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The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes th
by narrator 4y ago
The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down.
Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we have that same situation now, but instead 4chan is treated like that.
BTW, just because it's not your counterculture, doesn't mean it's not counterculture. You guys are looking at this all 60 years after the fact and saying that hippies were awesome. That's not what people thought at the time. 4chan is generally anti-ukraine war and anti-vax. 60 years from now they might look like the good guys.
- tomdell 4y ago"narrator" is a fitting username since you're narrating your own subjective reality. I don't think making disturbing sexual content with AI image generators is going to be viewed the same way as free love.
- narrator 4y ago"Free love" to the very conservative social morals coming out of the 1950s was just as shocking. You're looking at this with a perspective 60 years after the fact when "free love" has largely been normalized. Obscenity and homosexuality used to be regularly prosecuted back in the 1950s for example. Also, some aspects of the counterculture like the Manson family, Various Sex Cults, or Jim Jones Cult, massive drug use, the huge increases in crime were not good. However, now all the ugly parts have been ignored and idealized by the people who took the hippie culture mainstream.
- GenerocUsername 4y agoWell it wouldn't very well be counter culture if it's ideals matched the mainstream
- weedking 4y agoYou're also creating your own subjective reality. The poster made the claim that the dominant views on 4chan regarding Ukraine and vaccines may be viewed positively in the future, not the disturbing imagery.
- vorpalhex 4y agoSeveral hippies wrote in favor of having sex with children. Many of them took their own advice. Look at how whitewashed hippies are now.
- ipaddr 4y agoYou couldn't get away with a lot of the content from the 60s now.
- farmaway 4y agoThe nonces are still with us. Prostasia Foundation is the new NAMBLA, working hard to normalize "minor-attracted persons" within academia and the nonprofit space. They're aided by those who rationalize children's consent on questions of sexual and bodily integrity. If you trust a nine-year-old boy to tell us they're actually a girl, and you trust an eleven-year-old child who wants to inject puberty blockers, and you oblige a thirteen-year-old girl who wants to inject testosterone and cut off her breasts at fifteen, where is the logical barrier to other forms of sexual consent?
- s5300 4y agoIf you trust Peter Thiel to put a suicide collar on anybody working for him lest they disobey… Hope moral people will never not be completely weirded out by the amount of tech oriented folk who look up to him or aspire to be like him.
- ipaddr 4y agoWell I've got news for you. The 60s were about making disturbing sexual content available. People were trying to freak out the mainstream. History repeats. Your situation isn't as unique as you belief.
- concordDance 4y agoI suspect the opposite, that making disturbing sexual content will indeed be seen as free love is now.
- mise_en_place 4y agoWhether you like it or not pornography is always at the forefront of technology. I’m sure there will be much pearl clutching when sex robots are released.
- koprulusector 4y agoThe hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discovery, acceptance, mutual aid, egalitarianism, free thought. That contrasts sharply with 4chan’s demographics and motivations. I don’t think that anyone will look back with fondness or positivity toward a bunch of closeted homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels circle jerking themselves into a froth over who’s the edgiest edge lord.
- eddsh1994 4y ago> The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. That's an interesting point I haven't heard of before, thanks :)
- z3c0 4y agoIf you'd like to see it stratified as a full-blown fact, here's the interview where John Ehrlichman explained that it was a planned strategy to discredit Nixon's naysayers. https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ > “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
- ur-whale 4y ago> 60 years from now they might look like the good guys. If they're anti Ukraine war, they already are.
- undersuit 4y agoThe anti-war people, not so much... or did something change since <insert major US military operation that started in your youth>?
- wellthisisgreat 4y ago> generally anti-ukraine war Forgive my ignorance, but do you mean 4Chan is against the war in Ukraine in principle (anti-war), sides with Russia in that conflict (anti-Ukraine) or against US/West involvement in that war (anti-war but with a catch).
- snerbles 4y agoParticipants in the general war threads on /pol/ fill every permutation of the above, including pro-war/radical pro-NATO involvement and anti-Russia elements as well. Overall it's been more of an ideological bar brawl than a hive mind aligned in any particular direction.
- bglazer 4y agoBeing antisocial is not the same thing as being counterculture. There’s not really a flourishing of new ideas or material culture on 4chan, just a race to the bottom of taboo-breaking.
- Natsu 4y agoWeird, that's what they said about prior counter-cultures, too.
- jbm 4y agoNot a fan of 4chan, but almost all memes (the foundation of modern culture) seem to start there.
- Clubber 4y ago>just a race to the bottom of taboo-breaking You've basically described cultural art and music since at least the 1950s. Elvis dared to play black music and gyrate his hips. Madonna rolled around in a wedding dress talking about virgins. RAP broke a whole bunch of them. Cardi B sang about WAP. If a band just sings about relationship troubles and drugs like everyone else, their music / art probably isn't very remarkable.
- woodruffw 4y agoThis is confusing cause and effect: 4chan was a countercultural force, in the same way that SA was. Countercultural forces always end the same way: they're either co-opted for a purpose, or they fade into irrelevancy (as counterculture becomes culture). 4chan is a case of being co-opted: there hasn't been meaningful countercultural activity on 4chan in over a decade, but there is ample reactionary activity masquerading as counterculture. Muddying the distinction between the two is the reactionary's objective.
- Minor49er 4y agoI think this is an important point. 4chan today is largely populated by bot posters, especially on the bigger boards like /b/. Regular users will suffer through captchas mysteriously not working, getting (range) banned for proxy use when the poster is not using a proxy, or even just shadowbanned
- ohbleek 4y ago“Conservatism is the new counter culture” is a very old line that has been passed along by older conservatives as a way to allure itself with young right leaning teens in mostly rural areas. It takes a complete misunderstanding of what “counter culture” means in order to believe it. It was always just marketing.
- alphazard 4y agoThere are a lot of sibling comments that seem to be upset that two counter cultures could be both different from one another and the dominant culture. I really don't understand the gate keeping of what is and isn't a counter culture. A culture is information collectively held across many minds. A counter culture is a culture with contradictory information to the dominant culture. It's clear both the hippies and 4chan meet the criteria. I found your analysis cogent.
- Clubber 4y ago>I really don't understand the gate keeping of what is and isn't a counter culture. The people who brought in the mainstream culture are now older; they are now the fuddy-duddies. Time to move over for the next generation; it's either complimentary or contradictory and sometimes both.
- birdyrooster 4y agoI mean the KKK was also counter culture. Not sure why counting hate groups is meaningful in this discussion.
- longbrass 4y ago4chan is almost 20 years old, it may have been a countercultural element but I assure you kids these days are not on the chans like they once were. If it is still a cultural touchpoint for males 18-24 it is unlikely to remain so for much longer. Your yardstick for cultural relevance centered around creative AI usage is myopic when compared to the interests of actual younger humans who presumably would make up the counterculture. What is hilarious is that by your definition it is concevable that the increasingly old men who continue to use 4chan could infact be the counterculture you seek... so in 60 years they will all be dead anyway (vax or no vax)
- johnny22 4y ago> 4chan is generally anti-ukraine war most people are against the war in ukraine. I have a feeling the motivations are different though.
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- licebmi__at__ 4y agoI still enjoy diving into *chans, (even 4chan which has become so mainstream) because the hobbyist boards are still the best places to have some engagement with hobbyists. Still thinking 4chan culture is a counterculture only supports the thesis that we are living in a society without a counter culture. You have to be a coddled kid to believe that 4chan and their racism, misogyny and xenophobia are not mainstream or challenge the status quo. I mean, yes liberalism tries to stick a smiley face on the grimm reality, but it’s stupid to think you’re challenging anything just because you draw a frown and a hitler mustache on said smiley face.