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
#2Is there anything but counterculture on the internet anymore? How I miss the occasional measured, adult point of view! The internet has destroyed most of my interest in eccentric artists or alternative viewpoints.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#3Yet his examples are people who did stuff to get clicks.
Arguably, the most effective counterculture in recent times was QAnon. That didn't end well.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#4I'm going to have to read this again to see if it's brilliant or just pretentious. But I'm going to print it and read it again more carefully, which suggests to me that it may lean toward the former.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#5I'm going to have to read this again to see if it's brilliant or just pretentious. But I'm going to print it and read it again more carefully, which suggests to me that it may lean toward the former.
Got about halfway through and feels like it’s taking a lot of words to say very little, the author seems to think it’s hard to be an anarchist today and that’s sad.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#6Still 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.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#7Still 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 think there is something similar at work with decentralized platforms: they might never be as slick as their centralized counterparts, but it’s a kind of ascetic choice that opens new doors.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#8Still 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.
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 into private WhatsApp group chats, Discord groups, and so on.
In some cases these are groups of people I know in real life, and in some cases everyone is anonymous or pseudonymous.
And there is definitely an unspoken rule of "don't unilaterally invite anyone, don't advertise that this group exists, stay hidden, we like what we have going on here."
It's in some ways a reversion to the style of older private Usenet/BBS/IRC channels, but in other respects it's a lateral move. For one, it's still mostly happening on centralized platforms.
What I think is interesting is how our media ecology (in the sense of media as means we communicate and express ourselves, not "mass media") is an interplay between these big public spaces and a proliferation of smaller private spaces. It's not _just_ a dark forest, there's also a bright canopy into which people emerge, forage, and carry back down into the forest.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#9Still 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 think there is something similar at work with decentralized platforms: they might never be as slick as their centralized counterparts, but it’s a kind of ascetic choice that opens new doors.
I find this is a good way to learn. Comfortable mega-platforms don't really foster anything productive (generalizing, obviously) but when you start to play with the bleeding edge decentralized options it allows you see "what could be".
Trying to rid my life of google has opened all sorts of doors. If you're a tinkerer there are a plethora of options available for you to customize your experience and discover new capabilities.
Re: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram
#10The truth is that today the counter-culture is the right wing dudes (and ladies) who won't be beholden to trigger warnings, won't treat particular words as if they have magical powers and won't try to get you fired if you openly believe that male and female are real concepts. If your cursor is hovering over the downvote button right now then that's natural - counter culture isn't popular. By definition.