Live data from Hacker News

Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

xmodtwo.com

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#481

The medium is the message dudes. At this point in history, what will qualify a true counterculture is NOT BEING ONLINE. Whatever the true counterculture will be, it won’t be subject to the Internet and its all-seeing eye. It won’t be made out of memes and flame wars. No matter what the political bent, we’re all very much a captive audience online. “Master’s house/master’s tools” and all that.

On this topic: part of counterculture used to be the ability to *signal* your identification with the group to other group members. Styles of dress, certain symbols or artifacts have all been commonly used. How does one signal to others their social media rejectionism in the age of social media communication ubiquity?

Socialize in person. I don’t even remember the last time I went somewhere with the intention of socializing but without any knowledge or plan about who would be there (e.g. in my small town, there was a specific place teenagers used to just go to hang out without specific plans to do so, meeting with whoever happened to also show up).

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one needs to change the way they act around you. Christianity and Catholicism are strongly majority groups in the US. You were already treated as a Christian because that's what the majority of our society is based on.

> no one needs to change the way they act around you. This is only because Catholics and Christians often don’t mention when workplace behaviors make them uncomfortable. I’ve been in multiple situations where coworkers have used names of God as expletives or made jokes about things I consider holy. And if you’re a Catholic and “trad” and planning lunch with colleagues, things like “is it Friday” or “is it a Friday in…

Abstinence is a form of penance. Frankly if the office doesn't bend over backwards for your self-flagellation every week I'm OK with it. Are you demanding that the entire office fast with you if they can't find a pescatarian option?

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#484
If you only consume mainstream media then you may personally live in a society which lacks a counterculture.

You strike up a conversation with the girl picking mushrooms in the middle of nowhere or you go to an underground death metal concert or spend a bit of time on 4chan and you'll find countercultures alive and well that you're just not part of.

If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then you must be looking at a woefully tiny portion of the creative world. It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#485
I kind of think we have a fragmentary counterculture going against prevailing culture in certain aspects only. Just as hippie counterculture was obviously mostly in american college-educated middle class students and black panthers were obviously primarily black.

We have traditional catholics in america who are going against the pope's relatively progressive positions on gay people.

We have aggressive de-institutionalize-the-cops people.

We have had (for a while now!) anti-prison people (this is far longer than "defund the police" and has roots in anti-racism) and I think they're pretty countercultural. (This is not "we should make better prisons" people, I mean "we should have no prisons".)

We have had monarchists, people who believe we should do away with democracy and go back to monarchist rule. IDK about them but I know they exist.

I think all counterculture is going against some aspect of a culture, not all aspects of all culture. But since we're aware of so much more cultures than before, the relative counter movements all seem small in comparison individually. I'm sure hippies were never that big, nor punks.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another hard agree. I always get a good laugh when people in queer culture claim to be living a counter culture lifestyle. Meanwhile the US state department is flying the queer flag at its embassies around the world and using it to agitate foreign conservative cultures. I nominate being an unapologetic white male as the counter culture of our current time. Just watch how many downvotes you'll get on any social media…

It's not that it's an unpopular position, it's that the argument is flawed and the point you're trying to make falls flat. First, you lump all of queer culture into one group, a false categorization without which your augment fails. Second, you assert that being in the overwhelmingly dominant racial group, the overwhelmingly dominant sexual orientation and the undeniably dominant gender should somehow be interpreted…

[deleted]

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#487
post #76

Personally I think the word “counterculture” should be retired, as we no longer live in monocultural societies. We no longer gather round any shared fireplace. For a counterculture to meaningfully exist, it has to be somehow discordant with a dominant narrative - but there is no dominant narrative any more. The west is not ruled by the left or the right or the church or the state. We are all fragmenting off into echo…

There is a big trend on this thread for people to declare themselves the counter culture like it is an aspiration to be so.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#488

I'm pretty sure I've been existing in a number of counter-cultures for the last decade or two. These have been either linked to my identity or physical location, I couldn't have properly experienced them through consuming media on the subject. Certainly all required an active choice and/or lifestyle change on my part. Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life: - Freelanci…

> There is a huge non-obvious culture of LQBTQIA

Does the second Q stand for something else than the first? Or is it a typo?

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#489
Using a throwaway for this, because I know this topic is sensitive. Hello fellow HN'er :)

I'm not sharp on the definition of counter culture, but just by the feeling of "counter", I'd argue that the pickup artist community has some aspects of it. I think about game obsessively for both genders, though mostly my own (male). The following that I'm writing is true for both, but in the pickup artist community it seems that almost exclusively men are practicing it (but women could too).

A few things that feel counter:

1. You can take pro-active charge of your dating life by consciously/intentionally approaching people: on the street, in a book store, on the train, in a club, in a night club, in a bar, more or less anywhere. Especially the first 10 seconds to 2 minutes need to be scripted as you're basically talking to the autopilot of a person and not the actual person (my opinion). In normal culture, you just "naturally" meet people through friends or "it just happens". When I'm on the street and approach someone, it doesn't just happen. When I'm on Tinder even, it's optimized. The way I approach people is pre-meditated, the improv side comes out after 10 seconds to 2 minutes (there are also schools of seduction that use a fully scripted approach, I've never done that, can't talk about that. I started out with improv all the way and came to the sad conclusion that you can't do that for the first seconds to few minutes).

2. Sex with tens to hundreds to thousands of people is fine. There are a few other cultures that do this, but not the mainstream one. Note, it's not fully counter cultural here as having a GF as a goal is almost as admirable (I say almost because everyone says it is just as admirable, but the high lay count seduction guys don't care about what you have to say if your lay count isn't high because they believe you lack experience).

3. A fairly strong belief [1] that men should be dominant, leading, winning and powerful. Women are inherently submissive, caring, supporting and seen as weaker. This "seen as weaker" is even true when it comes to cognitive abilities. I don't think anyone would say it that way, but I can see it in the behavior. Such as the phrase a "girl is shit testing you." I've thought deeply about it and realized that men test as well and some tests by women are actually quite good (and others indeed utter nonsense, but that goes for both genders IMO). The thing is, I've met quite a few very appealing looking women in the US that come across as dumb, I can't put it any other way. I'm from Europe and it makes the dumb women from Europe look sophisticated (for example, they are aware of other European countries so know more about language than their US counter parts). But I personally find this whole view nonsense as my strategy is focused on finding intelligent women that are amazingly attractive as well (discussing the Bhagavad Gita on minute 3 in Florida? Yep, been there, done that :) Or what about Austrian politics and geopolitics on minute 1 in Vienna? Definitely). People exist on a distribution, but the strong polar image that the seduction community tries to create, it feels counter.

I'm a hardcore fan of 1. I'm a fan of 2, no one should be slut shamed but slut celebrated. I disagree with 3, but I'm one of the few or so it seems. With that said, all these 3 things feel "counter" to the current culture (with perhaps not 2, in a sense because when you think about it, any form of sexual expression that doesn't harm others is worthy of celebration according to feminism).

[1] Not by all, not by me anyway but I'm a complicated cookie in general for many cultures :) Careful with mapping the seduction community to me 1 to 1, it doesn't work.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#490
There's a compelling argument to be made that the furries constitute a counterculture: they certainly fall outside the mainstream, with most external perceptions of them range from see them as "weird" to "degenerates". They create plenty of their own cultural artifacts in the form of art and writing. And they have a disproportionate impact on the tech world relative to their numbers.

On the other hand they are a very small group relative to, say, the hippies, and aren't really framed a being in direct opposition of the status quo. But I don't think the status quo has much support in popular culture. Our current state of affairs is the result of a stalemated tug of war between many different groups who all oppose the status quo.

Post reply on HN