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.
Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
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Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#72No, the counterculture is actually thriving. But many people just don't understand it yet, because of how, well, counter it is to their ideas about culture: its roots are now in conservatism. It currently seems to be cool and edgy amongst the kids to be alt right in pretty much exactly the same way that it was cool and edgy to be very liberal in the 60s. I'm not saying I agree with or subscribe to the tenets of conse…
I don't think a movement can be called countercultural once it's taken over one of the two major US political parties and chosen a president.
I think we might still consider this counterculture as long as its norms are not mainstream culture. And I think it's fair to say the dominant culture of many cultural institutions in the US currently has a distinct leftward lean - Hollywood, news, education, research, social media, advertising, other large swathes of industry. (Which again, I'm not saying is a bad thing)
Also, Trump represented many things to many people, as opposed to just this emerging alt-right counterculture idea cloud. And by the numbers, most voters soundly rejected him in 2020.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding of counterculture is that it 'counters'. I.e. it inherently searches to change or influence the dominant culture. Your examples do show that we are (thankfully) not a monoculture. But they place themselves outside of our culture, instead trying to influence. A good example of counter culture is BLM, Extinction Rebellion or Occupy Wallstreet. Only thing: those are movements, not cultures. And they are…
>BLM >LGBT >counter culture Endlessly supported by literally every news outlet, major tech company, big 5 sports league, F1000, university, and at least half of the political class. You’re not counter to any major institution, lmao. You’re not the resistance
This is such a superficial understanding of "support". They make their logo rainbow for a month. None of the groups you mentioned support police abolition, prison abolition, for instance. Police budgets still go up. Homeless encampments still get bulldozed. Black people are still killed by police.
Capitalists have co-opted the least disruptive demands of advocates in an attempt to draw attention away from the actual point. They think if they focus on saying words and not doing deeds, people will move on and forget.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#74I'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…
>Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life [...] I'm not sure if I am agreeing and disagreeing with the OP. Your examples of counter culture are alternative lifestyles . The author (Kirk Thaker) and his cited author (Ted Gioia) were talking about media and entertainment content. Basically, the "long-tail" of obscure/experimental content not being widely exposed and whatev…
The extent to which these kinds of lifestyles are astroturfed is always interesting. Not claiming it is necessarily the case, just that it does happen from time to time. Thomas Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool” is a good reference here.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#75The moment in which techies realize that they became the mainstream, and counterculture is elsewhere.
In the present moment, the counterculture is always hard to find and identify. That's what makes it the counterculture. Now you can read and listen to the Beat poets anywhere, but that would have been challenging in the early '50s. You had to go to the right coffee shop on the right night and if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch…
> if you went and saw what was going on you might question if these were geniuses pushing the frontiers of expression or a bunch of degenerates exploiting impressionable young people.
To be fair, a lot of people still have this question about the Beat Generation.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#76Personally 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 chambers and bubbles of culture, where we each take a slightly different slice of the cake. If anything, we are all the counterculture, and so the term’s meaning evaporates.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#77Feels that way. Inside metro areas in the US there is very little difference of opinion on most issues. It was not always this way. People seems mostly content to consume content and ‘raise awareness’ online, and repeat.
You can't have non-standard opinions anymore. All opinions are now politics. If I say I like guns people instantly categorize me as Right-Wing-Nut or Alt-Right-Nut. If you express any kind of differing opinion publicly you will be associated with everything and anything the person hates. There are differing opinions, but those need to be kept private for fear of retaliation.
100%
Wait what? You adopt some right wing ideas and some leftist ideas? You are "modernist"?, you are just a right/left winger!!!(depending on their enemy)/s
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#78Having the median beliefs and political opinions of your grandparents is counter culture enough that you will be banned from pretty much any social media website.
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#79The moment in which techies realize that they became the mainstream, and counterculture is elsewhere.
I’ve been wondering for a few years… was Big Bang Theory the instigator or the indicator?
Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?
#80Is it any wonder that the artistic scene is curiously conformist?
"Wiens brood men eet diens woord men spreekt".
Ah Dutch language has so many great sayings involving money- like Eskimos and the snow.
Artists are clowns hired by a small elite that has the disposable income to spend. Ofcourse we live in a society that idolises the arts for some reason but most people never go to ballet or buy a sculpture. In Europe the government has subsidized theatre productions for a hundred years and it hasn't made a dent.