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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?

#911
post #473

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> IMO Incels tend to be people who would, at the first chance, jump at the opportunity to become sexually active. It's literally in the name: involuntary celibate

>It's literally in the name: involuntary celibate I've always taken issue with that term. Any guy who bathes, doesn't say mean things, tries to make himself more attractive, doesn't consider a woman unattractive because she isn't an 8+, and learns to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex will find someone sooner or later. I don't know much about them, but people presented as incels generally seem unwilling t…

> but people presented as incels

Originally it was a label they chose for themselves because they couldn't figure out why they kept getting rejected. It was only later outsiders caught on, then turned it into an insult. Beyond that I also don't know very much.

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

#912
post #525

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> I'm not catholic so please help me out here. These are all reasonable questions. I'll answer as best as I can, but please understand that I'm not any kind of formal authority. > If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23? I don't know of any Catholic doctrine that says people can't use pseudonyms, nicknames, or even change their…

> I would most likely treat it as a good opportunity to say nothing on the subject. You know you can do this with trans people too. Or do they not have names?

That's not considered enough in some environments.

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

#913
post #721

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Wow uhh... that sure is a post. Let's try to disentagle this gish gallop shall we :) ? > the people beating up anyone are the underclass/proles, be it rural whites or ghetto blacks -- by definition these are not cultural elites. But they do make up the culture of the parts of society people actually live in. > Physical violence (and physical needs, shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and ani…

sorry but discussions of culture trends can't be easily parsed by people who can only think so ...literally why not just get stuck on 'what IS culture even', 'what is a trend Really??', and other forms of useless filler-think that magically only crop up when a middle class smart-and-friendly-smile type person is made uncomfortable by working class people actually 'noticing things' with their eyes and ears... Policy-w…

> sorry but discussions of culture trends can't be easily parsed by people who can only think so ...literally

"I can explain away anything you say, because in my worldview internal consistency doesn't matter"

> I'm a radical feminist, if american conservatives/rep have common cause then all the better

And then all became clear.

The only people who I've met who describe themselves as radical feminists are described by everyone else as TERF's.

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

#914
post #596

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"It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness." Completely agree. It has also never been easier to discover sameness, broadcast sameness, or replicate sameness. The Instagrammification of the world is why the hip local coffee shop in Thailand looks like it could be in Brooklyn or Amsterdam.

Meh. Even countercultures replicate sameness. Find someone from any counterculture and everything from his/her ideas, to their music, to the perfume they stink from are probably all exactly the same. There's really nothing new that 99.99999999% of humans come up with. I mean a 4chan user in Poland spouts the same tired nonsense as a 4chan user from Argentina or the US. Same styles of dress. Same haircuts. Even uses t…

[deleted]

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

#915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yeah, there's a million corners of non-mainstream culture today that aren't 4chan and aren't just "edgy" middleschoolesque trolling that are also "countercultures". There's more variety than ever thanks to the ease of people connecting. If you're betting that 4chan is the one that's going to stand out of "ahead of its time" you aren't doing it because "counterculture is always ahead" you're doing it because it's the…

If it isn't offensive to mainstream sensibilities, it's a sub-culture not a counter-culture. You're describing sub-cultures of the mainstream.

For example, in the current year vegetarianism is a sub-culture of mainstream lifestyle dieting while carnivorism is a counter-culture.

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

#916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society did not get abruptly and dramatically unequal between 2013 and 2015 nor between 2019 and 2020. Socioeconomics doesn’t predict these crime surges. Richard Rosenfeld speaking to The Guardian: “The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson Effect” Vox reporting on Travis Campbell’s research: “Campbell’s research indicates that these protests correlate with a 10% increase in murders…

Of course they're being silly if they decide the mere discussion of holding criminals accountable is responsible for a rise in crime, just because said criminals happen to be wearing blue. The solution is obvious. Start rolling heads of Police Chiefs until they get their hierarchies of people in line. If it ends with the entire police union fired so be it, insubordinate lawless police are worse than useless.

This is just a recipe for chiefs that are good are juking stats or playing PR. You can't just fire the person at the top, the institution needs to change.

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

#917

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…

Your list is literally what the main stream would specify about hippies: stunted in growth and irrationally angry at society for its goals and aspirations (hippies would be seen as man children who will rather do drugs and have sex than grow up, get a job and start a family).

It appears to me that you are so angry at 4-chan for its perceived ideas that you cannot see things from their perspective.

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

#918

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…

> 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.

The opposite actually: nobody would look down on you for going to a Jazz club, rock is mainstream and disco is just old, not unacceptable.

Being LGBTQ is a lot more accepted today than it was 20 years ago. Fuck I could set my pronouns on my linkedin profile of all places.

If a man has long hair, it is looked as a style and is completely acceptable unless you are in the military.

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

#919

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.

Being LGBTQ is one of the few identities or choices that will result in being disowned by a significant portion of American families. That attitude is edging out of the mainstream but it’s practically dogma among evangelicals and other socially conservative groups. So yes, those people do live in a different reality, where Biden admin policy and “Will and Grace” don’t matter at all.

That is a good argument for the social conservative movement and identity being an/the counter culture.

It is an interesting thought.

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

#920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motivation matters. Jazz and Rock was the music of african americans that became mainstream in white america just like rap did later. Punk was a reaction to rock becoming boring and stale. Disco came out from the african-american AND LGBTQ community, and the eventual "disco sucks" mainstream backlash was at least somewhat motivated by racism/homophobia, not anything inherent with disco. None of these creative out…

>Punk was a reaction to rock becoming boring and stale. ... >None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone. So when Sid Vicious (and other punks) wore a swastika, he wasn't trying to offend people?

OK, you're right. But, that's an example of something that was indefensible at the time, and still indefensible.

Punk Rock the MUSIC genre changed rock n roll forever and made it better.

Punk Rock the Swastika Wearers didn't need to exist.

It's the same today with 4chan the Meme Factory vs 4chan the Swastika Wearers.

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