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The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

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Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#311

Post by GuB-42 »

agumonkey wrote: post #289
keiferski wrote: post #55

Charles Taylor, the philosopher, covered much of this about twenty years ago with far less snark and buzzwords. I strongly recommend reading The Ethics of Authenticity. It’s all about the trend of individualism and how it precedes social media by...centuries. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692 Social media is no longer authentic so you’re seeing a slowly growing backlash against it. https://se…

I think the whole thing is bogus from the start, the 'social media' idea I mean. These are companies.. they're not here to make culture or societies.. they're parasite leeching on your human needs. When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.

> When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.

I think I have seen the same argument about anime conventions. The idea is that a trend starts with a small group of passionate people, as things get bigger and more popular, followers arrive. Followers are not really passionate, they just jump on the bandwagon, but will leave and jump on another bandwagon as the thing gets less trendy. With the followers come people who will try to profit on them since they represent a sizable market. Among the "exploiters" are former members of the original group, who see a find a way to monetize their passion, taking advantage of their deep knowledge of the field.

So the idea that "people start to profit and the game is over" is mostly right, but the dynamic is more complex than just having a small number of people ruining it from everyone else.

And it is not all bad. While the community is less genuine, it is also more productive, if anything, just from the sheer numbers.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#312

Post by narrator »

I think the closest thing to counterculture today would be the world of cryptocurrency. It is the least connected thing to the rest of whole mainstream ecosystem that has serious unstoppable vitality.

Btw, reading about Boyd Rice reminded me of Russian experimental electronic band GameBoydRice who makes music using a hacked gameboy and a mixer. https://youtu.be/lxzpatLthxE

Just one of the billions of random little market segments and sub genres out there. The mainstream had much less hold on the world than it used to. The platform censorship though constrains it. Crypto doesn't have those constraints though. One is reminded of how Wikileaks, getting locked out of every bank, took cryptocurrency donations and became hugely wealthy as a result.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#313

Post by mbg721 »

randomdude402 wrote: post #304
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for thousands of years the churches have been saying, "The culture isn't going to give you that."

I don't understand why churches would say that, when they were the cornerstone of culture until a few tens of years ago.

Traditionally, they say that because even when their outward trappings are all over popular culture, they know that their core message is difficult to live out in practice, and most of the people who show up aren't doing it.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#314

Post by imaginationra »

airhead969 wrote: post #110
imaginationra wrote: post #90

I run an independent film/animation/music/interactive studio- I have never owned any mobile phone and don't use any social media except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media platforms. We are the counterculture. Our studio has released torrents of media over the past 15 years that I would classify as counterculture but you would never know because we aren't hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing…

> We are the counterculture. Isn't that a tad bit arrogant to stick a flag in all of it? See also: https://youtu.be/uEx5G-GOS1k Youtube is "lame as fuck." Release everywhere to not be arbitrarily silenced because anything good is controversial, by definition. Why abuse the word "counterculture" so many times? It comes across like you're trying too hard. Good luck and I hope you find an audience rather than make at ob…

Its not arrogance- it is confidence.

We've been doings like this for twenty years. We made Potato Phones in 2002 before a potato phone was a thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo3StA3INws

Youtube is lame- our work is also archived on Internet Archive and other places- this is a 172 gb master of one of our films https://archive.org/details/heartstringmarionette

Flag? I don't see a flag. I see text.

The "try too hard" stuff usually comes from weak people who are wannabe creators but lack the guts to do it, let alone stick with it for several decades while remaining original and independent.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#315

Post by lambda_obrien »

everdrive wrote: post #6

Still reading the article, but this is an interesting blurb if nothing else: "To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self." I hadn't thought of boycotting much of popular online space as being counter-cultural. It's an interesting thought.

Well, if everyone is an attention seeker online trying to pitch their own line of BS and side hustling, then not using social media, or being genuine there, is counter to culture.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#316

Post by airhead969 »

rcurry wrote: post #309
airhead969 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Antisocial media" would a truthful title. I don't even like texting. Email is a letter replacement. Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO. Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak, LinkedOut can all listen to the flushing sound of me deleting their advertising monetization. "Buh buh all of your Ivy and Pac12 associations that made you look important on a résumé." Too bad, I haven't talked to most of…

Good for you. I grew up in the eighties, and if I couldn’t remember your phone number you probably weren’t my friend. I’m okay with the same rules now. Twitter and Facebook are the Internet equivalent of Skid Row - a bunch of hobos fighting over a bottle of thunderbird. The only winning solution is not to play.

About 20 years ago, I used to say: "People are like dung beetles... fighting over balls of shit." Might've been live, pirated HBO George Carlin-inspired.

How about a nice game of chess?

I wouldn't demonize the very poor as addicts; drunks, sure. A dry hobo is likely to whip your ass and mine at chess. There are a good fraction of sane, teetotaling, drug-free hobos who are merely poor and itinerant without magical bootstraps.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#317

Post by imaginationra »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #100
imaginationra wrote: post #90

I run an independent film/animation/music/interactive studio- I have never owned any mobile phone and don't use any social media except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media platforms. We are the counterculture. Our studio has released torrents of media over the past 15 years that I would classify as counterculture but you would never know because we aren't hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing…

> its just not playing in the sandboxes everyone else is playing in Where is it playing?

You have to pull to find it- we live in a push world now and that's why all you see is the same old crap- because people aren't searching new works out- they are just sitting around letting curators and algo's push it to them.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#318

Post by bawolff »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #275
bawolff wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont get why paper docs are still forgeable in this day and age. Just put a qr code on it containing the same info plus a digital signature, and have verifiers scan it with an app. That sounds a lot more secure than the enduser having an app that the verifier just looks at with their eyes.

The apps being discussed will generate QR codes that the verifier will scan. But these codes are meant to be limited-time codes, so that if a new COVID strain appears and the old vaccines don’t protect against it (or it turns out that annual boosters are necessary), the person will no longer be able to report as vaccinated but will go back to the unvaccinated category.

Does limited time codes really get you anything that putting a date or which vaccine you got wouldn't? Besides, seems a bit overengineered for something that might happen in theory but hasn't yet.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#319

Post by imaginationra »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #144
imaginationra wrote: post #90

I run an independent film/animation/music/interactive studio- I have never owned any mobile phone and don't use any social media except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media platforms. We are the counterculture. Our studio has released torrents of media over the past 15 years that I would classify as counterculture but you would never know because we aren't hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing…

> I have never owned any mobile phone Eschewing a mobile phone has been pretty counterculture these recent years, but I think we are close to a point where it will no longer be sustainable, at least for anyone wanting to cross borders – or depending on the country, even enter a restaurant or concert. Several governments have announced that their vaccine passports will exist as mobile phone apps, because paper certifi…

We work just fine without mobiles. The plus is that we aren't enslaved to a handheld device ruled by rich guys.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#320

Post by krick »

agumonkey wrote: post #289
keiferski wrote: post #55

Charles Taylor, the philosopher, covered much of this about twenty years ago with far less snark and buzzwords. I strongly recommend reading The Ethics of Authenticity. It’s all about the trend of individualism and how it precedes social media by...centuries. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692 Social media is no longer authentic so you’re seeing a slowly growing backlash against it. https://se…

I think the whole thing is bogus from the start, the 'social media' idea I mean. These are companies.. they're not here to make culture or societies.. they're parasite leeching on your human needs. When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.

That's kind of true. You obviously know the reasons why it should be true, but consider also (the "kind of" part) the fact that there's stuff like mastodon, like small hobbyist forums, unpopular telegram groups & channels that don't sell ads, imageboards with a couple hundreds of users. They appear because people (the users, not so much the owners) need them. And they are (at least sometimes) loosing to FB/reddit/twitter, because there's at least something (even if that "something" is the network effect) that these Companies are better at providing.

Which means, that even if they only want to be companies, they (unfortunately for all) indeed are the "social media" in some sense. Sometimes even borderline with "essential infrastructure".

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