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Punk is dead and so are we

bananapeel.substack.com

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Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#201

Post by cykros »

ethbr1 wrote: post #133
dfxm12 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online or offline has nothing to with doing it yourself or not. Social media, websites, etc. makes organizing events, people, projects incredibly easier and more inclusive. Punk isn't sitting over a xerox machine for a few hours printing flyers. It is actually putting a (music, performance art, benefit, whatever) event together at an all ages venue in a town where live nation owns all the venues and keeps shows 21+ s…

It's a slippery slope though, because the corrosive effect of the attention economy trying to skew social platform interactions to their benefit. Some platforms are less aggressive about it, some more, but they all control their own levers of power and to some degree abuse them. E.g. Facebook Marketplace being locked into an identity in the rest of their ecosystem So absolutely, use efficient tools to do more, but al…

Facebook is the modern day equivalent of AOL. It's where people are kept corralled to keep the rest of the Internet fun.

The problem is, there's a lot more AOL-like platforms these days, to some degree or other. IRC has turned mostly vacant. Perhaps there's greener pastures in the Matrix space, because Discord is pretty hit or miss, always with the understanding that the great eye in the sky might smite the server at any moment.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#202

Post by krapp »

toyg wrote: post #198
rglover wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's what it is: a commodified version of "f*ck you mom and dad" rebellion with DIY window dressings. I grew up in punk culture (my house in college was a DIY punk club [1]) and at the core, that's all it is [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJ60dAHyc4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefQjTeaUDI

What it is today , codified in the aesthetic and cultural mores that the mainstream labelled punk in the '70s. 60 years ago, it was something very different.

That's why it's dead.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#203

Post by rglover »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #161
rglover wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's what it is: a commodified version of "f*ck you mom and dad" rebellion with DIY window dressings. I grew up in punk culture (my house in college was a DIY punk club [1]) and at the core, that's all it is [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJ60dAHyc4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefQjTeaUDI

I don't know what punk was like anywhere in 2008. It wasn't (just) that in London in the 1970s, and there is non-commodified version of it that continues to exist in many places (or so it seems).

It's all commodified. Think about it: how do you know someone is a "punk?"

They look a certain way. They listen to certain music. Hang out in certain places. Behave in certain ways (e.g., 80s punks were all about "anarchy" and "damage").

At the end of the day, it's a "kit" or "package" that someone adopts and "wears" as a personality and belief system. They just tell themselves it isn't because they desperately want to feel unique and one-of-a-kind.

The only real punk is the first person to define the look. Like the SLC Punk clip I linked above explains: everybody after them is just a "trendy ass poser."

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#204

Post by toyg »

rglover wrote: post #203
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what punk was like anywhere in 2008. It wasn't (just) that in London in the 1970s, and there is non-commodified version of it that continues to exist in many places (or so it seems).

It's all commodified. Think about it: how do you know someone is a "punk?" They look a certain way. They listen to certain music. Hang out in certain places. Behave in certain ways (e.g., 80s punks were all about "anarchy" and "damage"). At the end of the day, it's a "kit" or "package" that someone adopts and "wears" as a personality and belief system. They just tell themselves it isn't because they desperately want…

That's not right, and that's not what the post says either. There are strong elements of originality in later-wave punks too, across various media, up until the mid-80s. The first punks didn't even have mohawks or leather jackets, just to mention two of the most (in)famous elements associated with the word; punk looks, sounds, art, and practices, continued to evolve throughout the '70s.

A common milestone is typically considered to be when The Clash release (and tour) Sandinista! in 1980, veering towards a pop sound. The punk scene effectively starts to self-disintegrate at that point, increasingly unable to reconcile its minoritarian attitudes with its by-then-undeniable mainstream popularity. By the middle of the decade, in most of the world punk had become the formulaic subculture you describe, losing its experimental streak; but until then it had been a living and evolving organism.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#205

Post by opyate »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #58

I don't piss on anyone, regardless of their age, for looking out at the world and wishing for something different, something better. Even approaching 60 years old I am still doing the same kind of searching. It's not a fashion for me, I don't wear it on my sleeve. But perhaps even because I am older, I am increasingly unhappy with the bed that was already made for me when I was born. So often I find myself wondering…

> How did the world get to the way it is now?

How is the world now, in your view?

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#206

Post by pavel_lishin »

toyg wrote: post #195
ethbr1 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more faith in the Protestant and Baptist, more decentralized methods. Catholic monoliths, less so.

American evangelist preachers are notorious tax-evaders. Just sayin'.

Beats the other sort of thing religious leaders can get up to.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#207

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rglover wrote: post #203
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what punk was like anywhere in 2008. It wasn't (just) that in London in the 1970s, and there is non-commodified version of it that continues to exist in many places (or so it seems).

It's all commodified. Think about it: how do you know someone is a "punk?" They look a certain way. They listen to certain music. Hang out in certain places. Behave in certain ways (e.g., 80s punks were all about "anarchy" and "damage"). At the end of the day, it's a "kit" or "package" that someone adopts and "wears" as a personality and belief system. They just tell themselves it isn't because they desperately want…

> how do you know someone is a "punk?"

should I know?

right here in the comments for this post are several people explaining how the core of punk is a DIY ethos. i'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with that, but if that was correct, then (a) it wouldn't matter if i could tell that someone was a punk (b) punk at its core has no connection to a "kit"or "package" or "look" at all. someone even argues that using mastodon to help find cures for cancer (i may be paraphrasing a bit) is an example of punk in 2024.

you seem very attached to the idea that punk is nothing more than a style sub-culture. i don't know if that's true, but there seem to be quite a few people who think it is false.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#208

Post by s1artibartfast »

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #191
s1artibartfast wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it also seeks to minimize democracy itself, in favor of anarchy wherever possible, if not entirely.

If by anarchy you mean freedom of association, then sure.

I dont follow the distinction you are drawing.

The point that I was making is that democracy is still a tool for restricting indidvidual freedoms of all types. You can have a controlling tyranny of the majority in direct democracy just like a representative ones.

A feature of libertarianism is seeking to minimize the scope of state control and authority, irrespective of government mechanism.

That is to say, the purpose of direct democracy is still to tell people what they can, cant, and must do.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#209

Post by u32480932048 »

roflyear wrote: post #145
u32480932048 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has absolutely become fashionable in the past few years, as evidenced by things the author (or maybe Hunter Thompson) wrote about, like having their own section in Target and ostensibly having support from Lockheed Martin (and every other company that wants to sell more products each June). The risk of yesterday is greatly diminished; "being LGBT++++" is now mostly a process of buying the right pronoun pins from A…

> Everything I've seen points to a combination of attention-seeking and shoehorning their mediocre white suburban existences into the Oppression Pyramid, because that's the only way to signal that they're not Evil Colonizers. It's sad. If you attend a pride event, even in mostly white areas, you'll quickly realize that the majority of people there are not white.

It's definitely not a majority-white event, but I've never been condescended to by a Black, Asian, or Hispanic gay man or lesbian woman - or even a trans person, for that matter. One or two acute mental health episodes aside, they're all pretty chill.

I can't say the same for a certain class of white, know-it-all college kid who insists I must be a semihemidemiqueer or somesuch because I can both iron my own clothes (no man can do this) and change a tire (no woman has ever succeeded).

I'm old enough to remember a time when women were allowed to enjoy beer and football and men were allowed to like wine and TV dramas, because fuck gender roles and stereotypes. Now, we hold the stereotypes constant and assume we must have a oh-so-special gender because I like wine and beer, hate TV dramas, tolerate baseball, and can change a tire and iron my own clothes.

It's poorly-conceived bullshit, and no number of secret downvotes or unreproducible social science studies will convince me otherwise.

Re: Punk is dead and so are we

#210

Post by red-iron-pine »

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #55
mchinen wrote: post #24

There is a sort of nihilism that emerges when you look deeper at counterculture and it's conformity. Neo recognizing with horror the other neos is a great example. (In that case it only worked out for him because of hollywood's love of love - because he loved trinity so much he was really different from the rest.) I've often wondered how the leaders of the hippie, punk, and more modern movements would compare to clas…

In my opinion, todays true counterculture is conservative religious communities. There is nother more counter to the cultural moment then being a traditionally moral, upright citizen who doesnt do drugs, doesnt lie, cheat, steal, has their libido under control, is reliable, whose existence is profitable to the rest of the world (not neccessarily economically, just mean someone who contributes more than they take : fi…

> In my opinion, todays true counterculture is conservative religious communities.

Jihad vs. McWorld is essentially about this point.

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