Part of the appeal of these ideologies is clearly that they are offensive, not permitted on mainstream platforms, and therefore are something that their participants can "own" and that won't be co-opted by consumerism. It's the same thing that fueled "Satanic" rock and similar things. Fascism is devil music. That most people are…

> I think this is the biggest argument against deplatforming: it actually makes them cool. The thing that mystifies me is that when parents get in on something it usually nukes the coolness factor, but the far right has an overwhelming supply of 50+ year olds on just about every platform and this has had no impact on its rise in popularity among the teens and twenty-somethings.

One thing the Internet has at least weakened is age stratification in culture, for the simple reason that it's hard to tell how old people are online.

Also I'm not talking so much about Fox News right wingers. I'm talking about the 4chan /pol stuff. The stuff Fox provides is the radio-safe edit.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#83
post #5

> To be truly countercultural in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self. Interesting enough quote, maybe obvious but maybe a nice reminder too. > Search Google Images for ‘counterculture’ and it overwhelmingly returns black-and-white photos of young people all now over 60. I just love the idea of some social…

Because the term didn't exist or was popularized by people that are now over 60. --- counterculture (n.) also counter-culture, "way of life or collective values deliberately at variance with the prevailing norms of a time and place," 1968, from counter- + culture (n.). Popularized by, and perhaps coined in, the book "The Making of a Counter Culture" by U.S. academic Theodore Roszak. As an adjective by 1972.

> Because the term didn't exist or was popularized by people that are now over 60.

And because even if it was nominally a generic term, its use to describe the generic phenomenon faded with the aging of the particular youth counterculture movement it was coined for; “punk” and later movements which might fairly be described as countercultural were never as popularly labeled with the term “counterculture” as the hippies were, and now it's a term groups overtly focused on exaggerating traditional elements of mainstream culture claim as a means of clout chasing.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#84

The real counterculture right now is non-participation . In a world where virtually everything is either designed to completely waste your time or fail and not be repairable, it's a highly radical act to stop consuming like the 95%, preferring to spend time with other humans in reality doing something that isn't technological. In spite of the popular world pushing the message that you will be fulfilled living in virt…

The truly radical have combined frisbee-golf and pub trivia into a single, chaotic event with the introduction of ping-pong balls, water clocks and questions asked in made up languages.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#86

The real counterculture right now is non-participation . In a world where virtually everything is either designed to completely waste your time or fail and not be repairable, it's a highly radical act to stop consuming like the 95%, preferring to spend time with other humans in reality doing something that isn't technological. In spite of the popular world pushing the message that you will be fulfilled living in virt…

There are dozens of memes floating around claiming that the counterculture is made of of people getting married to someone of the opposite sex, raising a family, practicing a religion, eating meals together, celebrating the holidays together etc.

Naturally, these folks have left social networks like Facebook and Instagram far behind.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#88
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people think counterculture is dead. I've hurt myself badly many times and have never regretted it, because it was fun and incredibly intellectually satisfying. I know no-one at these places that regret it, everyone accepts that that they are all working to a common goal of being awesome

I’ve never met anyone who regretted causing their own death either.

You may be surprised to learn some people survive being "dead" for a short while. I know at least two and neither regretted it, it was just a cool story.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#89

The real counterculture right now is non-participation . In a world where virtually everything is either designed to completely waste your time or fail and not be repairable, it's a highly radical act to stop consuming like the 95%, preferring to spend time with other humans in reality doing something that isn't technological. In spite of the popular world pushing the message that you will be fulfilled living in virt…

the radical sets their phone to "do not disturb" and plays frisbee-golf or pub trivia I have recently been surprised to learn how robust both the stamp collecting and model railroading hobbies are these days. Living in the HN bubble, I just assumed they were both dead. They're not. Not by a long shot. I wonder what other "old timey" hobbies are still popular.

Railroading is and has always been huge as far as I can tell. I know quite a few folks who are into it and the projects they build are featured in our local museums. It turns out that kids LOVE trains and of the 3 history museums in my city, all of them have an exhibit for model trains. One of them (our heritage park) provides funding to the creators, paying them to transport and set up their models in their museum. So far, the room that has such exhibits shows off 20+ large scale train models.

It's pretty cool seeing the older train hobbyists training new folks on how to create trees, little homes, automated circuits, etc.

What's even more cool is them interacting with the community and sharing their knowledge to wide-eyed little kids. Warms the heart seeing people of all ages bonding over a shared interest.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)

#90

The real counterculture right now is non-participation . In a world where virtually everything is either designed to completely waste your time or fail and not be repairable, it's a highly radical act to stop consuming like the 95%, preferring to spend time with other humans in reality doing something that isn't technological. In spite of the popular world pushing the message that you will be fulfilled living in virt…

Precisely this. Deleted my Facebook, barely on Instagram, haven't wasted time on Snapchat, and TikTok what?

Maybe I'm a millennial boomer, but I don't care. Social media is cancer and the world would benefit from a return to a time when everyone wasn't on it.

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