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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)

#161

Post by s1artibartfast »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #116
coldpie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wonder how much of this is driven by the publishers vs audiences. I have read a lot of blogs and articles from authors and agents about thematic checklists for publishing. On the flip side, immigration makes up the vast majority of content creation, and the leading edge were using these premises 20-30 years ago when they were more novel

Imitation*

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

#162

Post by s1artibartfast »

robocat wrote: post #160
s1artibartfast wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toddlers don't have that level of agency.

I would say that Toddlers are mostly not given agency. Toddlers want things and they don't want other things. Their parents don't permit much agency, because. I'm probably agreeing with you but I wasn't sure of your implication.

I guess what I'm saying is that a 3 year old can sometimes pick out their clothes (sometimes they will hate the consequences). They can't really commit to long term decisions about what hairstyle they will want to live with for months, or manage the upkeep of the style they pick.

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

#163

Post by finnthehuman »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #122
finnthehuman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intentio…

I don't see why it would be mutually exclusive. It can be the case that a subculture was commoditized AND people still enjoy doing the stuff the subculture formed around.

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

#164

Post by s1artibartfast »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #155
s1artibartfast wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I'm biased from being in manufacturing. During Covid the lack of even a few types of parts, derailed huge projects. So you could have a project going in worth millions, with thousands of parts. But the whole thing gets delayed because of a single 100$ part that could not be sourced. It really seemed stark how the global supply chain could just start crumbling. And I was extrapolating to people, if we aren't s…

That is an entirely separate problem. You are mistaking the topic and risks of globalization and supply concentration with scale.

Needing a widget from China doesn't mean that it needs to come from a mega factory in China and can't be produced in a smaller one. All of China shutting down doesn't prove it can't be done smaller

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

#165

Post by emchammer »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #106
Sharlin wrote: post #23

"One may dye their hair green and wear their grandma’s coat all they want. Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead." —Joyce Messier in Disco Elysium Probably inspired by Mark Fisher: "The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its 'sys…

I have yet to see cooperations integrating radical islam.

Memri TV

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

#166

Post by finnthehuman »

lupusreal wrote: post #159
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like it was a lot more about where you lived and a lot less "whether you had a personality". I was never a skater kid and never pretended to be one, but I knew plenty and they wore shirts from Kmart because in rural PA kids aren't going to have access to the whole "authentic punk social infrastructure" or whatever it is that supposedly grants kids access to "personality".

>supposedly grants kids access to "personality".

You have it backwards. The shirt is neither necessary nor sufficient. sporkydistance was dogging on poseurs. deadfread was explaining why a t-shirt was ever an indicator (and even when there's someone handmaking shirts for your thing they're taking as many sales as possible).

The shirt validating the identity is a wrong interpretation of what was written. But it's also a normal perspective these days, one core to social criticism this conversation is getting at.

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

#168

Post by s1artibartfast »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #147
s1artibartfast wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>If the world lost half it's people, it would be 1970s level population with modern technology. Sure, but with modern technology that they can't easily replace or repair. How long does the technology last? Is anything we make today made for longevity? >I think you and the parent poster are underestimating the amount of redundancy Redundancy is inefficient and costs money. We live in a world without warehouses, becaus…

I couldn't disagree more. We will have to agree to disagree.

The logs per person of one team with a million square miles to work with is more than 1000 teams working the same land.

They get to pick the very best.

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

#169

Post by _DeadFred_ »

lupusreal wrote: post #159
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like it was a lot more about where you lived and a lot less "whether you had a personality". I was never a skater kid and never pretended to be one, but I knew plenty and they wore shirts from Kmart because in rural PA kids aren't going to have access to the whole "authentic punk social infrastructure" or whatever it is that supposedly grants kids access to "personality".

Bennie sells discs at the disc golf course. Bennie is the guy who arranges timed skiing races up on the mountain. Bennie is just the placeholder of 'if you do this a lot locally, you know XYZ who is always around' and hence you are 'part of the scene' IE you have actually engaged with it on some level. Nowadays that might be substituted with 'do you watch XYZ streamer'.

The t-shirt didn't represent having a personality. It represented than 'I am around this community enough I have at least interacted with Bennie'. Someone wearing a Kmart t-shirt saying 'ah did you get that from Bennie' would be the exact cred/personality as having a Bennie shirt.

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

#170

Post by FrustratedMonky »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #164
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm biased from being in manufacturing. During Covid the lack of even a few types of parts, derailed huge projects. So you could have a project going in worth millions, with thousands of parts. But the whole thing gets delayed because of a single 100$ part that could not be sourced. It really seemed stark how the global supply chain could just start crumbling. And I was extrapolating to people, if we aren't s…

That is an entirely separate problem. You are mistaking the topic and risks of globalization and supply concentration with scale. Needing a widget from China doesn't mean that it needs to come from a mega factory in China and can't be produced in a smaller one. All of China shutting down doesn't prove it can't be done smaller

Ok.

Guess that is valid differentiation.

Then the only problem is time frame, rate of change.

Can the global supply chain, re-configure itself to only run factories where there is still enough population to staff.

It would take years to move factories to concentrate where there is still people.

And I'd say most disaster scenarios happen a lot faster. Then it's Mad Max again. But guess, even in Mad Max there was an oil refinery, they had a factory, and some cars running. But didn't look sustainable.

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