761–770 of 1001 posts
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I routinely get eyerolls for asking people to ask me first before putting pictures of me up on the internet.
I just had that conversation yesterday. The only pictures of me that exist are in relation to my current employer, and only because they post headshots of all new execs in the local paper (small towns are weird like that). Otherwise, I flat do not exist online. People are ASTOUNDED when I ask them to crop me out, or to ask my permission before posting with me in it. I'm always polite, but people act like I asked them…
Most people are happy to have photos with themselves in it. Like it or not, you're the strange one in this situation.
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 yo…
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…
4chan is a case of being co-opted: there hasn't been meaningful countercultural activity on 4chan in over a decade, but there is ample reactionary activity masquerading as counterculture. Muddying the distinction between the two is the reactionary's objective.
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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…
That you are 35 (hi, 36) and raised by people who came of age during the hippy time (also, hi, same!), I would presume, explicitly means you were not a result of hippy free love attitudes, and were a planned child, since those were ~60s and we're both 80s babies.
PS - Props to you for researching on Erowid!
Aside from any differences in observations about "working class party goers" (which, boy howdy do I have), if your theory is that "hippy attitudes towards their drugs cause addictive drug use today", that's going to run into a host of problems starting with the differences in which drugs.
I don't understand how direct testimony that significant power (political, governmental, social, etc etc) at the time was directed to destabilizing the community you're talking about doesn't support my assertion that any conversation around addiction in those communities is going to be complicated.
I'd bet $100 (probably more) that alcoholism has a larger overall impact than (illegal) drug addiction, if only because of there are far more people with an addiction to alcohol than there are people with addictions to illegal drugs; ie total case count. I can't speak to statistic regarding relative harm on a per-person basis; ie - yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the average heroin addict experiences more harm from their addiction than the average alcoholic.
Similarly, bet you $100 that abstinence-only education results in more accidental pregnancies and more children being born into unstable situations than "Free Love" ever did then or "sex-positivity" does today. If only because (IME) free love attitudes largely also come with pro-birth-control attitudes.
Re: Bets - I'm serious. We'd OFC have to formalize the question and answer-methodology ala prediction marketplaces, which might functionally prevent an actual bet, but regardless, I'm serious.
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 yo…
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…
I’m going to get flamed for this but at this point the closest we’re getting to counter culture is the exact opposite… “Trads”. Young people with super traditional values doing exactly the opposite of most of what you just listed. No one would seriously suggest the trendiest most mainstream supported or glorified lifestyles (van life, queerness, gig work) are counter culture…that IS the culture; there’s very little c…
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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…
> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, grea…
This is a vile take. It is sickening to compare liking a genre of music or wearing a certain style of dress or being queer to hating people because they're queer, not white, not male, or because they're a woman who won't have sex with you.
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> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, grea…
> jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
I'm not so sure about "emotionally and mentally stunted incels," but homophobia, racism, and sexism were all acceptable in the past, and given enough time will most likely be acceptable in the future.
Progress is a lie; change can go in all directions. It's a mistake to draw a line across living memory or the recent historical era and extrapolate whatever trend you find very far into the future.
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.
https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm...
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> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, grea…
> LGBTQ was edgy Aside from monogamous gay people, queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture. (This is not a positive thing, but it is reality.)