> we don't have a 21st century hippy equivalent
Today's counter-culture won't be identified somewhere on the left-right spectrum, or be found in the struggle for mass media attention. Which was basically the hippies.
The truly dominating force today is the weight of our technological environment. The actual physical things. The actual algorithms of the bureaucracies. The world doesn't "feel" the same. It actual "is" the same. To our senses.
The counter cultural movements are the ones that reject submission to technology. Cyclists stand up to the car (the actual thing). Homeschoolers threaten the processes of the school district (the actual bureaucracy). In the mainstream, the driver submits to the car, the redshirter submits to the bureaucracy.
All the rest; music you listen to, political opinions you hold, movies you see, books you read, sexual disposition. It is completely irrelevant because they do not challenge technological foundations. For the hippies, those were anchors since culture still attached much value to say e.g. artistic expression. But today, culture is not defined by those.
That is also why much of this discussion is actually about the premise, we can't even recognize counterculture. We're looking in the wrong places. A boomer certainly won't recognize it. Music is more diverse than ever, and the big networks don't define culture.
But to be sure: death metal is not counterculture. That just gets co-opted in a headphone ad or whatever. Instead, those cyclists who are now doing critical mass events, they are laying the foundations of a future in which the past will be unrecognizable. Death metal hobbyist lay the foundation for nothing but more niche consumption.
I'm somewhat joking with that last example, but even so. Look at dominant technology (physical or procedural), as concrete and specific as you can make it. What is in opposition of _that_, that is counter culture.