Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014) • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by FrustratedMonky » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #119

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. This is laughably naive. Not only would "innovation suffer", but it's pretty doubtful that current technology could be maintained with a population as small as that. Humans are a (weak) hivemind intelligence, and everything we have now is only capable with a population as high as we have it currently. Sure, there might be some in…

I never said hundreds of percent, that's all your imagination. If I were to guess, I would ballpark 25% more efficiency if population were 1% and no growth. I think we are well into the linear and decreasing scale for most industries. How many parallel factories do you think there are around the world building tractors. How many independent factories making cars and trucks? Also, consider how much labor is spent on R…

There are a lot more single threaded supply chain factories that you'd think.

When they start falling apart, it all starts falling apart. We got a dry run of this in covid with chips. One small part of chip making, think some substrate, was in short supply, and shut down the automakers

And even the Hurricane that hit NC, took out one of the single factories making high end quartz for chips.

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

#122

Post by bakuninsbart » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

finnthehuman wrote: post #83

bakuninsbart wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that no one yet mentioned the elephant in the room given that this is HN: Hacker and FOSS culture. Of course there are attempts to commercialize it, but people are naturally resistant.

The DIY-spirited software scenes were so thoroughly commercialized that appealing to their aesthetics is now in the past. FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm. All the subculture has been thoroughly power…

> FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm.

Ok, I didn't see the forest for the trees there, which is quite funny. But I still get together with friends to build stuff for the sake of it, without any intention of commercializing the things we build, and there is still a very large corpus of FOSS software being maintained by people simply because they think it is cool, or because they are idealists who want free software to be free.

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

#123

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

notnaut wrote: post #87

Palomides wrote: post #6

there are still subcultures: the ones unpalatable to corporate interests; ones around topics that are illegal, very politically fringe, or centered on weird sex stuff

Sam Hyde and his canceled adult swim show World Peace seem to stand out in my mind in that it feels hard to call it “very” politically fringe these days (which is a scary thought from plenty of reasonable perspectives). He’s pretty hugely popular on the internet, could almost certainly be swallowed up by standard old corporatism, but has so far been spit back out for the most part. Perhaps a sign of just how dominant…

How would you define corporatism?

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

#124

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #111

pfdietz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, until you realize how unbelievable the entire genre is. Then it's just aggravating. Old man yelling at book "don't you realize your tropes are completely stale??"

I highly enjoy it, thank you very much

Sure, that's a state that will persist until it doesn't.

One common barrier to suspension of disbelief is the Fermi Problem. A great deal of space opera just ignores it, but once you take the argument seriously it ruins much of the world building.

If I want to ignore rationality of the world design and just read human achievement porn I'll head over to r/HFY.

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

#125

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

justonceokay wrote: post #36

jhbadger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty weird description of the British Museum. Yes, I know people can (and do) criticize the collection they have as the spoils of colonialism, but in no way do they present their collection as "merely aesthetic objects" -- they do explain what the artifacts are in terms of the cultures that created them.

Right but the bowls aren’t being eaten out of, the urns have had the organs removed. The instruments lay silent and the religious artifacts hold no more spirits. You might take a collection of dried leaves and put them on display and call it a “tree museum”, but your visitors aren’t going to get a good appreciation for what trees are like just by looking at their dead refuse

The urns and bowls that were used weren't preserved, because they were used. Only the ones no longer used exist at all.

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

#126

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

sporkydistance wrote: post #67

Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of subculture that started in the 80's and really swallowed everything in the 1990's (in the USA at least); Here's the book: https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent One of his examples is that music and clothing companies realized there was a…

I think that just covers maybe the first dip of the toe into a niche being commodified. For a skateboarder there are signs that kind of show if you really are a hardcore skateboarder or have just bought a board at zumies and don’t really ride it much. Is the board graphic damaged from rails? Are the shoes torn apart? The skaters I see hitting a waxed public cement bench without a shirt on during the work day probably don’t give a shit about thrasher and all that.

Kind of like bluejeans. You can buy them predistressed but the wear patterns are different than if you made them yourself. Maybe most people can’t tell but the true in group of the subculture can.

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

#127

Post by ranger207 » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

Subcultures only stay subcultures by gatekeeping. Otherwise their ideas and fashions spread out and it merely becomes culture. The internet made it easier than ever to gatecrash, so it's no surprise there's no subcultures left. And of course capitalism and consumerism responds to what culture wants

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

#128

Post by lupusreal » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:18 PM UTC

sporkydistance wrote: post #67

Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of subculture that started in the 80's and really swallowed everything in the 1990's (in the USA at least); Here's the book: https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent One of his examples is that music and clothing companies realized there was a…

> in the 1960's it was ... a simpler time and the outcasts looked like normal kids having fun compared to today

Seems like some sort of gatekeeping and old-man shaking his fist at youth to me. The overwhelming majority of people skateboarding today are regular kids and young adults who are just in it to have fun. If their techniques are more advanced, its probably because technology has improved and also because they're emulating the things they see professional or otherwise experienced skaters do, but what's the problem with that? They're still having fun, aren't they? That's the point of it all, isn't it?

And buying a shirt means you don't have personality? Is personality all about happening to know a guy who does custom T-shirt printing? What makes one more authentic than the other? Seems like nonsense.

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

#129

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:20 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #120

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Innovation would suffer, but 80 million is sufficient for a diversified modern economy. This is laughably naive. Not only would "innovation suffer", but it's pretty doubtful that current technology could be maintained with a population as small as that. Humans are a (weak) hivemind intelligence, and everything we have now is only capable with a population as high as we have it currently. Sure, there might be some in…

This was more my understanding. That even with todays population slowdown/shrinking, there is already worry that we wont be able to staff the jobs to keep society functioning. Suddenly you have a factory that makes pumps, it can't meet demand, so the factory that makes tractors doesn't meet demand, so farmers can't plant. We end up back with Oxen pulled plows. It seems that "The Peripheral" kind of skipped how they g…

If the world lost half it's people, it would be 1970s level population with modern technology. I think you and the parent poster are underestimating the amount of redundancy that exists in most every industry.

Another way to think about it is the USA population is 3.5% of the world population and trade (both ways) makes up 20% of the USA GDP. If the rest of the world were walled off, we wouldn't go back to the stone age.

If everyone else in the world fell over dead and the resources were available, the US would be massively better off than now.

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

#130

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #21

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.

Curious what subcultures comes to mind for you. I havent finished my coffee, but and drawing a blank on cultural interests that cant be commodified.

Anything unsavory to associate a major brand with is generally actively ignored in mass media. Could be something weird or heinous or merely frowned upon like partying culture these days.