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The internet didn’t kill counterculture, it's just not on Instagram (2021)
- turtleyacht 3y ago(2021)
- linuxftw 3y ago[flagged]
- burnished 3y agoI hesitate to vouch for this comment because of the tone, but I feel like theres genuine confusion here worth talking about. So to answer directly - I thought it was very clear. I wouldn't describe it as word vomit at all albeit informal in tone. The idea that what used to be counter culture can not be so anymore because it feeds the beast is abstract and wild but also reasonable. Where did it lose you? Not asking as a gotcha, genuinely curious about interesting critique, or a misunderstanding I can help clear, or even just comparing differing readings of the same bit.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- jnsaff2 3y agoCounterculture has always been exploited by commercial interests to sell and be cool. So this is a moving target. You can surely find counterculture of yester on instagram.
- Llamasponge 3y ago[flagged]
- pkdpic 3y ago> To be truly countercultural in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self. Interesting enough quote, maybe obvious but maybe a nice reminder too. > Search Google Images for ‘counterculture’ and it overwhelmingly returns black-and-white photos of young people all now over 60. I just love the idea of some social media addicted teenager trying to break free and google image searching "counterculture"... I'm sure that was me c.2005
- gtirloni 3y agoBecause the term didn't exist or was popularized by people that are now over 60. --- counterculture (n.) also counter-culture, "way of life or collective values deliberately at variance with the prevailing norms of a time and place," 1968, from counter- + culture (n.). Popularized by, and perhaps coined in, the book "The Making of a Counter Culture" by U.S. academic Theodore Roszak. As an adjective by 1972.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Because the term didn't exist or was popularized by people that are now over 60. And because even if it was nominally a generic term, its use to describe the generic phenomenon faded with the aging of the particular youth counterculture movement it was coined for; “punk” and later movements which might fairly be described as countercultural were never as popularly labeled with the term “counterculture” as the hippies were, and now it's a term groups overtly focused on exaggerating traditional elements of mainstream culture claim as a means of clout chasing.
- parentheses 3y ago++ I'm too old to know what the current counter culture is. I think when I was young it was the emo crowd making melancholy ok (not emo so guessing).
- dragonwriter 3y ago
- halyconWays 3y agoInternet-era counterculture was developing en force during Occupy Wall Street and with figures like Snowden, Manning, and Assange. It scared the shit out of the powers-that-be and they worked over years to destroy the ability to form grassroots organizations. A lot of their weapons are focused on divide & conquer and making us fight one another over identity politics and our small differences. A few toxic ideologues (and ideologies) were essentially stuck on the equivalent of an enclosed train and shipped to the heart of the problem, and the establishment amplified their voices a thousandfold with the outlets they had available to them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 3y agoI think this is well-written and argued but juxtaposed with the rest of the magazine it is simple hypocrisy. All of the fashion photo collections on the site feature only huge brands like Fendi, Gucci, LV, Saint Laurent, Prada. They are using the web, and YouTube, as a conduit to advertise Big Fashion under the banner of art.
- stubybubs 3y agoI think the article covers that: > So what does today’s counter-hegemonic culture look like? It’s not particularly interested in being seen—at least not in person. It gets no thrill out of wearing leather and a mohawk and walking past main-street shops, which are empty now anyway. It's really not about what you wear or don't wear, because it's all been done, it's all online. > It’s as if, having grown up on a fully networked Earth, Gen Z has bypassed counterculture, finding it futile in the face of a hegemonic system that more clearly resembles a Hydra than the monolithic forces that legacy counterculture was rebelling against. There is no escape so maybe fashion has become something that is completely orthogonal to counterculture, and the real counterculture is in the anonymous spaces, discourse, and connections found online, where it doesn't matter what you look like.
- Swizec 3y agoThe internet used to be counterculture. Now it’s the mall. Those of us who feel nostalgia for the countercultural internet … I fear we’re too old to be admitted into current counterculture. We are the culture the youths are countering.
- hutzlibu 3y agoErm, counter culture has nothing to do with age per se.
- Swizec 3y agoTouche. But many here on HN literally helped build the mainstream web. Or at least gave it their best shot. Hard to get more mainstream than “i work at facebook/google/whatever”
- hutzlibu 3y agoOh for sure. When you get old, you want more comfort(or have a family to feed) and more comfort comes with more money and more money comes with loosening up some ideals.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- harimau777 3y agoI see what you are saying. On the other hand, a lot of the counter culture that I've seen takes a view something like "The reality is that most of us have to work for a corp 9-5 to survive. What makes you counter culture is what you do with the rest of your life."
- hutzlibu 3y ago"The reality is that most of us have to work for a corp 9-5 to survive." I think the reality is, that you have to work 9-5 to maintain the modern, expected standard. But if you don't care about that, there are plenty of other ways.
- spacemadness 3y ago“Actual power keeps a low profile; actual power doesn’t need a social media presence, it owns social media.” So where does Elon fit in here?
- kipchak 3y agoI think this depends on whether you assess Elon as actual power, or something closer to new money trying to put themselves in the position of being actual power.
- phoe-krk 3y agoIn the greatest circus on the world, where he's the head clown, watched by millions. Keeping a low profile and covertly performing power is actually possible if you distract everyone else with being an ultra-rich obnoxious idiot online. I obviously can't prove it (even more so because it's unlikely Elon is more than an ultra-rich obnoxious online idiot), but it's an entertaining thought nonetheless.
- JohnFen 3y agoHe doesn't.
- robertlagrant 3y agoElon Musk is only powerful in that he is productive or enables productiveness, producing things that others find valuable and hard to produce. I.e. he's powerful in the capitalist sense, not the political sense.
- LordShredda 3y agoHe fired half the Twitter team,where does the produce come from
- robertlagrant 3y agoElon Musk is only powerful in that he is productive or enables productiveness, producing things that others find valuable and hard to produce. I.e. he's powerful in the capitalist sense.
- wand3r 3y agoReminds me of an interesting article about the dynamics of a subculture from birth to death: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
- Llamasponge 3y agoIn a time where tolerance and respect for minorities is slowly becoming mainstream, you could argue that the far-right has become counterculture. The far-right is VERY prevalent on both Instagram, Twitter and other social media.
- helboi4 3y agoI mean, there were racist skinheads back in the day at the same time as leftist countercultures existed. One side of the political spectrum doesn't get a monopoly. Both of them are countercultures compared to the centre.
- andsoitis 3y agoRelevant article: https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-new-counterculture/ https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-new-counterculture/
- api 3y agoI think this is the biggest argument against deplatforming: it actually makes them cool. Part of the appeal of these ideologies is clearly that they are offensive, not permitted on mainstream platforms, and therefore are something that their participants can "own" and that won't be co-opted by consumerism. It's the same thing that fueled "Satanic" rock and similar things. Fascism is devil music. That most people are offended by it and mainstream authorities preach against it is a huge part of its appeal. Elon Musk might be damaging this a little. It's hard to think you're a rebellious counterculture when you have one of the world's richest men acting as a public torch bearer.
- acuozzo 3y ago> I think this is the biggest argument against deplatforming: it actually makes them cool. The thing that mystifies me is that when parents get in on something it usually nukes the coolness factor, but the far right has an overwhelming supply of 50+ year olds on just about every platform and this has had no impact on its rise in popularity among the teens and twenty-somethings.
- smithcoin 3y agoYou’ll find it on 4chan.
- krapp 3y ago4chan is about as mainstream as it gets. Being edgy and racist isn't countercultural, certainly not nowadays.
- ecshafer 3y ago4chan isn't edgy and racist, unless its on like /b/ or /pol/. /lit/ or /fit/ or most of the boards aren't racist.
- tivert 3y ago> 4chan is about as mainstream as it gets. 4chan certainly isn't mainstream. Being somewhat well-trafficked != mainstream. > Being edgy and racist isn't countercultural, certainly not nowadays. That's just so obviously wrong, it's hard to know where to start. I mean, pretty much the entire media and business apparatus of the country spends a lot of effort loudly condemning those things. You might have the arrived at the wrong impression because those groups have the goal of achieving something close to total extermination of those things, so counter-productively give even small instances massive amounts of attention.
- ceejayoz 3y ago> I mean, pretty much the entire media and business apparatus of the country spends a lot of effort loudly condemning those things. ... and it's widely claimed by many that they're out of touch with Real American culture for doing so. There's no easy, solid definition here. Disney and DeSantis are fighting over culture hot potatoes; which one is "establishment" and which one is "counter-culture" in that fight? (Neither, really. Both are establishment, and both are a little counter-cultural.) 4chan has become a lot less shocking than it used to be. That's a bit of a cultural shift in its direction.
- 3y ago
- greenie_beans 3y agowriter obviously doesn't follow any meme accounts. meme accounts get banned all the time and they just create a new account.
- onemoresoop 3y agoHope to see a big wave of counterculture and that's when/if masses of people get off their devices and start interacting IRL.
- ravenstine 3y agoThe real counterculture right now is non-participation. In a world where virtually everything is either designed to completely waste your time or fail and not be repairable, it's a highly radical act to stop consuming like the 95%, preferring to spend time with other humans in reality doing something that isn't technological. In spite of the popular world pushing the message that you will be fulfilled living in virtual reality and consuming soy/insect products, the radical sets their phone to "do not disturb" and plays frisbee-golf or pub trivia.
- spacemadness 3y agoI agree, but it’s just anti-consumerism in another form. Albeit with a twist as we’re what’s being sold some of the time. Anti-consumerism is anti-participation.
- clsec 3y agoAgreed up until DND & frisbee golf. It's actually off/airplane mode and what happens in counterculture stays off the internet. Instead frisbee-golf pics will be posted to fool the masses.
- dingusdew 3y agoYou had me until the weird put-down of soy and insects.
- helen___keller 3y agoSome people really really hate tofu I guess. Probably never had a great mapo tofu, that stuff slaps
- extr0pian 3y agoTofu scrambles are awesome. One of my favorite meals is fried tofu with steamed broccoli and soy sauce.
- alwaysbeconsing 3y agoMapo tofu doesn't seem like a good counterexample since the pork component is as important as the tofu to the dish. Granted there are veg versions using mushrooms as an alternative.
- tekla 3y agoCounterculture requires gatekeeping, because most people can't take it, ESPECIALLY anyone who uses Instragram The best times I've had were having parties where we would work on cool exhibits with barely contained pyrotechnics, Tesla coils that would kill you if you touched it, and an expectation that YOU DO NOT PUT IT ON THE INTERNET and if you get hurt, YOU DID NOT GET HURT HERE. Everyone wants a nice and curated experience of "counterculture" until they get into a scenario where they are the only person not cool with losing a finger or two from doing something fucking awesome
- JohnFen 3y agoYes. Social media in general, and particularly things like FB, IG or Tiktok, are the exact opposite of "counterculture".
- rchaud 3y agoDepends which side of the funnel you're on. To some, "move fast, break things" is counter-cultural, even if the term comes from an erstwhile hoodie-clad CEO that rapidly mutated into the biggest suit in corporate history.
- ipaddr 3y agoIf you are risking fingers, cutting off body parts or taking dumb risks just stop. It's not worth it. It's not cool or interesting. These are the things you regret later. You did not get hurt here works until someone does get hurt and the hammer comes down on you.
- tekla 3y agoThis is why people think counterculture is dead. I've hurt myself badly many times and have never regretted it, because it was fun and incredibly intellectually satisfying. I know no-one at these places that regret it, everyone accepts that that they are all working to a common goal of being awesome
- 3y ago
- unpopularopp 3y agoIn 2023 counterculture is right wing but that's a hard to swallow pill for a lot
- ceejayoz 3y agoThat's only a hard pill to swallow if your premise is "counterculture = good". It isn't necessarily.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- basisword 3y agoIn what sense? The last 24 years in the US have/will be split equally between Democrat and Republican presidents. In the UK the majority of this century has been run by the Conservative party. The US Supreme Court is 'right leaning' and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. How can the right wing be the counter culture when it holds most of the power? [Obviously just looking at two countries I'm familiar with but right wing ideology has surged all over in the last decade].
- jahewson 3y ago> The last 24 years in the US have/will be split equally between Democrat and Republican presidents. By this logic the counterculture can’t be left-wing either.
- basisword 3y agoWhy does the counter culture have to be left wing or right wing? It could be centrist. Apolitical. Based around other shared beliefs outside of political differences.
- krapp 3y agoCounter culture by definition counters some established cultural paradigm. It is at least critical, and at most actively hostile - but cannot by its very nature be apolitical, much less maximally accepting. Counterculture among the right would be the alt-right/white supremacist movements and QAnon, which counter mainstream conservatism. Among the left it would be actual (not the American definition of "anyone to the left of Reagan") communists, tankies, black and indigenous activism, etc. It's true that not every counterculture has to be defined, or define themselves, along the left/right axis, but given the greedy nature of that axis, it seems inevitable that any counterculture could be.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ecshafer 3y agoThe author has a good use of language but so many things they say seem very off. They seem overly fixated on the idea that counter-culture also has to be progressive. They are weirdly fixated on some aspects of internet culture. The main take away I have is that this author doesn't really seem to understand culture, what is counter culture, or internet culture. They are right that instagram isn't counter cultural, But honestly the real counter culture things are just offline.
- ulizzle 3y agoYeah, that was my same take. To be counter-culture, according to this article, you have to be a progressive furry goth hacker, who prays to St. Greta of Climate Change and Karl Marx, puts pronouns in their bios, and moonlights as an Antifa every once in a long while. That's been mainstream for a while. There are plenty of counter-cultures out there online; but because the author leans left, they are blind to them. Likely, the author doesn't even think of it as culture, like how "white people don't have culture."
- pmlnr 3y agoRelated, better: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media....
- dfxm12 3y agoThe Internet killed "monoculture". With no majority culture, by definition, it's hard to have counter culture.
- helboi4 3y agoThis is likely the real issue.
- baremetal 3y ago[flagged]
- TheGigaChad 3y ago[dead]
- s1artibartfast 3y agoCounter-culture isnt singular, but yes, religion and trad behavior can be a form of counter culture
- dogleash 3y agoThere's a beginning of an idea here, but this article quickly degrades into faffing about. The author is opining on various cultural touchpoints and weaving narrative. But it's all rather disconnected from what happened to the internet and why it is the way it is.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoCounterculture now is the far right. Trad West etc are huge, and the AOC/Wine Mom/Twitter dunk set doesn't really realize. Google Doodle Capitalism is really, really unpopular among that set, and the memes are incredible
- nemo44x 3y ago> ...the AOC/Wine Mom/Twitter dunk set doesn't really realize. They just have no idea. They have an equally irrelevant and unaware corporate media reenforcing this. I think certain corporations are beginning to sense it - you've seen a bit of a tone shift but they're just not sure because they just aren't tapped into this thing. Their elite training has not prepared them for this. They're still "hello fellow kids"'ing things that have become amazingly unpopular very quickly.
- backtoyoujim 3y agocan we ever stop being the product ?
- marginalia_nu 3y agoTL;DR: The revolution will not be televised.
- sakopov 3y ago> Search Google Images for ‘counterculture’ and it overwhelmingly returns black-and-white photos of young people all now over 60. In the pictures, it is so clear what they were countering: The Man, of course, who, with his white collar, white skin, and short hair, singlehandedly symbolized dominant cultural norms. Counterculture was a force that went up against the establishment as much as it did cultural norms. These days, it appears that the cultural norm is to bed in bed with the so-called establishment. When you have Cardi B and Ye rallying on behalf of politicians and celebrities/musicians regurgitating the talking points of the mainstream media you know the counterculture is dead.
- UnixSchizoid 3y agoLinux and FOSS software enthusiasts are todays counter culture
- jononomo 3y agoWe don't even have a main culture anymore, so there is nothing to counter.
- user_named 3y agoHaving your Instagram set to private is counterculture. And not adding coworkers there.
- helen___keller 3y agoSearching for photos of counterculture brings up black and white photos from the 60s because the term is obsolete in modern society except for sprawling wordy articles trying to redefine the word in a modern context
- nus07 3y agoMoney corrupts all. A big part of counterculture in the past was the luxury to go against the grain and do things without having to worry about your next meal or paying off your debts and healthcare. Unfortunately today we live in a much more complex society where a lot more people are in debt and less secure. As a result it’s become way more difficult to be counterculture today. The ones who are probably considered crazy right wingers or so on.
- thinkingemote 3y agoCounterculture may not be on the internet because the counterculture is normal, or ... square. It's not boring, it's not exciting it's just normal, or common. (Perhaps more accurately we should say that there is no counterculture anymore when the mainstream culture continues to performs the roles that it used to hold) Current culture rejects the normal, what people think is basic or commonplace in favour of the spectacular, the colourful, the exciting, the transgressive, the provoking, the radical. Many things that were shunned when we were growing up as being geeky are mainstream now as it is packaged up and made available to buy in as many formats and products as possible. Washing your car on a Saturday, working 9 to 5, mowing the lawn, taking your kids to the park, not caring about politics much, visiting elderly relatives, going on holiday, having a hobby, doing a craft, not worrying about authenticity, getting a mortgage, going to church. Be there by being square. The past radicals used to say "the revolution will not be televised". Perhaps now we have to say "the revolution cannot be televised" as it's anti spectacular.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26436552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26436552
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26436552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26436552 - March 2021 (436 comments)
- azubinski 3y agoIn order for the syntax of the word "counterculture" to be semantic, it is necessary that there be semantics for the word "culture". Therefore, the question arises - is there any semantics of the word "culture" in the syntax-semantics of the word "Instagram"? And, it turns out that there is the possibility of searching for "the denial of what cannot be at all" :)
- Anon_Forever 3y agoIf you have the support of almost the entirety of academia, half of the political establishment, the highest levels of government, multinational corporations, etc. you're not the counterculture "resistance"... You're the evil empire.
- partiallypro 3y agoA lot of what used to be considered "counterculture" now is just mainstream. If you look back to the early 2000s (around when MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/YouTube grew) to now, a lot of "pop culture" is very similar to what it was then. I think social media killed the monolithic culture that TV and other media presented and now everything has been a hodgepodge ever since. The new "counterculture" seems to be more people that are off the map and are more traditional.
- s17n 3y agoThe article misses what really happened to “counterculture” - it’s been killed by increasing social and economic stratification. Sure, in the early 90s it was still possible to shock conservatives but what really made counterculture viable back then was that you could afford an apartment without having a career. It wasn’t just housing costs, either - in general, the benefits of participating wholeheartedly in the system were much more modest than they are now. The internet has certainly been a factor, particularly in making the concept of a local music scene kind of obsolete, but the demise of counterculture is definitely due to material concerns.
- devit 3y agoIn a lot of places there is either a formal ban on phones and cameras or at least of taking photos, or people simply are used to live simply or in the moment and don't use them (at least not for non-essential things). This holds for writing and stories as well, so it's best to rely on personal experience and not assume that you can use the Internet to predict the details of the experiences you can have in the world.
- dogman144 3y ago20 Interviews is an interesting read, and the author is smart to link Snowden to this indirectly. I agree with the author’s assessment that a/the counterculture to the early 2000’s global tech MAGA FAANG thunderdome will come out of that… space in the way described: some mix of Snowden, crypto, compass meme, e-deologies. If you read Snowden’s bio, he was fully schooled in the internet being a new space of free thought and open information. If you read 20 Interviews, Nick Land comes up… a lot… in interviews with edgy teenagers. One of the worst Intel leaks recently, the discord/Ukraine leaks, came from a what looks like a perma-online discord resident. You can guesstimate that he was in the direction of the political compass culture. Crypto (cryptography and cryptocurrency) itself comes out of the original internet-establishment/surveillance state haters. Jack Dorsey is firmly an old school cypherpunk. I don’t think there’s a cohesive label for all this outside “cypherpunks” although that feels dated. but it is a cohesive group and this article was interesting to read as it seems rarely Linked in public. I see it, there’s a group that is extending the cypherpunk ideologies of the 90’s combined with the nihilism of watching climate change/COVID failures combined with internet edge-lord roots. I think it’s a potent force. It has so far: - brought consumer encryption into the world - caused two of the largest intelligence leaks in recent memory - love it or hate it, invented cryptocurrency and permanently changed conversations about what money is and how it’s accessed to include a new $5bil global market - brought tor and vpns onto the scene - brought you the Arab spring
- lofatdairy 3y agoWow, really like this piece. Not much to add, just think that it ties together a lot of concepts in really conceptually rich ways (dark forest communities, "breaking" platforms as a hallmark for success, aesthetics of identity, etc). Also really admire how theory is applied in ways that add to the piece, while still leaving it approachable and appropriate for a magazine piece. Would love to see this expanded into a more full text at some point, it definitely captures the current zeitgeist far better than most mainstream articles.
- the-printer 3y agoThere is no obvious counter-cultural movement in the West because there is nothing deemed subversive enough by major institutions that hasn't been commercialized to some extent. If we are viewing things on a political spectrum, the right and the left each claim to be bucking the values and traditions of "the establishment" with the approval and encouragement of both sides of the "establishment" one way or the other.
- nemo44x 3y agoIndeed. The system will co-opt whatever is valuable and fortify its power. It’s not long for it to become the official policy of your favorite credit card and bank. Well, Occupy didn’t but that was sort of just swept away into something that could.
- quags 3y agoThe early internet was counter culture. When I was in high school the nerds were on the internet and it wasn’t yet mainstream.