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The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

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Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#91

Post by helen___keller »

mdoms wrote: post #30
jandrese wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you can't openly express your dominance and superiority over some other group of people is life even worth living?

Counter culture should make you uncomfortable. Otherwise what's it counter to? By the way, a lot of people here seem to think that the term "counter culture" has positive connotations. It doesn't, necessarily.

> By the way, a lot of people here seem to think that the term "counter culture" has positive connotations. It doesn't, necessarily.

I would expand on this to say:

If society and culture are unjust, then to be moral and just necessitates dipping into counterculture. Example: Participating in the underground railroad would be counter-culture in a society built on slavery.

If society and culture are truly just, then the counter-culture is perhaps necessarily unjust.

Of course, real life is never so clear-cut (we will never live in a truly just society), but I would argue that society now is substantially more just than it was for most of human history, and consequently this reflects back on the sort of counter-culture that exists.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#92

Post by greenonions »

itronitron wrote: post #73
lamp_book wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that's an important distinction - you need a critical mass of people sharing in countercultural behavior/practices in some way to get an actual counterculture. Many people have eschewed social media for one reason or another but not in some unified way that I know of.

A culture doesn't require that people meet up and agree on some way of doing things. Hence a counterculture does not need to be organized or even acknowledged while in process. It just happens and then gets written about a decade later.

Imagine the Instagram posts profiling the weirdos like myself who simply have not been using Instagram for the past decade for the Instagram audience.

"What do you do when you visit a scenic vista, if not take pictures?"

"I look at it for a time and leave."

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#93

Post by shakezula »

edrxty wrote: post #43
shakezula wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been very interesting to see counter culture swing to the (arguably far but that part is up for interpretation) right. Terrifying, but nonetheless interesting.

In a way this makes sense, the mega platforms have become a highly uniform slightly left leaning milquetoast walled city. That leaves being either a raging socialist (guilty) or a raging....bigot. The far right isn't tolerated as they're dangerous to advertisers sensitivities. Meanwhile the far left individuals are mostly tolerated but they're also all very aware that if the far right were to disappear overnight, the…

I'm hesitant to even admit that far-left politics are more accepted; I've seen harsher rejection of socialist ideals than legitimate, objective fascism. But I agree with your general point - if the far right was gone overnight, the far left would be next up on the chopping block.

> highly uniform slightly left leaning milquetoast walled city.

This is absolutely true, though. It's become their immediate point of mockery for any right leaning people. They get to call us robots, NPCs, brittle snowflakes, etc... and the left doesn't have a good retort. :shrug:

It's frustrating, because I think that the left should chill out with the identity politics and at least start trying to focus on larger issues and really drive those points home - healthcare, income inequality, etc... those are issues that have overwhelming public support but are constantly able to be derailed by republican talking points because of the identity politics.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#94

Post by Kelamir »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #29
everdrive wrote: post #6

Still reading the article, but this is an interesting blurb if nothing else: "To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self." I hadn't thought of boycotting much of popular online space as being counter-cultural. It's an interesting thought.

> I hadn't thought of boycotting much of popular online space as being counter-cultural. It's an interesting thought I think the interesting part is that it's kind of counter-culture but it itself is not really a culture at all. There are no groups (as far as I know) for people who eschew social media. They don't meet up at the pub and talk about it, they don't have any kind of organization, even a loose one. People…

> I think the interesting part is that it's kind of counter-culture but it itself is not really a culture at all.

It reminds me of a chapter from Kino's adventures, where she finds a city, which has a culture of cat lovers. When she leaves them, she meets their king, who tells the story of the land: people had decided they don't need the king and any culture, so they've decided to appear to every traveller with a different culture.

However, the king says, they are not aware that that is their new culture.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#95

Post by datavirtue »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #49
1propionyl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy to Cixin Liu's "dark forest" concept also seems apt and enlightening. (Basically: it's a game theoretic response to the Fermi Paradox that suggests that any sensible galactic civilization would avoid making contact with any other civilization and attempt to stay hidden.) More and more over the past few years, I've seen my own social circles migrate away from public forums like Facebook and Twitter and int…

The thing that I hate about what social media has done is that it is resistant to persistance of knowledge. I grew up in the heyday of forums (late 90s to mid-late 00s). It seems like a lot of these groups have moved to facebook (or discord, or whatsapp), and now a lot of that knowledge for specialty stuff is unsearchable and behind a wall. One of my hobbies is boatbuilding, and there is a LOT of good material that i…

That was the beginning of the end for me. Trying to search for a post I saw a few hours ago resulted in nothing but frustration. What a joke.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#96

Post by helen___keller »

klyrs wrote: post #72
mdoms wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter culture should make you uncomfortable. Otherwise what's it counter to? By the way, a lot of people here seem to think that the term "counter culture" has positive connotations. It doesn't, necessarily.

In your original comment, and to a lesser extent here, you seem to be saying that counterculture necessarily has negative connotations. I listed some counterexamples in another comment, but take "bronies" for another. Does the notion (grown men obsessing over a kids show) make people uncomfortable? Yeah, kinda... but is that because dominant culture says only girls should like ponies? Or is it because we assume men w…

Comparing to my comment[0], I think we're seeing a divergence in the meaning of "counter-culture" as either:

a. Counter or opposing the dominant culture

b. An uncommon or rare culture

I argue in [0] that (a) is increasingly likely to be negative as society grows more just. However, as you mention, (b) can include all manner of neutral cultures, which are of course not necessarily negative.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26440512

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#97

Post by drdrey »

greenonions wrote: post #89
potta_coffee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems somewhat counter-cultural to not have social media and tv, though rejecting those things doesn't define a culture. I've had visitors to my house that realize I don't have a TV and they assume I'm some kind of judgemental weirdo.

I don't own a TV and most people here don't seem to know how to react to this information. Often they don't seem to have considered the possibility that someone wouldn't own one. I haven't watched television for entertainment in a decade or so, so I only get references which I absorb through YouTube, Twitch. I wouldn't think of myself countercultural, but it shows just how conforming many people are without realizing…

> most people here

Can you define “here”? I live in a country that is not your country of origin?

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#98

Post by throwawayboise »

pjc50 wrote: post #40
thepasswordis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely correct. Consider: your HR department is left leaning, your boss is probably left leaning, your teachers are left leaning, the government is left leaning. How on earth could the "counter culture" be the hegemonic culture of the most powerful billionaires on earth, and the people who have the most power over the most people in their daily lives (HR departments for adults, school administrators for ch…

> your HR department is left leaning, your boss is probably left leaning, the government is left leaning .. if you think this, your definition of left leaning is completely broken and your Overton window is in a very strange place.

It entirely depends on where you work. If you work for a municipality or university, it's probably very accurate.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#99

Post by satellite2 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #59
helen___keller wrote: post #18

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me: > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when well-intentioned claims of “silence is violence” (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP “Silence = Death” campaign) spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following who hadn’t come forward with a timely public statement of solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popul…

What you're saying is and isn't true. One example of a countercultural movement that's been in the news recently is the DDoSecrets leaks/hacks (they get upset if you aren't clear that they're hackers). They've got a strong Twitter presence that helps them get their message out, but they conduct no "real" business on Twitter. So a counterculture can use the mainstream platforms, but they choose to do so only as a micr…

It seems like a very strong stance to say that the publicly advertised leaks and hacks are not financially motivated.

Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

imaginationra wrote: post #90

I run an independent film/animation/music/interactive studio- I have never owned any mobile phone and don't use any social media except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media platforms. We are the counterculture. Our studio has released torrents of media over the past 15 years that I would classify as counterculture but you would never know because we aren't hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing…

> its just not playing in the sandboxes everyone else is playing in

Where is it playing?

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