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I'm pretty sure I've been existing in a number of counter-cultures for the last decade or two. These have been either linked to my identity or physical location
by adamcharnock 4y ago
I'm pretty sure I've been existing in a number of counter-cultures for the last decade or two. These have been either linked to my identity or physical location, I couldn't have properly experienced them through consuming media on the subject. Certainly all required an active choice and/or lifestyle change on my part.
Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life:
- Freelancing/contracting, and actively living substantially below my means. This has given me free time in a way that really changed my view on the world and allowed me to be around other people who were not in the 9-5 working world.
- Sexuality & ENM, plus living in a large city. There is a huge non-obvious culture of LQBTQIA people in this culture which often have very different outlooks on life to the mainstream.
- Communal living. Living in a warehouse with people from very different walks of life. I was exposed to so many fascinating ideas and people this way. It was a truly magical time of my life in which I also played a part in supporting the queer/ENM sub-culture of my city.
- Buying land and living off grid. There is a whole sub-culture of people doing this, both online and (more importantly) physically around me.
So I think counter-culture is available but – having written the above – I'm not sure if I am agreeing and disagreeing with the OP. On one hand it exists, but on the other hand I'm saying that it is very hard to access without making material changes to one's life.
- voldacar 4y agoIt's hard to call something countercultural if every major corporation pays lip service to it 24/7
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anovikov 4y agoBingo! As soon as you get to define counterculture as something else but "a kind of bullshit you read on the Internet which is different from what normies read", you realise that there is plenty of it.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoLGBTQ stuff is pretty mainstream now, in the sense that it is an omnipresent "other" though 20 years ago, it definitely wasn't. I'd say today's counter culture is people eschewing corporate life, sort of like it was before corporate culture took over.
- xyzelement 4y agoI think that's mainstream as well. People talk about digital nomadism x going off grid whatever all the time. The real counterculture is showing up to work and feeding your kids
- isthisthingon99 4y agoHey you're right
- nxmnxm99 4y ago[flagged]
- TheCapeGreek 4y agoThe voices may be loud online, but it's definitely not "normal" culture.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoMy bank decorates rainbow ATMs during pride month. A block away from my house my local council has created a rainbow street crossing. I don’t think it’s possible to get more mainstream than that.
- misnome 4y agoTaping a nail to your jacket doesn’t make you Punk.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoSounds like gatekeeping to me. I know LGBT culture generally used to be edgy and underground. But widespread mainstream acceptance means that’s not really true anymore.
- zirgs 4y agoIn other countries it's still kinda "edgy". Yeah - gay pride is allowed and my bank changed its app icon to include rainbow colours. There also are no "LGBT propaganda" laws so gay-friendly pop culture is allowed. (Like movies depicting same sex families) But at the same time gay marriages and civil unions are both illegal. Adoption for gay couples is illegal too. Even if they are performed abroad. The state still treat gay couples as if they were roommates or something.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
- ArnoVW 4y agoMy understanding of counterculture is that it 'counters'. I.e. it inherently searches to change or influence the dominant culture. Your examples do show that we are (thankfully) not a monoculture. But they place themselves outside of our culture, instead trying to influence. A good example of counter culture is BLM, Extinction Rebellion or Occupy Wallstreet. Only thing: those are movements, not cultures. And they are, IMHO, generally ephemeral.
- jiriknesl 4y agoBLM, Extinction Rebellion and Occupy Wallstreet are the culture. Colour-blind antiracism, preparing for global warming instead of pushing green deal & capitalism are countercultures now.
- TurkishPoptart 4y agoRight, and ironically all are astro-turfed and embraced by the World Economic Forum.
- ianai 4y agogoogle: coun·ter·cul·ture /ˈkoun(t)ərˌkəlCHər/ Learn to pronounce noun noun: counterculture; plural noun: countercultures; noun: counter-culture; plural noun: counter-cultures a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm. "the idealists of the 60s counterculture"
- ArnoVW 4y agoBeing not native, I googled before I posted. In the first page I saw some phrases that seemed to confirm for me. For example, Wikipedia, citing a book from 1991: Counterculture may or may not be explicitly political. It typically involves criticism or rejection of currently powerful institutions, with accompanying hope for a better life or a new society. But if I'm completely besides the mark, apologies
- ianai 4y ago
- rcarr 4y agoI agree with this, I had a friend who lived in a caravan in a forest in the north of England with a bunch of hippies. They'd throw parties now and again and there were tons of them. There are loads of people doing van life for various reasons or something similar like bike packing or living on a homestead. These people are counter culture but you won't hear about them because most of them aren't hustling to become social media influencers - they'll do some honest work to earn some money and then spend the year living out of a van and rock climbing or whatever. It's mostly word of mouth or messaging groups with them. At the party I went to, all the music played was mp3s on the guy's hard drive because he didn't want to pay for Spotify because he thought it devalued music. If you're looking for the counter culture on the mainstream platforms then you're not going to find it. The counter culture is 100% there they just don't really care about influencing you. You have to choose to break free of the mainstream yourself, they're not going to try and do it for you anymore.
- pibechorro 4y agoYup, people living it dont brag about it, gotta keep the poser johnny come lately herds away from ruining it. I have been living and crusing on a sailboat, mosty off anchor rent free when I can, surrounded by many other sailors who rather not see it ruined by Instagram. The key here is the counter culture starts and ends in your heart. Get out and break out of the matrix.
- kderbyma 4y agohonestly. how many months of rent was that boat? You are privileged ag
- jstarfish 4y agoUsed boats are (deceptively) cheap to buy.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoFiberglass hulls last forever. It’s everything else that needs repaired or replaced.
- jasode 4y ago>Maybe people mean something else by counter-culture, but here are examples from my life [...] I'm not sure if I am agreeing and disagreeing with the OP. Your examples of counter culture are alternative lifestyles. The author (Kirk Thaker) and his cited author (Ted Gioia) were talking about media and entertainment content. Basically, the "long-tail" of obscure/experimental content not being widely exposed and whatever content they do see all looks the same to them. Those are orthogonal areas of counter culture. E.g. You have a digital nomad living 100% in a camping RV ... but watches the same popular Netflix shows as everybody else. Or, you have the person that ignores popular sports and tv shows and only reads obscure Japanese comics... but works at a conventional 9-to-5 office job.
- sfpotter 4y agoThe extent to which these kinds of lifestyles are astroturfed is always interesting. Not claiming it is necessarily the case, just that it does happen from time to time. Thomas Frank’s “The Conquest of Cool” is a good reference here.
- willcipriano 4y ago> There is a huge non-obvious culture of LQBTQIA Take a look at Twitter on pride month, even Raytheon changes their logo to a rainbow version. That stuff is so mainstream it hurts. It's a counterculture in Saudi Arabia where the logos don't change and they throw gay people off of buildings, but in the US/Europe it's part of the dominant culture.
- arisu 4y agoNon-obvious means the things that you dont understand and/or see. You make it sound like a bad thing. I'm happy we don't throw people off buildings as often.
- notnaut 4y agoThere is the Walmartized rainbow culture that you’re talking about and then there’s the meat and potatoes queer culture that is and will always be counterculture for as long as human reproduction remains sexually binary. There is still a substantial amount of “queerness” that you don’t see on TV. Primary culture loves to pull from counterculture after the morsel has been thoroughly sanitized and monetized.
- anon223345 4y agoThe thing is though, queerness is now “cool” so it’s not counter culture
- ivanbakel 4y agoCountercultures have always been "cool" - the rejection of the dominant culture is part of their cool factor. Some of the most memorable aspects of recent Western cultural history are counter-cultural: hippies, punks, slackers. A counterculture isn't defined by whether or not it's considered cool, but by whether or not it is actively participated in and shared among the majority of people. Queer identities may have a lot of public support (and even that's debatable), but queerness is not part of most people's lives. Western societies are still cis- and heteronormative. Queer culture is an other, not the mainstream.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoIf you think LGBT is the counterculture, Raytheon advertising wants a word with you.
- skyyler 4y agoRaytheon's advertising employed "rainbow capitalism" on twitter, like most other American companies, is just following in the footsteps of Subaru and RJ Reynolds who realised gays have money in the 90s. Rainbow capitalism isn't LGBT culture. It's attempts at getting our money. The large majority of queer culture cannot be commercially re-packaged and will never be part of the dominant culture.
- fundad 4y agoAlso Raytheon can't limit its recruitment to just straight people if it wants to be competitive.
- Jensson 4y agoNot to mention redpill, mgtow, incel etc. Counter culture aren't always rainbows and flowers.
- lp4vn 4y agoI don't think that what you described counts as counterculture in what the people in general understand as the "societal" meaning of the term. All societies in all epochs had their share of people living off of the grid or in hedonistic and socially repproachable ways. A counterculture is a set of social norms that clash with the establishment to the point of generating a credible threat of replacing it and creating a new cultural reality. LGBTQIA people living in warehouses and doing orgies is not a common way of living for sure, but it sounds more like a bout of isolated risky behaviour than a new cultural norm.
- kderbyma 4y agoYeah. the orgies aren't exactly what I would call culture.....more like vice.
- larve 4y agoHaving lived in some of those scenes, the environment or the identity or political affinities that lead to the creation of those groups are only indirectly linked to the cultural aspects that emerge from it. There very much is specific music, specific visual art, written art, zines, comics, software (!) that emerge when people live off the mainstream. As for lgbtqia cultures even, with the lip embrace or sometimes slightly more heartfelt embrace by mainstream media, is far from being culturally present, let alone politically. Just tally up the ratios in the comments here… A rainbow flag is not techno/house/zines/novels, advertising is not culture. Advertising is by definition the antithesis of culture, adopting cultural norms. Ultimately it will be hollow and opportunistic because that’s its mission. An ad showing a leatherbear is not culture, and I don’t think you will ever see a leather show on prime time, if at all. Yet a culture it is (and possibly a lifestyle, but one doesn’t imply the other).
- jeoqn 4y ago[flagged]
- arisu 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jononomo 4y agoA counter-culture has to be at least a somewhat monolithic and unifying thing. If there are two dozen counter-cultures, then there aren't any.
- coldtea 4y agoAll those are safe hipster options these days...
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago[dead]
- standardUser 4y agoThis is a great counterpoint, but you're missing the other half of the argument. The realm of subcultures that do not require one to change their material lives/location is far vaster than it has ever been. Perhaps the author is unaware of the seemingly endless array of niche blogs and forums and servers that cater to far-flung populations of people engaging in all manner of counterculture, some of it radically "counter", that did not and could not exist without the internet.
- alex_young 4y agoI think it's clear that there is a dominant culture in the United States, one of consumption and competition, with a strong history of puritanical influence in our way of thinking; everything from how we view and treat 'others', to how we feel about our own actions. The other clear thing to me, is that enough people find the dominant culture so objectionable that they are inclined to form other cultures, even when there are massive social barriers to doing so. I think that one positive change, and this seems to be what TFA was really trying to say, is that it has become somewhat less punitive to seek out these other cultures and join them, largely because of our digital connections. One thing I have found valuable in thinking about our culture, is living outside of it for a while. Experiencing another dominant culture and trying to gel with it gave me a lot of perspective on both how systems we take for granted can be different and work just fine, and on how hard it is for foreigners in our country to just exist here. So yeah, I think counter-culture is alive and well, perhaps a bit too easy to access, but that's for the most part a good thing.
- flangola7 4y agoENM/polyam is definitely a good example, and personally one I'm happy to see is slowly entering into public knowledge.
- ckemere 4y agoIt's really unfortunate that the comment chain attached to the queer aspects of your comment, because it seems that the communal living/ off-grid aspects are more interesting. I think that the article is lamenting the idea that these sorts of things no longer appear to have runway to potentially enter "mainstream" culture in a way that, e.g., raisin bran did in the early part of the last century. It's possible that maybe the reality is that there's some aspect of abiltity-to-be commercialized that has always limited counter cultures reach? Or maybe that's an alternate way of valuing culture - can it produce concepts that can be adopted by the majority. Ironically, given the replies, it seems that Christian communities (i.e., Hudderites or Mennonites) had discovered what you discovered a century ago, but the very nature of the counterculture they express limits their impact on the mainstream?
- badpun 4y ago> There is a huge non-obvious culture of LQBTQIA Does the second Q stand for something else than the first? Or is it a typo?