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

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #88

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…

It's not just commodification. If you were a punk in the 80s with a green mohawk, you might find it cute to put one on your kid in the 2000s. I have long hair, my son has long hair. This isn't a commodification of a culture, it's me, like every parent ever, using my culture to inform how I raise my kids. What am I going to do? Not dress and present my kid how I want to and how I identify?

Post by icegreentea2 » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

rcxdude wrote: post #110

icegreentea2 wrote: post #30

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I believe "merely aesthetic objects" in this case should be interpreted as "dead objects". The very word "artifact" signifies the distinction. These objects were once alive - they were parts of active interactions. Now they are dead and ossified. This is the difference between your album CDs when you actually listened to them, and then when you put them on a display case on the wall.

but in most cases they were dead before they were in the museum. In some cases dead before capitalism even existed. I don't really see how this amounts to a criticism of the museum itself (or capitalism alongside it). (I will agree in the cases where they were not: there are certainly a lot of infamous examples there, where even if the objects were dead relative to the culture that created them, they are also being s…

Post by FrustratedMonky » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #134

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #121

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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.

Chip making is one of the most concentrated industries in the world, and in no way representative the whole. Even then, a huge amount of the chipmaking industry aside from the bleeding edge is parallelized. Let me ask you a question. How much efficiency do you think would be saved with zero population growth and zero innovation? What percent of the world do you think works in Chip making? It is tiny.

Post by snapcaster » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #89

snapcaster wrote: post #75

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Man i was so disappointed by hyperion. felt like they didn't really go anywhere satisfying with the premise

I felt similarly - it was like "here's a series of disconnected vignettes that don't really go anywhere or add up to anything; enjoy" - but I didn't, especially. I wondered for a long time if there was something about the novel I just wasn't understanding, which would make it make sense, but eventually I decided what I was missing is that some people are totally fine with a series of disconnected vignettes that don't…

Post by lupusreal » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #140

lupusreal wrote: post #128

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> 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…

You didn't 'happen to know someone who made t-shirts' if you were around the scene. If you went to the skate park regularly, Bennie was always there, and Bennie hustled struggled by doing things like make t-shirts to support the scene. Bennie always had decks/trucks/stickers/t-shirts for sale out of the back of his car. If people were working on a park or a ramp or something Bennie let everyone know when and where. S…