4 ms·

The 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 admitte

by Swizec 3y ago

The 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 ago
Erm, counter culture has nothing to do with age per se.
- Swizec 3y ago
  Touche. 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 ago
    Oh 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 ago
    I 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.
- krapp 3y ago
  "never trust anyone over 30" was a maxim for a reason. It's difficult to fight culture once you've become invested in the status quo, and so alienated by the cutting edge that modernity disgusts you.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "that modernity disgusts you" The thing that disgusts me the most about modernity, is actually teenage Instagramm/TikTok zombies, totally unaware of the algorithms controlling them, created by the tech crowd.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    That was for a different time. Those under 30s grew up and many are more countercultural than kids under 30 now
    - Swizec 3y ago
      > Those under 30s grew up and many are more countercultural than kids under 30 now Pretty sure this is exactly how my Gen X parents feel. My mom couldn't understand how the music I loved in high school doesn't have a political message. But she grew up in a time when you'd go to jail for speaking up against the regime unless it was masked through art. I grew up in a democracy. Very different.
  - jononomo 3y ago
    My motto is "don't trust anyone under 30" -- because in my experience they just don't know enough yet to have valuable opinions and also because the kids these days have a value system that deifies mental illness and victimhood, and I'm just not interested in the opinions of people who operate from a mentally-ill victimhood stance.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      But do you actually interact with kids? If you would, you might find that there are differences, just like with old people.
tekla 3y ago
I know plenty of crust punks who bring their kids to events. They just dont let their kids do the actually fun stuff, because the kids don't have enough experience yet.
pmlnr 3y ago
> The internet used to be counterculture. Now it’s the mall. No. The internet is the same thing or place; the mall is the well known part of it, like AOL or Yahoo was, "back in the days". The artisan alleys of the net exist (eg http://www.penmorfa.com/ http://www.penmorfa.com/ , or basically anything from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 ), the abandoned houses or factories of the internet exist (look at blogs that hadn't been touched in a decade); museums, art, libraries, etc exist (look at websites like https://ubu.com/ https://ubu.com/ or https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ ). It's all still there. And malls are there as well, so are packed beaches, attractions, and all the cheap and bad things from the world. Someone somewhere definitely said already the internet is but a mirror of the world.
api 3y ago
It still exists. You find it in places like the Fediverse, private self-hosted forums, private Slack and Discord groups, etc.
anileated 3y ago
Counterculture and seemingly-mainstream %thing1% are not mutually exclusive. All that’s required to subvert %thing1%’s mainstreamness is to approach it (in case of a place, be in it) differently. Answering the phone, wearing clothes in public, taking a bus, driving a car, using a popular social media app, visiting a mall. You can be at a mall ironically. Observe signaling from outside of your identity. Come in to take a dump in a nice bathroom. All that’s required is some self-awareness. In fact, it is the other way around: problems often begin when a thing seems countercultural, leading you to approach it as part of your identity—it can be much harder to ironically or out of pure utility visit an artisan alley or an underground music club. In this sense, if we imagine some hypothetical scale of counterculturalness, I’d say it’s very well possible that some artisan alley would do much worse than a mall on it.

by Swizec 3y ago

hutzlibu 3y ago

Erm, counter culture has nothing to do with age per se.

Swizec 3y ago
Touche. 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 ago
  Oh 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 ago
  I 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.
krapp 3y ago
"never trust anyone over 30" was a maxim for a reason. It's difficult to fight culture once you've become invested in the status quo, and so alienated by the cutting edge that modernity disgusts you.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "that modernity disgusts you" The thing that disgusts me the most about modernity, is actually teenage Instagramm/TikTok zombies, totally unaware of the algorithms controlling them, created by the tech crowd.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  That was for a different time. Those under 30s grew up and many are more countercultural than kids under 30 now
  - Swizec 3y ago
    > Those under 30s grew up and many are more countercultural than kids under 30 now Pretty sure this is exactly how my Gen X parents feel. My mom couldn't understand how the music I loved in high school doesn't have a political message. But she grew up in a time when you'd go to jail for speaking up against the regime unless it was masked through art. I grew up in a democracy. Very different.
- jononomo 3y ago
  My motto is "don't trust anyone under 30" -- because in my experience they just don't know enough yet to have valuable opinions and also because the kids these days have a value system that deifies mental illness and victimhood, and I'm just not interested in the opinions of people who operate from a mentally-ill victimhood stance.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    But do you actually interact with kids? If you would, you might find that there are differences, just like with old people.

tekla 3y ago

I know plenty of crust punks who bring their kids to events. They just dont let their kids do the actually fun stuff, because the kids don't have enough experience yet.

pmlnr 3y ago

> The internet used to be counterculture. Now it’s the mall. No. The internet is the same thing or place; the mall is the well known part of it, like AOL or Yahoo was, "back in the days". The artisan alleys of the net exist (eg http://www.penmorfa.com/ http://www.penmorfa.com/ , or basically anything from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36575081 ), the abandoned houses or factories of the internet exist (look at blogs that hadn't been touched in a decade); museums, art, libraries, etc exist (look at websites like https://ubu.com/ https://ubu.com/ or https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ ). It's all still there. And malls are there as well, so are packed beaches, attractions, and all the cheap and bad things from the world. Someone somewhere definitely said already the internet is but a mirror of the world.

api 3y ago

It still exists. You find it in places like the Fediverse, private self-hosted forums, private Slack and Discord groups, etc.

anileated 3y ago

Counterculture and seemingly-mainstream %thing1% are not mutually exclusive. All that’s required to subvert %thing1%’s mainstreamness is to approach it (in case of a place, be in it) differently. Answering the phone, wearing clothes in public, taking a bus, driving a car, using a popular social media app, visiting a mall. You can be at a mall ironically. Observe signaling from outside of your identity. Come in to take a dump in a nice bathroom. All that’s required is some self-awareness. In fact, it is the other way around: problems often begin when a thing seems countercultural, leading you to approach it as part of your identity—it can be much harder to ironically or out of pure utility visit an artisan alley or an underground music club. In this sense, if we imagine some hypothetical scale of counterculturalness, I’d say it’s very well possible that some artisan alley would do much worse than a mall on it.