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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)

#171

Post by sporkydistance »

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?

If you were punk you wouldn't give a fuck what I think and wouldn't have wasted your breath on me getting defensive.

Just sayin'.

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

#172

Post by JohnBooty »

sporkydistance wrote: post #66
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 think with books like Neuromancer it is a matter of "when" you read it. If you read it today, it seems trite, like Snow Crash. If you read Neuromancer in 1984, it was mind-blowing. Same thing with Snow Crash in 1992. These books were decades ahead of their time. Neuromancer is more like PKDick, in that they are adult-themed books more about personal problems with sci-fi on the side, and it is actually part one of a…

    If you read Neuromancer in 1984, it was mind-blowing. 
    Same thing with Snow Crash in 1992
So do you like, only enjoy art produced in the last N years?

Or art that was produced more than N years ago but didn't produce any imitators that retroactively diminished the original for you?

I guess I'm not enjoying things right. I read Snow Crash in the 2000s (and LOTR in the 90s) and enjoyed the hell out of them even though they were "outdated" and had inspired countless derivative works in the ensuing decades. In fact, I had a good time playing Ms. Pac Man just last weekend.

When I read Snow Crash it definitely felt like the product of an earlier decade but I didn't hold that against it. I like understanding the context in which a piece was made.

If you don't, that's okay and you're certainly not alone. Feels like you're missing out on some good stuff though. Possibly a lot of good stuff. Possibly the vast majority of human artistic output.

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

#173

Post by JohnBooty »

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?

Everything is inspired by something else. Objectively, punk rock is "just" rock music in terms of instruments and chords. And Jackson Pollack was not the first abstract painter. Etc.

But, some things are clearly... more distinct from their forebearers than others.

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

#174

Post by pfdietz »

philipkglass wrote: post #137
pfdietz wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought that you were going to condemn the genre's ubiquitous faster-than-light communications/travel. I approach space opera as a specialized variant of high fantasy, where the usual tropes are as genre-acceptable as wizards and ghosts.

That's an external inconsistency, but SF is typically allowed one such assumption.

Ignoring the Fermi Argument is an internal inconsistency. The world just doesn't work on its own terms.

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

#175

Post by brudgers »

Y_Y wrote: post #150
sdwr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What? Where's the trick? He just bounced on his board" That's the natural state of innocence - their reference frame is how the experience feels (I'm going fast and almost falling over!). When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks - the raw experience is overtaken in importance by progress and status and comparison.

> When the scene takes over, the reference point shifts to how it looks I accept this valid criticism of "posers" but I'd like to add that there's a strange loop here. It feels alien to me, but lots of people I know like to watch videos of themselves doing things (e.g. choreographed dances). It certainly does help to see how to improve, but also they get satisfaction from seeing themselves do the thing.

Maybe watching video of self-performance is subconscious confirmation that the work that went into making the video has indeed been done...and successfully posted...and does not stoke embarrassment.

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

#176

Post by s1artibartfast »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #170
s1artibartfast wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oi…

Sure, transition is a very real problem. If 90% of people died overnight, there would mayhem and most of the remainder would starve.

The fact that 10% population is viable doesn't mean all paths from A to B are valid. Some are catastrophic. That's the current challenge with birthrates. Even slow decreases over decades is a huge financial and productive problem.

Like falling out of an airplane. Ground level is perfectly safe. It is the transition that kills you.

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

#177

Post by WillPostForFood »

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.

Toddlers are 1-3 years old. Huge difference in agency between a 1 year old and a 3 year old. 1 year old can't dress themselves let alone make choices about dress.

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

#178

Post by Levitz »

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

But then this is rather a critique of teaching history no? It's basically impossible for anyone to get a good appreciation for any historic subject from studying history. You can read books about WW2 nonstop and it would be futile, hell, I could tell you about what I did last weekend but I'm afraid you just had to be there.

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

#179

Post by Levitz »

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.

I can get amazon to deliver a burqa to my door within the week, more than 40 colors to choose from.

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

#180

Post by spencerflem »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #132
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the ones banned by most social media, hard to find on google and even harder to find in real-life?

Some non commodifiable sub cultures are easy to find in real life. E.g. drinking or doing drugs in public.

Oh man, drinking is not the example I'd use

That's big industry

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