9 ms·

> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes

• banannaise 4y ago
  > LGBTQ was edgy Aside from monogamous gay people, queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture. (This is not a positive thing, but it is reality.)
  • subsistence234 4y ago
    >queerness is very much still edgy Something that people advertise about themselves on their linkedin profiles in order to get better job offers is the opposite of edgy.
  • savryn 4y ago
    [flagged]
  • mshake2 4y ago
    >queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture Being supported by advertising, movies, tv shows, signaled by major corporations and workplaces, and supported top-down by the government means its edgy and counterculture? We live in completely different realities I guess.
    • czx4f4bd 4y ago
      > Aside from monogamous gay people Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships? How is the government providing this "top-down" support? Are there now tax breaks for people in poly relationships?
      • mshake2 4y ago
        >Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships? Are you kidding me? https://www.hbomax.com/collections/lgbtq-voices https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/100010 >How is the government providing this "top-down" support? https://joebiden.com/lgbtq-policy/# This is not "edgy counterculture"
        • flangola7 4y ago
          I don't see significant featuring of non monogamy there
      • quickthrower2 4y ago
        SWAT, Billions?
    • bglazer 4y ago
      Being LGBTQ is one of the few identities or choices that will result in being disowned by a significant portion of American families. That attitude is edging out of the mainstream but it’s practically dogma among evangelicals and other socially conservative groups. So yes, those people do live in a different reality, where Biden admin policy and “Will and Grace” don’t matter at all.
      • mshake2 4y ago
        You're making an emotional argument (LGBTQ people get disowned by families) against a logical argument (LGBTQ is supported at so many levels of culture that it no longer counts as "counterculture").
  • coding123 4y ago
    We want non-monogamous in society? Isn't that just chaos at best?
    • banannaise 4y ago
      What? I'm not talking about bigamy, I'm talking about relationship structures that aren't just two married people creating a nuclear family.
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  > jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
  • tablespoon 4y ago
    > This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful. I'm not so sure about "emotionally and mentally stunted incels," but homophobia, racism, and sexism were all acceptable in the past, and given enough time will most likely be acceptable in the future. Progress is a lie; change can go in all directions. It's a mistake to draw a line across living memory or the recent historical era and extrapolate whatever trend you find very far into the future.
  • conductr 4y ago
    Edgy because the status quo was so defined. The status quo is loosening up, so edges aren't so apparent. I'm in my 40s and my high school experience in the 90s sounds nothing like what I hear about today. We had well defined cliques. Today, except where bullying exists, it sounds like people aren't so hive minded but individuals and just float around various friend groups. This may be unpopular topic, but I actually think having a non-traditional sexuality/gender is the new 'edgy'. I know that implies it's just a trend/fad and not a reality for some individuals. It seems to have increased in such a massive relative basis that I can't help but think it actually is a trend versus following some natural occurrence. Or perhaps, given significant hindsight I could see that the definitions around these things is just undergoing an accelerating foundational shift. We know ancient societies had massively different ideas for what was and wasn't normal. Hell, very recently ago our own society had very different norms for age of consent and age of "child". Sorry if any of this is or sounds offensive, I look at it from a statistical mindset and what baseline seems to have existed. It's totally possible that societies around the world have used religion and such to suppress the baseline and it's starting to naturally come back - I wouldn't be able to observe things like that.
  • 4y ago
• deanCommie 4y ago
  The motivation matters. Jazz and Rock was the music of african americans that became mainstream in white america just like rap did later. Punk was a reaction to rock becoming boring and stale. Disco came out from the african-american AND LGBTQ community, and the eventual "disco sucks" mainstream backlash was at least somewhat motivated by racism/homophobia, not anything inherent with disco. None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone. That they offended was a side effect of them changing the world, and the mainstream reaction to it, not the core motivation. Now, I don't want to paint 4chan with one brush. I actually think a significant amount of internet creativity and beautiful creation occurs on it, and they never get enough credit for it. Most legendary memes - offensive or not - originate on 4chan. Internet memes are some of the most unique artistic creations of our generation. But the parts that people get mad at 4chan for (the homophobic/racist/misogynistic parts) are not that. Those are creations intentionally made to get a reaction: "You tell me I can't say <blank>? Watch me!!" There is a charitable interpretation of this that they are bucking against censorship and fighting for self-expression on principle. And some may draw comparisons to what they're doing to times in history when "blasphemers" criticized religious dogma. That making a homophobic or racist meme is the modern equivalent of proclaiming "There is no God" 200 years ago. The difference comes down to the Paradox of Intolerance. Religion and the dominant culture associated with it, actively repressed everyone who didn't match their worldview. People were told you have to believe this in faith and act as if you do, or you will be punished. The modern "dogma" of LGBTQ/race acceptance is instead saying "You CANNOT tell others how to believe and act, and punish them accordingly. You cannot discriminate against those different from you by birth race/gender/sexuality." It is highly childish to associate all "you cannot do <blank>" guidances as repressive and similar. And I meant that literally. Children can't tell the difference between "No, we can't have desert because i told you so" and "You can't touch the hot stove because it will hurt you". So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out.
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    > So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out. The problem is, young idiots were ordinary young idiots in the past. They didn't do much more than maybe snatch a car for a joyride or kick off someone of IRC by sending them a direct message with "DCC SEND" or whatever that caused middleboxes to drop the connection. Annoying, sometimes causing a bit of damage, but nothing too serious. Nowadays? They radicalize each other into a spiral that often enough ends in real-world violence - or in bullying people to suicide, which is just as bad. And unfortunately, the importance of hateful bigots is not diminishing. Not at all. The Tea Party and, following it, the Trumpets are recently risen developments - and they're still rising.
• oneplane 4y ago
  > Counter-culture is supposed to be [... list of stuff...] No, it's not. The words explain themselves perfectly fine: an opposing culture. What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture. And just in case someone takes "counter-productive" and tries to argue that being against trying to make everything productive is counter-culture: that's not what I mean and you know it. If you were to find yourself not aligning with anything out in the world and you wish to alter that, there are a whole lot of things you could be doing to get there, but what people do on 4chan gets nobody anywhere, unless the digital version of sniffing glue is considered an alteration of the status-quo.
  • wolverine876 4y ago
    > It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive IOW, reactionary
  • Gollapalli 4y ago
    >irrationally angry Angry to be sure, but Irrationally? Take a closer look. >stunted in various ways To be sure. C’est la vie. But also undeniably brilliant on occasion. >generally destructive Not unlike the hippies then. >If anything, it is devoid of culture. Simply ignorant.
  • jimbo9991 4y ago
    A counter culture that has been productive and changed the status quo is no longer a counter culture by definition, since that implies that they have the power to alter the dominant culture, which implies that they are the dominant culture. I think what you are really referring to is a social movement, which often aligns with a particular counter culture that has decided to organize. But there can be many counter cultures and not all of them the deliberate goal of social change.
  • Apocryphon 4y ago
    > What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive Like punks? Mods and rockers? Beatniks? Greasers?
• jancsika 4y ago
  [flagged]
• pohl 4y ago
  Us: Mom, can we get a counter-culture? Mom: We have a counter-culture at home. The counter-culture at home: 4chan incels
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• czx4f4bd 4y ago
  > [...] LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were. This is a vile take. It is sickening to compare liking a genre of music or wearing a certain style of dress or being queer to hating people because they're queer, not white, not male, or because they're a woman who won't have sex with you.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets.
  • calculatte 4y ago
    Counterculture doesn't cease to exist just because you are full of hate.
  • soderfoo 4y ago
    I always figured absurdist made up half of 4chan. People who say provocative stuff to go against the mainstream. The other half is a mix of the hateful or unstable. But who knows, it's the internet, and it's completely anonymous over there.
    • Mouthfeel 4y ago
      [dead]
• mschuster91 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • zassy 4y ago
    Sid Vicious, Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper and many other artists who were undebatably part of counterculture very often did stuff to intentionally offend members of mainstream culture. Manson did a ton of stuff to piss off Christians and rightoids. While it might seem hilarious with modern day sensibilities, Rage saying fuck on BBC live did offend quite a lot of people. Hell, Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux used to regularly wear literal Swastikas for the shock value. None of this shit is new.
  • Fricken 4y ago
    Much of today's "counterculture" I suppose was more mainstream back in the 60s. Outsiders, delinquents, atavists and reprobates of many sorts are grouped together with, and generally accepted by the prevailing counterculture, but do not necessarily represent the counterculture's core beliefs and practices. They do, however, share a common antagonist.
• wolverine876 4y ago
  That argument seems to rationalize 4chan behavior by simply saying 'it's counter-culture', as if that makes the behavior better or worse, more or less bad or justified. It changes nothing; it's posers imitating counter-culture (by that definition).
  • majormajor 4y ago
    Yeah, there's a million corners of non-mainstream culture today that aren't 4chan and aren't just "edgy" middleschoolesque trolling that are also "countercultures". There's more variety than ever thanks to the ease of people connecting. If you're betting that 4chan is the one that's going to stand out of "ahead of its time" you aren't doing it because "counterculture is always ahead" you're doing it because it's the one you personally focus on. Otherwise you'd have to be evaluating it against all the other counterculture things. And many of them are much less derivative and backwards-looking.
    • MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      If it isn't offensive to mainstream sensibilities, it's a sub-culture not a counter-culture. You're describing sub-cultures of the mainstream. For example, in the current year vegetarianism is a sub-culture of mainstream lifestyle dieting while carnivorism is a counter-culture.
  • CyberWraith 4y ago
    By opposing it, you further prove it IS counter-culture
• o_____________o 4y ago
  Most of these countercultural ideologies confront oppressive bigotry in the status quo. 4chan is using bigotry against the status quo. Opposition alone is not the important dimension here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
• asdajksah2123 4y ago
  Homophobia is enshrined in law in the majority of countries in the world. You will literally be stoned to death for having sex with the same gender in several countries. Racism is core to nearly every country in the world. It may seem bad in the US, but it's worse elsewhere. And while people won't admit they're racist in the US, racism itself is pervasive. Sexism might be the most prominent and long lasting parts of the culture across the world for millenia. Just look up the rape stats, and then keep in mind that most rapes are not reported. Homophobia, racism, and sexism are deeply ingrained in nearly every culture on the planet today.