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Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

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Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#11

Post by heavenlyblue »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #9
detourdog wrote: post #8

Dumpster diving is one of those sub-cultures that is hard to commodify. One of my kids prefers the ethics of dumpster diving. What a privilege.

Someone, somewhere out there is selling designer or artisanal-crafted dumpster diving shoes "for the very best comfort and agility during your homebrew solid-waste recovery activities."

I was following this guy on instagram that makes the most amazing dumpster miniatures. Together with miniature trash that you can put in and out fo the dumpster.

Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#12

Post by brendoelfrendo »

detourdog wrote: post #8

Dumpster diving is one of those sub-cultures that is hard to commodify. One of my kids prefers the ethics of dumpster diving. What a privilege.

Dumpster diving specifically, maybe not, but thrifting and second-hand clothes definitely were. When thrifting was popular among the early hipsters, American Apparel would send buyers to thrift stores to gut them of all the best deals so they could offer curated collections of second-hand clothes at a steep markup. Companies like Urban Outfitters would send designers to Williamsburg parties to see what people were wearing so that they could start manufacturing knock-offs immediately. The hipster subculture is an odd one, itself a product of poor urban artists wearing and doing what they could afford being co-opted by college-educated urban Millennials trying to reject conventional symbols of elitism and instead crafting more "authentic" snobbery on the back of traditional working-class aesthetics. But if it had any potential to mean anything, it was murdered in the crib by those who cashed in on a demand for an aesthetic and divorced it from its meaning, which is the very thing that the early hipsters were rebelling against.

Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#13

Post by andyjohnson0 »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #11
RiverCrochet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, somewhere out there is selling designer or artisanal-crafted dumpster diving shoes "for the very best comfort and agility during your homebrew solid-waste recovery activities."

I was following this guy on instagram that makes the most amazing dumpster miniatures. Together with miniature trash that you can put in and out fo the dumpster.

Just needs miniature dumpster diver figures and the commoditisation is complete

Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#16

Post by FrustratedMonky »

The Peripheral

The biggest problem for me, is after the catastrophe, and collapse of everything, the survivors have "won the lottery". But the book never really explains how this future turned out 'good' for the survivors and not a 'mad max' like dystopia like every other post apocalypse story. If there was massive population decline, then how are they making all that technology? Is it all robots? Who built the robots?.

It was just a big leap from "huge global collapse and there are no people left" to "those that are left are really living it up in the abundance that is leftover".

Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#19

Post by lupusreal »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #11
RiverCrochet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone, somewhere out there is selling designer or artisanal-crafted dumpster diving shoes "for the very best comfort and agility during your homebrew solid-waste recovery activities."

I was following this guy on instagram that makes the most amazing dumpster miniatures. Together with miniature trash that you can put in and out fo the dumpster.

Somehow I'm not even surprised. Train watching/spotting and train miniature making are both popular with overlapping communities, and apparently there is a smaller but still extant community of people who are big fans of garbage trucks in the way that others are with trains. Dumpsters seems like a natural extension of that.

Incidentally, train fandom is definitely commodified, but I think not to the consternation or detriment of those into trains. I wonder why some subcultures are at odds with commercialization of their interests while others are at peace with it.

Re: Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)

#20

Post by BarryMilo »

I am a sci-fi nerd and I also found Neuromancer incredibly boring, but that's probably because it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine.

I'm not a fan if present-ish day sci-fi though, reality is depressing enough as it is.

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