6 ms·

One subculture I got somewhat involved in was the internet cyberpunk-hacker culture, until about a year ago. Communicating through 4chan threads, alt-chans, and

by x220 8y ago

One subculture I got somewhat involved in was the internet cyberpunk-hacker culture, until about a year ago. Communicating through 4chan threads, alt-chans, and IRC channels, these users were always interesting to read from on various topics such as cyberpunk media, politics, current events, hacking, software, fashion, and travel. I'm dismayed that it petered out. I see the cyberpunk form of art and worldview as more useful with each passing year.

malvosenior 8y ago
Do you have any theories as to why it petered out? Like you I feel it's more relevant today than ever before but also can't find a growing or healthy community with that mindset anymore.
- x220 8y ago
  Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media doesn't come out very often, so people tended to talk about the same books, movies, manga, anime, videogames, and fashion. Some of the alt-chans with dedicated cyberpunk boards would run out of ideas to talk about pretty quickly, since there weren't enough posts that the website had to prune old threads like 4chan did. Another hypothesis I have is that cyberpunk media is not as captivating as it used to be since we arguably live in a cyberpunk world. In America there is unimaginable wealth inequality, with some cities having insane costs of rent for cramped apartments, with access to the best technology and medicine in the world but only if you can afford it. We also don't have to use media to imagine a world where digital corporations have a huge amount of power over daily life and the government spies on everyone all the time since both of those things are happening right now. I think we live in a cyberpunk world, it just doesn't have huge buildings, neon lights, and widespread punk fashion. I came in contact with a few guys who wanted to make another alt-chan with a different model (see what other users are typing in real-time, and all posts get deleted early in the morning) but it never materialized as far as I can tell. Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community?
  - n-exploit 8y ago
    Maybe it's time to create anew.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.
  - eindiran 8y ago
    Are you considering making it materialize now?
    - x220 8y ago
      I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
      - miss_classified 8y ago
        By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
        jniedrauer 8y ago
        There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
- beloch 8y ago
  You might consider asking why so many of the greatest cyberpunk authors abandoned the genre. Many science fiction authors idealistically try to produce stories they feel society needs to hear at a given point rather than just retreading genres that have been well-mined and which they feel aren't contributing to progress. Google Neal Stephenson and "getting big stuff done". Stephenson wrote some of the best books late in Cyperpunk's sci-fi reign, but later came to feel that portraying technological advance as leading to decay, inequality, and corruption was contributing to the stifling of technological ambition in the U.S.. When huge technological leaps are necessary to get past pressing problems like clean energy, space exploration, etc., does it make sense for pop culture to portray technological progress as a negative force that will lead to dystopias? William Gibson gradually moved away from Cyberpunk for a long period of time, writing novels that were set closer and closer to the present day. "The Peripheral", released in 2014, was the first book by Gibson set in what could be considered "Cyberpunk" for quite a while, but it's not really cyberpunk. (Note: Mild spoilers ahead) Technology does indeed create a calamity that negatively impacts world society in this book, but "cleptocrats" are just as much to blame for creating a dystopia. However, the book also shows some "big stuff" being done, even in the dystopia, and some pretty far-out tech ultimately prevents the calamity it created in the book's prime timeline. A fairly idealistic group of heroes actually change the world for the better using technology in this book, which is rather more optimistic view of both people and technology than is consistent with standard cyberpunk. While Ernest Cline was not an established author before writing "Ready Player One", it's interesting to note that this book doesn't really represent a return to cyberpunk for serious science fiction. The plot can certainly be considered cyberpunk. (Note: I have read the book, but not seen the movie yet). However, it's basically one long dose of 80's nostalgia, so the cyberpunk setting makes perfect sense for that book. Thus, it's not really science fiction in this respect. It's not trying to predict or shape the future. It's an exercise in wallowing in the past, and the form of this novel matches that function. I'm still a fan of cyberpunk, but I recognize that science fiction has moved on. It responds to the needs of society, and nightmarish technocratic dystopias are not what is needed today.
  - the_af 8y ago
    I think a worthy and more relevant successor to classic cyberpunk may be bio/ecopunk or whatever it's called, like The Windup Girl and much of what Paolo Bacigalupi writes. It describes struggling or weird futures without the somewhat outdated trappings of cyberpunk, but with some of the same attitude.
- SuoDuanDao 8y ago
  I have a couple theories. I think there's a genuine attempt to subvert the countercultures and it's easier to do so now than ever before, the decline of 4chan didn't feel organic to me at all, more like the members of the community got crowded out by automated accounts. Then there's the fact that the /punk communities have kind of splintered, I try to get involved in a lot of ecopunk or solarpunk for example, and there are various aesthetics that people gravitate to depending on what they think the solution is. And on a positive note, I think that this might just be a year where a lot of people are building - groups like 4 thieves, the Odin, Blockcon are actually getting after it. People are fairly busy, but this year in particular it's the kind of busy that doesn't make much noise.
- jMyles 8y ago
  PyCon? DefCon? Ethereum? MAGFest? Speedrunning?
- INTPenis 8y ago
  I don't think it did. I was just like OP here, getting involved in the anonymous boards around 2004 because they were spreading funny images and links. But I was 19 at the time. And around the age of 26-27 I stopped spending time in that culture. So I think you just outgrow it. But those cultures are still alive out there. New people come in, some old people stay. There are always going to be kids who refuse the "normal" trends like snapchat. Who seek out alternative places and those alternative places are imo still websites. Apps will never breach this space because apps are too easy to adopt by large groups of your peers. The alt.kids want something tougher, a challenge. And most of all they want to get away from the throng. I'm just waiting to see persistent community forums in darknets. Of course I don't make an effort to track these things anymore but I'd love to know that it has become a reality. Anonymity is important because just like games lead to programming and hacking, anonymous forums lead to free expression and sub-cultures. It might look like they're just goofing around but look at what 4chan became. We were just goofing around but enough people came to goof around to make it a potential movement.
- ataturk 8y ago
  Um, probably because it was a thing back in the '80s and whatever resurgence it has had is more of a second or even third coming. Cyberpunk does seem to some staying power, but I taught a course on Cyberpunk literature back in '99. "High tech, low culture"--seems to describe our contemporary status quo just fine by these eyes. I would love to code with the Dixie Flatline.
peterwwillis 8y ago
What was the cyberpunk worldview? Afaik it was something along the lines of "the world is run by vast networks of shadowy dystopian entities and we must use cryptography to resist this so we can have freedom" (basically, Information Technology libertarians)
- wavefunction 8y ago
  That's cypherpunks.
- westmeal 8y ago
  That's the cypherpunks. Cyberpunks are 'high tech low lifes'.
- SuoDuanDao 8y ago
  I believe Charles Stross described it as 'Whither bohemia in a hyperconnected world?' Guy's got a way with words...
- rasz 8y ago
  Cyberpunk [1990] Documentary "CYBERPUNK is Marianne Trench's stylistic documentary about the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s. William Gibson, author of cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, and Timothy Leary, famous advocate of psychedelic drugs, share their thoughts on the future of society and technology. While looking a bit dated now, this film provides an interesting insight into the cyberpunk movement of the 80's. The feeling at the time was there was some overlap between this new technical age we were entering vs the counter culture of the 1960s." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbZq8Zmd88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbZq8Zmd88
rv-de 8y ago
What is cyberpunk actually? I have only a very vague understanding of it and would be interested in a summary and how it relates to the present.
- creep 8y ago
  It's many things at once. For some people, it's just an aesthetic. It's the whole "hacker, rebel, techy, lone-wolf" aesthetic. It's also a genre of science fiction. It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. For example, a cyberpunk setting may have godlike AI, but everyone lives in the ghetto. Usually there are rogue actors that try to disrupt or exploit the technology system in place-- the "hackers". These actors are all about reclaiming old tech, building gadgets, and often cyborg-like body mods. Cyberpunk is a sort of philosophy as well, along the same lines. This is where the subculture aspect comes in. Ever heard of steampunk? Steampunk in a fictional setting is where all technology is mostly mechanical, usually drawing on Victorian elements as well, and sometimes magic or supernatural stuff is included. Steampunk can be boiled down to an initiative to create stable, reliable, mechanically sound systems, usually put to interesting/novel use. Cyberpunk as a subculture is similar. It's all about making tech work for you, pushing it to its limits, experimenting and exploiting within the given system. It's a rebellious attitude and a response to corporate and government tech control. It incorporates a fashion element like all good subcultures, likes to resurrect old tech (like nixie tubes), and often incorporates body modification (like NFC chips under the skin). People like to repair their own technology, modify their own technology, and collect obscure technologies. Many are also hackers, or want to be.
  - evincarofautumn 8y ago
    > It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. In other words, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed” — William Gibson. And it will probably always be that way, not just in terms of global inequality, but even in a single person’s life: you might be among the billion or two people living as humans have lived for thousands of years, on subsistence agriculture and herding with no running water, but you also have a smartphone and can video-chat with your cousins across the world. That aspect of cyberpunk storytelling is just taking this fact of existence and amplifying it to draw attention to it.

by x220 8y ago

malvosenior 8y ago

Do you have any theories as to why it petered out? Like you I feel it's more relevant today than ever before but also can't find a growing or healthy community with that mindset anymore.

x220 8y ago
Aside from conspiracy-theorizing about current events (and I don't use that term pejoratively), people tended to discuss the same topics. New cyberpunk media doesn't come out very often, so people tended to talk about the same books, movies, manga, anime, videogames, and fashion. Some of the alt-chans with dedicated cyberpunk boards would run out of ideas to talk about pretty quickly, since there weren't enough posts that the website had to prune old threads like 4chan did. Another hypothesis I have is that cyberpunk media is not as captivating as it used to be since we arguably live in a cyberpunk world. In America there is unimaginable wealth inequality, with some cities having insane costs of rent for cramped apartments, with access to the best technology and medicine in the world but only if you can afford it. We also don't have to use media to imagine a world where digital corporations have a huge amount of power over daily life and the government spies on everyone all the time since both of those things are happening right now. I think we live in a cyberpunk world, it just doesn't have huge buildings, neon lights, and widespread punk fashion. I came in contact with a few guys who wanted to make another alt-chan with a different model (see what other users are typing in real-time, and all posts get deleted early in the morning) but it never materialized as far as I can tell. Edit: do any of you want to join an online cyberpunk community?
- n-exploit 8y ago
  Maybe it's time to create anew.
- starbeast 8y ago
  Not an online one. If it was a BBS running on a cube sat, then maybe.
- eindiran 8y ago
  Are you considering making it materialize now?
  - x220 8y ago
    I'm considering making an alt-chan that cyclically purges content.
    - miss_classified 8y ago
      By now, it should be obvious that your efforts to attenuate the duration of long-running content won't prove to cultivate an increase in the quality of participation. There are (at least) three aspects of online community participation, that seasoned users are pretty well-versed in: 1. Archiving, mirroring and back-ups. 2. Leaked screen captures and scrapes of private direct messaging. 3. Back-end aggregation of logs and messages, even for supposedly private SMS interactions. Forget it dude. We all know that whatever signals get placed onto the wire turn out to be spliced through passive beam splitters and land in an open S3 bucket. The ones that don't? Your girlfriend just screenshots it, and and tweets it out in the open for the world to see anyway. Whoops! There are no more online subcultures. Only distortions of perception enforced by impulsive, would-be moderators.
      - jniedrauer 8y ago
        There is still one place left on the internet where conversations more or less fade away forever after they end: IRC Sure, there are probably logs somewhere. User logs and server logs. But in all the decades I've been using IRC, I've never seen my chatlogs show up on a search engine before. It's just obscure enough and just low value enough to slip under the radar.
beloch 8y ago
You might consider asking why so many of the greatest cyberpunk authors abandoned the genre. Many science fiction authors idealistically try to produce stories they feel society needs to hear at a given point rather than just retreading genres that have been well-mined and which they feel aren't contributing to progress. Google Neal Stephenson and "getting big stuff done". Stephenson wrote some of the best books late in Cyperpunk's sci-fi reign, but later came to feel that portraying technological advance as leading to decay, inequality, and corruption was contributing to the stifling of technological ambition in the U.S.. When huge technological leaps are necessary to get past pressing problems like clean energy, space exploration, etc., does it make sense for pop culture to portray technological progress as a negative force that will lead to dystopias? William Gibson gradually moved away from Cyberpunk for a long period of time, writing novels that were set closer and closer to the present day. "The Peripheral", released in 2014, was the first book by Gibson set in what could be considered "Cyberpunk" for quite a while, but it's not really cyberpunk. (Note: Mild spoilers ahead) Technology does indeed create a calamity that negatively impacts world society in this book, but "cleptocrats" are just as much to blame for creating a dystopia. However, the book also shows some "big stuff" being done, even in the dystopia, and some pretty far-out tech ultimately prevents the calamity it created in the book's prime timeline. A fairly idealistic group of heroes actually change the world for the better using technology in this book, which is rather more optimistic view of both people and technology than is consistent with standard cyberpunk. While Ernest Cline was not an established author before writing "Ready Player One", it's interesting to note that this book doesn't really represent a return to cyberpunk for serious science fiction. The plot can certainly be considered cyberpunk. (Note: I have read the book, but not seen the movie yet). However, it's basically one long dose of 80's nostalgia, so the cyberpunk setting makes perfect sense for that book. Thus, it's not really science fiction in this respect. It's not trying to predict or shape the future. It's an exercise in wallowing in the past, and the form of this novel matches that function. I'm still a fan of cyberpunk, but I recognize that science fiction has moved on. It responds to the needs of society, and nightmarish technocratic dystopias are not what is needed today.
- the_af 8y ago
  I think a worthy and more relevant successor to classic cyberpunk may be bio/ecopunk or whatever it's called, like The Windup Girl and much of what Paolo Bacigalupi writes. It describes struggling or weird futures without the somewhat outdated trappings of cyberpunk, but with some of the same attitude.
SuoDuanDao 8y ago
I have a couple theories. I think there's a genuine attempt to subvert the countercultures and it's easier to do so now than ever before, the decline of 4chan didn't feel organic to me at all, more like the members of the community got crowded out by automated accounts. Then there's the fact that the /punk communities have kind of splintered, I try to get involved in a lot of ecopunk or solarpunk for example, and there are various aesthetics that people gravitate to depending on what they think the solution is. And on a positive note, I think that this might just be a year where a lot of people are building - groups like 4 thieves, the Odin, Blockcon are actually getting after it. People are fairly busy, but this year in particular it's the kind of busy that doesn't make much noise.
jMyles 8y ago
PyCon? DefCon? Ethereum? MAGFest? Speedrunning?
INTPenis 8y ago
I don't think it did. I was just like OP here, getting involved in the anonymous boards around 2004 because they were spreading funny images and links. But I was 19 at the time. And around the age of 26-27 I stopped spending time in that culture. So I think you just outgrow it. But those cultures are still alive out there. New people come in, some old people stay. There are always going to be kids who refuse the "normal" trends like snapchat. Who seek out alternative places and those alternative places are imo still websites. Apps will never breach this space because apps are too easy to adopt by large groups of your peers. The alt.kids want something tougher, a challenge. And most of all they want to get away from the throng. I'm just waiting to see persistent community forums in darknets. Of course I don't make an effort to track these things anymore but I'd love to know that it has become a reality. Anonymity is important because just like games lead to programming and hacking, anonymous forums lead to free expression and sub-cultures. It might look like they're just goofing around but look at what 4chan became. We were just goofing around but enough people came to goof around to make it a potential movement.
ataturk 8y ago
Um, probably because it was a thing back in the '80s and whatever resurgence it has had is more of a second or even third coming. Cyberpunk does seem to some staying power, but I taught a course on Cyberpunk literature back in '99. "High tech, low culture"--seems to describe our contemporary status quo just fine by these eyes. I would love to code with the Dixie Flatline.

peterwwillis 8y ago

What was the cyberpunk worldview? Afaik it was something along the lines of "the world is run by vast networks of shadowy dystopian entities and we must use cryptography to resist this so we can have freedom" (basically, Information Technology libertarians)

wavefunction 8y ago
That's cypherpunks.
westmeal 8y ago
That's the cypherpunks. Cyberpunks are 'high tech low lifes'.
SuoDuanDao 8y ago
I believe Charles Stross described it as 'Whither bohemia in a hyperconnected world?' Guy's got a way with words...
rasz 8y ago
Cyberpunk [1990] Documentary "CYBERPUNK is Marianne Trench's stylistic documentary about the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s. William Gibson, author of cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, and Timothy Leary, famous advocate of psychedelic drugs, share their thoughts on the future of society and technology. While looking a bit dated now, this film provides an interesting insight into the cyberpunk movement of the 80's. The feeling at the time was there was some overlap between this new technical age we were entering vs the counter culture of the 1960s." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbZq8Zmd88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbZq8Zmd88

rv-de 8y ago

What is cyberpunk actually? I have only a very vague understanding of it and would be interested in a summary and how it relates to the present.

creep 8y ago
It's many things at once. For some people, it's just an aesthetic. It's the whole "hacker, rebel, techy, lone-wolf" aesthetic. It's also a genre of science fiction. It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. For example, a cyberpunk setting may have godlike AI, but everyone lives in the ghetto. Usually there are rogue actors that try to disrupt or exploit the technology system in place-- the "hackers". These actors are all about reclaiming old tech, building gadgets, and often cyborg-like body mods. Cyberpunk is a sort of philosophy as well, along the same lines. This is where the subculture aspect comes in. Ever heard of steampunk? Steampunk in a fictional setting is where all technology is mostly mechanical, usually drawing on Victorian elements as well, and sometimes magic or supernatural stuff is included. Steampunk can be boiled down to an initiative to create stable, reliable, mechanically sound systems, usually put to interesting/novel use. Cyberpunk as a subculture is similar. It's all about making tech work for you, pushing it to its limits, experimenting and exploiting within the given system. It's a rebellious attitude and a response to corporate and government tech control. It incorporates a fashion element like all good subcultures, likes to resurrect old tech (like nixie tubes), and often incorporates body modification (like NFC chips under the skin). People like to repair their own technology, modify their own technology, and collect obscure technologies. Many are also hackers, or want to be.
- evincarofautumn 8y ago
  > It basically combines futuristic tech with dystopian/utopian elements, and grimy, old-world stuff. In other words, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed” — William Gibson. And it will probably always be that way, not just in terms of global inequality, but even in a single person’s life: you might be among the billion or two people living as humans have lived for thousands of years, on subsistence agriculture and herding with no running water, but you also have a smartphone and can video-chat with your cousins across the world. That aspect of cyberpunk storytelling is just taking this fact of existence and amplifying it to draw attention to it.