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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)

#51

Post by coldpie »

BarryMilo wrote: post #20

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.

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

I subscribe to the Asimov's sci-fi short story magazine (I highly recommend it!) and yeah, I have to skip every story that starts with "the world was devastated by climate change 20-50 years ago, here's how we're surviving now above the flooded remains of our world." I just can't take it.

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

#52

Post by etrautmann »

namaria wrote: post #49
BarryMilo wrote: post #20

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.

I like sci-fi but I tend to only like classics. I found Neuromancer so incredibly interesting because it seems to be at the root of so much contemporary "cyberpunk" stuff. I often say that genres are what happens when mediocre artists latch on to something fresh someone created, and to me it's only worth spending time with the originators. Though I understand lots of people like that something that engrossed them can…

Interesting, though I think this type of thinking os overly black and white. All art is inspired and derived from the context in which it was created. While there are obviously more and less original works, genre boundaries are often soft. This may just have more to do with what you were exposed to first or when you were born?

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

#53

Post by namaria »

etrautmann wrote: post #52
namaria wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like sci-fi but I tend to only like classics. I found Neuromancer so incredibly interesting because it seems to be at the root of so much contemporary "cyberpunk" stuff. I often say that genres are what happens when mediocre artists latch on to something fresh someone created, and to me it's only worth spending time with the originators. Though I understand lots of people like that something that engrossed them can…

Interesting, though I think this type of thinking os overly black and white. All art is inspired and derived from the context in which it was created. While there are obviously more and less original works, genre boundaries are often soft. This may just have more to do with what you were exposed to first or when you were born?

I agree, this is just how I go about it. Not defending it on any general grounds whatsoever.

I acknowledge that a lot of the media I consume ends up being just part of a genre, and that I often don't even know the originals and only have access to simulacra.

But when I think about what I wanna read next, what albums to buy records of and so on, I prefer to go as far upstream as I can or know about.

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

#54

Post by detourdog »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #45
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.

I just tested an app that let's you pay $3.99 to get a bag of food about to go in the dumpster: https://www.toogoodtogo.com/

I guess I was wrong. What a world .

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

#55

Post by namaria »

coldpie wrote: post #51
BarryMilo wrote: post #20

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.

> I'm not a fan if present-ish day sci-fi though, reality is depressing enough as it is. I subscribe to the Asimov's sci-fi short story magazine (I highly recommend it!) and yeah, I have to skip every story that starts with "the world was devastated by climate change 20-50 years ago, here's how we're surviving now above the flooded remains of our world." I just can't take it.

I tried re-reading Brave New World recently. It was too depressing how it felt it was describing present times.

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

#56

Post by implmntatio »

BarryMilo wrote: post #20

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.

+1 on my contra list for the book, which I have not read yet because the lingo annoybored me after two or three pages.

> it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine

So you've read works that build on Necromancer earlier. Care to share some of those books/authors and concepts?

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

#57

Post by mindcrime »

BarryMilo wrote: post #20

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.

I am a sci-fi nerd and I also found Neuromancer incredibly boring,

I'm curious... if you're willing to say, when did you first read Neuromancer? And had you read a lot of other cyberpunk themed media beforehand?

but that's probably because it introduced so many concepts that others went on to refine.

Yeah, if you'd already been exposed to a lot of the core ideas / themes from other more contemporary works, I can see how that might take away a bit from the Neuromancer experience.

To give a counterpoint... I first read Neuromancer about 1993 / 1994 or somewhere in that range. And I believe it was the first cyberpunk novel I'd read. I think maybe the only other media from the cyberpunk genre that I'd been exposed to then was the "Max Headroom" tv show. Anyway... Neuromancer absolutely blew my mind and I was instantly hooked. To this day it's one of my favorite novels, and I've re-read it several subsequent times. And will almost certainly read it again (and again...) I can't get enough of it.

Of course it's hard to say exactly why our respective reactions to it are so different. There are a lot of variables. But I think your notion from above has a lot of merit to it. If one experiences a derivative (or many derivatives) of something before the original, does the original them come to feel like a cheap copy?

I've had that experience with cover versions of songs before. That is, times when I heard and loved a cover, and then only later heard the original. And in many (maybe all) of those cases, I still preferred the cover over the original.

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

#58

Post by pbronez »

drdrek wrote: post #24

Firstly, there are many tiny subcultures that by definition you will not know about if you are not part of them. Secondly, I think that there is a hidden assumption in western audience that sub\counter culture are universally good, So when we see negative ones they do not register as counter cultures. The Man-o-sphere, N-th level gender advocates, Fascists, National Purity, Marxists, Libertarians. If anything there i…

I think this is the crux of the matter. We lack a baseline cultural context. Turns out you miss it when it's gone.

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

#59

Post by ndileas »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #42
torginus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also add things that are unprofitable and/or participating in them requires a high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money. Which describes a lot of things if you think about it.

Those get commercialized quickly, too. You'd think that e.g. dumpster-diving for food would be "unprofitable" and require "high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money", but freeganism already turned into aspirational hobby for many, and has its own little ecosystem of influencers selling books. It fits in nicely among its even more commercial cousins, like "minimalism", "healthy eating",…

I'd say excessive commercialization so that the whole activity is centered around buying and selling, or most members are gearheads who rarely go out and do stuff, etc, is definitely unfortunately common. But I see it mostly as an individual failing, enabled and made worse by media environment. Tune out.

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

#60

Post by icegreentea2 »

klodolph wrote: post #33

“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.” —Joyce Messier, Disco Elysium Gibson is a concrete example. He fashions critiques of capitalism in a book, the book is distilled into the aesthetics of cyberpunk, and the cyberpunk aesthetic is repackaged and resold to us.

Yeah, this is the general effect of "the thing in power", not just of capitalism. Capitalism, communism, feudalism/monarchy, colonialism. Once something is sufficiently entrenched, even resistance to the thing must be done in reference (and in context) to the thing being resisted against.

There are many layers to this, but the most "practical" is that the very structures and language of the status quo very much threatens to infect and limit the scope and form of resistance.

This is literally the idea that NewSpeak took to the logical extreme.

Capitalism is perhaps uniquely infectious in how "simple" (and therefore flexible) its core tenets are.

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