Do we live in a society without a counterculture? • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by srackey » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #502

anon223345 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their point was that BLM has flipped from counter cutler to mainline culture It’s on flags at schools, supported by government, roads are named after it, they have an enormous foundation with staff, and it’s even in college course curriculum

Ehh. I dunno, if that's "mainstream", why is this the third+ time this has had to be fought for? (BLM, Civil Rights, Civil War). We've had pictures of MLK in schools, Civil Rights has been "supported by government", roads were named after people, there were and are enormous foundations with staff, and it's definitely in college curriculums - and it's been that way for an entire human lifetime ... ...and yet the same…

This eternal fight is the culture.

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

#712

Post by notinfuriated » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

koprulusector wrote: post #560

narrator wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…

The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…

> closeted homophobic

So in addition to them being homophobes, they are also closeted homosexuals?

Why is it that this is such a popular insult among people here on HN? It's like this strange and incoherent insult from lefties where they think they're being supportive of gay people by calling out homophobia as bad, but also calling the homophobe gay to hurt them in some manner, which would imply that being gay is an insult. I suppose your defense might be that being gay is an insult to the homophobe, but why specifically would you call a homophobe gay, without further information? It erodes any assumption I'd have that you genuinely respect gay people if you're willing to just toss around some claims that this person or that group is gay.

And if I thought someone was a gay homophobe, putting aside any argument with them I have otherwise, I'd probably feel somewhat bad for them to be in that position.

Anyway, we both know that you're an edgelord. That's why you wrote that sentence. So quit hating on people who are just like you. You're like a closeted homophobe, but for 4chan edgelords.

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

#713

Post by neltnerb » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

> But it’s especially surprising given how much creative work today exists outside the mainstream.

See, the issue here may simply be that the author isn't aware of the central limit theorem. It is not at all strange that as you increase the number of independent estimates of what culture is (using content creation as a proxy) you see less "counterculture" (proportionally) because there's a smoothish variation between the two extremes with a peak near "mainstream" simply because that's how statistics work. A few scores of people on TV will invariably have more obviously different (and known) opinions.

But I'm also staring at this essay in quite a bit of confusion generally. There's all sorts of stuff that's counterculture being pushed into law by the extremist right, the extremist right is also a "counterculture", that's not slang for "the left". Outlawing teaching kids about LGBT people's existence and banning books is counterculture.

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

#714

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #162

neonnoodle wrote: post #71

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.

People should read “Gravity's Rainbow” - or at least an analysis of it. A major point/theme is that no matter what you do, if it’s useful/profitable/empowering/etc then it will be co-opted by “the man” or whatever. There’s a never ending graveyard of counter culture artifacts that existed to spit on the mainstream that were nearly merged in, packaged, and sold back to the hordes of consumers that think they’re outsid…

The cited goal of counterculture has always struck me as utterly incoherent and inconsistent not only with its own actions but it itself. It always fell into the same self-contradictory hypocrisy with no self awareness.

Look at the "counter-culture archetype" and how well it fits. - Dress the same to express your individuality" paradox. - Don't follow the rules but follow the rigidly defined rules about what is real "foo". - Say that you want people to think for themselves and be themselves yet get steaming mad at "posers" for not matching up with your vision or becoming adopted. - Complain about it dying out after complaining about it being popular.

It becomes like any other bigot's ever greased high velocity goalposts for what it takes to be considered acceptable.

When I was young I thought I was missing something. As I get older I get the feeling that no I didn't, it really was that incoherent and unpleasable.

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

#715

Post by jmull » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

dotconnector wrote: post #680

The purpose of 'counterculture' is an outlet for dissatisfaction, allowing the neo-colonial system to continue operating smoothly. Preferably getting the dissatisfied to buy things and serve their function among the colonized. The only true counterculture would be about changing the circumstances enabling the neo-colonial system, and this is the fear of the neo-colonialists and their enablers who benefit from status-…

I don’t think it makes sense to reduce culture, counter- or mainstream, to neocolonialism. Sure, it can be a tool of neocolonialism, but that’s hardly the extent.

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

#716

Post by at-w » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

tonfreed wrote: post #673

koprulusector wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…

Spoken like a true 1960s establishment thinker. Put yourself in the shoes of a WW2 veteran in the 60s. He sees his children get sucked into drug culture and protesting against the military that just 20 years ago saved the Pacific from tyranny. You turn on the news and see them making a nuisance of themselves in the streets. They're ungroomed, ugly, and do weird sex stuff. You ask yourself where you went wrong raising…

Or more objectively, they see murder rates literally doubling from 1964-1974, a rise never before seen in American history. They see a massive drug epidemic and an entirely unprecedented breakdown in the family unit that results in literally millions of children born to single mothers. They see a collapse of social institutions coinciding with an again unprecedented rise in suicides and antisocial activities. They see cities like Detroit, Newark (and to varying degrees nearly every other major city in the US) begin rapid declines that haven't been reversed to this day. Then they look to every other Western country that experienced the same "counterculture" in the same period and see these same issues to a similar or even greater extent.

It is either incredibly ignorant or intentionally dishonest to pretend that the 1960s counterculture was some uniformly benevolent force for peace and love, and says a lot about the person claiming so's lack of ability to see anything outside their contemporary/status-quo perspective.

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

#717

Post by EGreg » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

Well, it seems that hacker culture and open source software would be the antidote to all these.

Web2 and Web3 have been captured by the profit motive. Web2 with professional VCs and Web3 with everyone playing VC. Web1 was very much a countercultural movement.

I've been part of the IndieWeb, DecentralizedWeb, OfflineFirst movements, met with Tim Berners-Lee, just finished an interview with Noam Chomsky and David Harvey (raw video here: https://vimeo.com/795006182/31cdfcf335). I've written about what needs to happen on the Web for it to change (https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-a-web-that-lost-its-way-c...)

It's hard to have a counterculture when the dominant tools are all owned by huge corporations and governments. Here is some open source software to get you started if you're interested:

Web2: https://qbix.com

Web3: https://intercoin.org/applications

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

#718

Post by munificent » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #674

JKCalhoun wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Covered in the 14: "Alternative voices exist-in fact, they are everywhere--but are rarely heard, and their cultural impact is negligible."

Not at all. The weird stuff is well heard and has a large cultural impact. You'll have no problem finding countless examples of weird things that have been viewed and interacted with by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Compare that to say a punk band in the 80s that may have only had a few thousand people ever see it perform, or even the entire hippie movement which was only about half a million peop…

> You'll have no problem finding countless examples of weird things that have been viewed and interacted with by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

I don't think how widespread a piece of media is has a strong correlation with its impact. Yes, several billion people probably know who Grumpy Cat is. But it doesn't matter. Our awareness of Grumpy Cat doesn't change how we think about the world, how we live, how we relate to others. It's just a shared but otherwise mostly meaningless experience, like seeing a rainbow.

The Beat Generation was a relatively tiny subculture whose work at the time was consumed by a small number of people. But we remember them because the work they created mattered. It said something meaningful about the culture it was a reaction to and by doing that, it forced that culture to change.

Beats, hippies, punks, maybe early hackers were all countercultures because they in some way bent the arrow of history. There are no shortage of subcultures today, and they are great for finding people you share interests. But they don't have the same impact as a real counterculture.

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

#719

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

savryn wrote: post #642

Shared404 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context: Am LGBTQ person who also has traditional religious views. Big disagree. You carry a pride flag in the wrong parts of town where I am, you'll get beat up. Walk around preaching hellfire and damnation and at most you'll get a lot of annoyed looks and at best you'll get people cheering you on. > In schools these days it's trendy to be anything but straight. In high schools in my town people get beat up for comi…

the people beating up anyone are the cultural underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites. Physical violence (and any indicator of physical needs- shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'powe…

[deleted]

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

#720

Post by LAC-Tech » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #686

LAC-Tech wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that, in turn, is the slow death of the American working class. This is a much harsher society economically. That is why you step over bodies in San Francisco's Tenderloin. It wasn't like that when I moved here (early 80's). But why are you surprised? The hippies pushed free love and drug use. The inevitable end result was more children without stable families and drug addiction. When you step over those bodi…

That's a deeply flawed statement on a number of levels, here's a few: 1. Hippies were ~1960s. Children of hippies would then be adults in the ~1980s, and would be grandparents now. Tenderloin's median age[1] is 38, or 20 years too young 2a. Hippies pushed marijuana and psychedelics. Weed has a 10% addiction rate. LSD and psilocybin have no addiction rate. 2b. Drugs that are addictive (heroin) had complex, controversi…

1. I'm 35, was raised by people who came of age during the hippy time, and not only was I influenced by it via family members, but also by that point schools and other institutions.

2a. Recreational drug use cannot be so neatly compartmentalised as you might think. The only reason I tried marijuana and psychedelics but refused speed was because I was a nerd who researched things on erowid. I don't know if you've met young working class party-goers, but most are not so discerning.

2b. The quote you provided doesn't support what you said.

2c. It has a significant impact, but you're delusional if you think it has more of an impact than amphetamines and heroin. I'm certainly not here to defend alcoholism.

3a. Free Love is going to result in more accidental pregnancies and more children being born in unstable situations. I surely don't need to explain this.

3b. No, but it damn sure helps.