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All countercultures get coopted. "Counter" is a dynamic thing. I understand the nostalgia, but this is the same old "get off my lawn" stuff that all old punks/g
by drauh 11y ago
All countercultures get coopted. "Counter" is a dynamic thing. I understand the nostalgia, but this is the same old "get off my lawn" stuff that all old punks/goths/hackers/hippies/whatever write 20 years after their heyday.
- ethbro 11y agoI wouldn't say it gets coopted. I'd say it has historically gotten appropriated, and then the public has been too ignorant to tell the difference. (Either through the unwillingness or incompetence of any of the original disciples to popularize the true meaning, or simple giving way beneath ever better funded commercial interests)
- Jtsummers 11y ago> I wouldn't say it gets coopted. I'd say it has historically gotten appropriated, and then the public has been too ignorant to tell the difference. That's exactly what coopting is. See definition 2b here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co-opt http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co-opt
- ethbro 11y agohttp://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appropriating http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/appropriating I'm quibbling over words too. But the difference to me is that the problem is not that "hacking" (or "hippie culture", "patriot", "environmentalism", or "American") gets used in a context at odds with what its founders would espouse. It's that a lot of times that secondary (historically speaking) definition then becomes the dominant definition in the public's mind. Whatever mutually exclusive word for that is the one I want to use. Because, ultimately, it doesn't matter a rat's ass if my local LUG knows the more positive definition of a hacker, if a geeky 8-year old with a penchant for figuring out interesting things to do with computers is surrounded by exposure (news, adults, school, popular media) to the negative definition.