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Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

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

#801

Post by jjk166 »

munificent wrote: post #718
jjk166 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Grumpy cat is mainstream culture. Yes, just because something has been widely consumed does not make it impactful, but that's a very different position from there are no impactful things widely consumed.

The impact of various past countercultures is only evident in hindsight. As you said, movements like the Beat generation were at the time tiny subcultures, of the exact same sort we have loads of today. To say that 80s hackers were a counterculture but modern biohackers are just a subculture is simply temporal chauvinism.

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

#802

Post by AnimalMuppet »

zamfi wrote: post #627
somenameforme wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would you really assert that 1950s in the US was a complete monolith? I think the reason we might intuitively see it that way is because, ironically, we're outsiders. But of course I'm sure you'd agree that there were countless little cultures going on at the time there as well, even within the same cities. So it seems clear that "mainstream" culture is not monolithic, merely dominant. You can always find bubbles…

[Caveat: I'm not an expert here, so ignore all this.] Well, yes and no. The mainstream culture was far more dominant in the 50s than even 20 years later. And of course there were countless little (and often not-at-all-little!) cultures going on at the time -- and still going on. But "counterculture" is not merely "alternative culture" -- and no one would write a post describing America today as lacking "alternative c…

Three channels (at least 3 networks) on TV. Perhaps more than one local paper, but all the out-of-town news came from UPI or AP. Time and Life. Maybe the New York Times. And that was about it. Those eight organizations defined mainstream culture. And their positions were not very far apart.

Nothing has that level of control today. There are more major organizations, and they have much more divergent positions. As a result, the culture has fragmented, becoming multiple cultures. There is no "mainstream" any more. There are multiple major streams, but no one mainstream.

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

#803

Post by yunwal »

munificent wrote: post #718
jjk166 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

In the past 10 years, capitalism has become a dirty word to people under 30. Whether you agree or not, that feels like it matters.

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

#804

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

czx4f4bd wrote: post #767
Perceval wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were. 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.

Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets.

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

#805

Post by [deleted] »

jjk166 wrote: post #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 yo…

[deleted]

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

#806

Post by mshake2 »

czx4f4bd wrote: post #797
mshake2 wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture Being supported by advertising, movies, tv shows, signaled by major corporations and workplaces, and supported top-down by the government means its edgy and counterculture? We live in completely different realities I guess.

> Aside from monogamous gay people Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships? How is the government providing this "top-down" support? Are there now tax breaks for people in poly relationships?

>Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships?

Are you kidding me?

  https://www.hbomax.com/collections/lgbtq-voices
  https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/100010
>How is the government providing this "top-down" support?

  https://joebiden.com/lgbtq-policy/#
This is not "edgy counterculture"

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

#807

Post by calculatte »

czx4f4bd wrote: post #767
Perceval wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were. 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.

Counterculture doesn't cease to exist just because you are full of hate.

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

#808

Post by wolverine876 »

Perceval wrote: post #677
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…

> 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…

That argument seems to rationalize 4chan behavior by simply saying 'it's counter-culture', as if that makes the behavior better or worse, more or less bad or justified. It changes nothing; it's posers imitating counter-culture (by that definition).

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

#809

Post by machina_ex_deus »

rightbyte wrote: post #527
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, so I am right that this is counter culture? I said this and it triggered you to jump and respond with fact checks and whatever. https://web.archive.org/web/20060212064058/https://www.merri... Can also show you that the dominant medical narrative around vaccines was that they provide immunity (except in the case of immune compromised individuals). To this day I'm actually astonished watching the entire medical co…

> The definition of vaccine (provides immunity), I kinda agree with you except about vaccines. The seasonal flu vaccines are nowhere close to giving immunity and predates COVID-19.

The excuses made for flu vaccines (there are many strains of flu after generations of different strains circulating and diverging), don't apply to COVID.

It's pretty obvious they started to redefine what vaccine does right around the time the COVID vaccine failed. The tests used to authorize the vaccines supposedly showed 95% efficiency doing just that.

The narrative shift was extremely sharp.

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

#810

Post by wolverine876 »

oneplane wrote: post #740
Perceval wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Counter-culture is supposed to be [... list of stuff...] No, it's not. The words explain themselves perfectly fine: an opposing culture. What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture. And just in case someone takes "counter-productive…

> It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive

IOW, reactionary

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