> But it’s especially surprising given how much creative work today exists outside the mainstream. See, the issue here may simply be that the author isn't awar

> But it’s especially surprising given how much creative work today exists outside the mainstream. See, the issue here may simply be that the author isn't aware of the central limit theorem. It is not at all strange that as you increase the number of independent estimates of what culture is (using content creation as a proxy) you see less "counterculture" (proportionally) because there's a smoothish variation between the two extremes with a peak near "mainstream" simply because that's how statistics work. A few scores of people on TV will invariably have more obviously different (and known) opinions. But I'm also staring at this essay in quite a bit of confusion generally. There's all sorts of stuff that's counterculture being pushed into law by the extremist right, the extremist right is also a "counterculture", that's not slang for "the left". Outlawing teaching kids about LGBT people's existence and banning books is counterculture.