8 ms·

The 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

The 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 ago
I 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 ago
Agreed 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 ago
You had me until the weird put-down of soy and insects.
- helen___keller 3y ago
  Some people really really hate tofu I guess. Probably never had a great mapo tofu, that stuff slaps
  - extr0pian 3y ago
    Tofu scrambles are awesome. One of my favorite meals is fried tofu with steamed broccoli and soy sauce.
  - alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
    Mapo 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.
    - helboi4 3y ago
      Pretty much every asian tofu dish in its authentic form includes meat. Tofu was never seen as a meat replacement in its countries of origin. However, if you think about it, mixing tofu and meat as protein sources does reduce the overconsumption of meat. My Japanese friend who came to visit recently was shocked by the large steaks and whole chickens that you could buy here. There they usually eat very small slivers of meat with other stuff. So, yeah, still probably helpful to the environment and probably healthier considering humans are not herbivores.
    - helen___keller 3y ago
      Is a tofu+pork dish not considered “consuming soy products”?
- extr0pian 3y ago
  Same. Soy is great source of protein that's far less resource intensive and generally cheaper than factory farming. And the only times I've heard of people eating insects are from people attacking/insulting another group of people.
- ycomuser 3y ago
  What's weird about it? I don't know about soy, but for insects if it weren't for the internet, they would be on far fewer people's radar. It's not an unrelated thing.
  - dingusdew 3y ago
    [dead]
reportgunner 3y ago
A strange game.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
I don't know why you needed to derail a good point with the insect conspiracy theory dog whistle tho. If me and the homies get together weekly for bible study and fried crickets does that not fit into what you're describing?
- Pannoniae 3y ago
  The best indicator for "is this a conspiracy theory" is "is this true, or at least plausible?" The "live in virtual reality and consume insects" is a point pushed by at least a few people, so it's not a baseless conspiracy theory. You might say they are not influential or whatever, but it's not like this was made up on the spot. Even if it was a baseless conspiracy theory, it doesn't detract from the value of the rest of the comment.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    No, the best indicator is, "does this rhetoric serve to promote an agenda more than it serves to explain a phenomenon we did not understand previously?" Lots of conspiracy theories are plausible. With the sheer number of them, some of them will have strong elements of truth, even. Conspiracy theory isn't an epistemological designation, it's a political and rhetorical one. [ETA: To clarify, by political, I mean "within political science" not "for political ends". That also happens, of course, it's just not what I refer to here.] A conspiracy theory purports to explain something, but actually serves to justify an ideology by stealth. Lots of anti-LGBTQ ideology disguises itself as concern about transhumanism ("they want to turn us into soy boy sheep plugged into virtual reality" sort of rhetoric).
    - Pannoniae 3y ago
      "Conspiracy theories isn't an epistemological designation, it's a political and rhetorical one." Well, that's the problem. If the word was only used for baseless things, it would be taken seriously. But nowadays, "conspiracy theory" is mostly used to discredit legitimate opinions or ideologies just because the powers being don't like them.
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
I work seasonally and spend the other half of the year trying to disconnect and focus on real-life, outdoor hobbies. Even if I leave my phone turned off, the majority of the people around me, young and old alike, are on their phones. They feel a need to document what they are doing on social media. Even in countercultures that draw on the 1960s hippies for examples, people might frown on photos going on social media, but participants are still whipping out their phones constantly to look at stuff. Today, the person who takes that radical act finds it much more difficult to have a community of like-minded people.
- jehb 3y ago
  > I work seasonally and spend the other half of the year trying to disconnect and focus on real-life, outdoor hobbies. A bit off-topic, but I'm curious if you have any advice for finding seasonal jobs? It feels a bit ironic to be working in tech, making twice what I actually need to live off of, but with no real option to just work half as much.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    Any primary industry plus tourism will find you those kind of jobs. They're advertised just the same way as any other jobs. Pay and benefits are usually bottom-tier, with much dishonesty among employers. Work is usually very tough and stressful physically and mentally. Work mates can be some of the most fun people you've met.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Sorry, I don’t work in tech at all but a different profession, one where seasonal work is easily arranged. I’m on HN because I learned shell/Python/Emacs as part of installing Linux decades ago and so I enjoy a “news for nerds” site, and I ended up here just because there was little place else to go after the decline of Slashdot.
    - jehb 3y ago
      Thanks. I should have been clearer, I am okay leaving tech. :)
reaperducer 3y ago
the radical sets their phone to "do not disturb" and plays frisbee-golf or pub trivia I have recently been surprised to learn how robust both the stamp collecting and model railroading hobbies are these days. Living in the HN bubble, I just assumed they were both dead. They're not. Not by a long shot. I wonder what other "old timey" hobbies are still popular.
- softfalcon 3y ago
  Railroading is and has always been huge as far as I can tell. I know quite a few folks who are into it and the projects they build are featured in our local museums. It turns out that kids LOVE trains and of the 3 history museums in my city, all of them have an exhibit for model trains. One of them (our heritage park) provides funding to the creators, paying them to transport and set up their models in their museum. So far, the room that has such exhibits shows off 20+ large scale train models. It's pretty cool seeing the older train hobbyists training new folks on how to create trees, little homes, automated circuits, etc. What's even more cool is them interacting with the community and sharing their knowledge to wide-eyed little kids. Warms the heart seeing people of all ages bonding over a shared interest.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't think any "old timey" hobbies are dead, at least not in my area. There are even subcultures like blacksmithing, cobbling, etc. But you won't find any of these online.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  that's funny, I saw a thing recently covering the death of stamp collecting, with participants obsessive but aging, very few young people entering the scene and very few interesting stamps (to collectors) being made. I'm confident railroads will continue to be a thing though, its ajacent to wargaming which I know is going strong from my own participation :)
  - notadev 3y ago
    > with participants obsessive but aging, very few young people entering the scene I believe amateur/ham radio is experiencing a similar aging out of interest as well.
williamcotton 3y ago
The truly radical have combined frisbee-golf and pub trivia into a single, chaotic event with the introduction of ping-pong balls, water clocks and questions asked in made up languages.
xhkkffbf 3y ago
There are dozens of memes floating around claiming that the counterculture is made of of people getting married to someone of the opposite sex, raising a family, practicing a religion, eating meals together, celebrating the holidays together etc. Naturally, these folks have left social networks like Facebook and Instagram far behind.
- helboi4 3y ago
  All sounds nice and I've love that. But I do happen to be gay and it's not a choice so it would need to be a same sex partner. Seems like being straight can't be a counterculture because you can't just do it to be edgy and it is still the majority and the hegemony bro
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I would say that those subjects dominate my social media feed, but that wouldn't actually be true as my social media feed is currently mostly pictures of women whose nipples I can clearly see through their clothes which I would think would be against Meta's guidelines, but if it drives engagement, I suppose guidelines be damned. Either way, I consider it a big upgrade from political rage/engagement bait that they used to serve me constantly. But the social media I see from my actual human friends is in fact about 95% what you posted, and is actually what I want from social media.
- rchaud 3y ago
  They have? Facebook is the only place where you'd even see memes like that, always shared from one of the million "traditional values' Pages.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
Precisely this. Deleted my Facebook, barely on Instagram, haven't wasted time on Snapchat, and TikTok what? Maybe I'm a millennial boomer, but I don't care. Social media is cancer and the world would benefit from a return to a time when everyone wasn't on it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hammock 3y ago
Networks of cottage industry. During Covid lockdowns I joined a powerlifting gym that was a startup in an old dry cleaners, had to “try out” to get in (make sure I wasn’t a narc), was the only gym in a city of 5+ million that was open and they had papered over the windows so prying eyes couldn’t observe the no-masks inside. I had the fewest tats in the place, you only wear black, there will never be any TVs and the heaviest lifter in there at the time gets to control the Spotify station which is always metal. They have both a pro-2A plaque and a trans flag on the wall. One of the co-owners is gay and films onlyfans in the gym at night. Fast forward years later and I get my coffee beans from a startup local roaster who hosts an Elvis impersonator, for the motorcycle meetup, I learned where the tats get done, I support a local microbrewery, there is a cafe where I get lunch, I got my black t shirts from a designer…every single business owner I just mentioned goes to the same gym. It’s a neat little community. And I’ve NEVER seen one of these people pull out a phone around others (unless they were filming a PR for their trainer)
- dogman144 3y ago
  Yes agree. Finding small local interest groups usually leads towards communities that’ll run again the Insta-grain. This is most of my social life as well.
- jhartwig 3y ago
  (Make sure I wasn’t a narc) What does this mean in the context? Were they afraid of getting shut down during covid or something? I’m assuming that is what you meant.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
    Could be roids. When I used to powerlift that stuff was all too common. When I was kid lifting with the grownups they sold GHB next to the protein bars.
    - dogman144 3y ago
      Yes my thought was juicing. Beyond the obvious bodybuilders in gyms the world over, when fitness is needed past a certain level of seriousness it’s much more common than expected.
NiloCK 3y ago
It's maybe telling that even imaginary radicals own smartphones.
RC_ITR 3y ago
I always think it’s so interesting that on the threads about counterculture, nobody brings up the obvious counterculture that is a huge topic of conversation in America: Homeless people. A large group of individuals who live their life very differently from the mainstream (countercultures do not have to be opt-in), who have completely different goals/morals/motivations than the mainstream, and are fully and violently rejected by the mainstream. I think the 1960’s mythology confused a lot of people into thinking that counterculture is what young white people choose to do to seem cool, but homeless people are actually probably the most prominent counterculture America has ever had. In practice, it’s hard to think of something more core to American culture than private property ownership and we have an increasing large group of people who are not participants in that.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > A large group of individuals who live their life very differently from the mainstream (countercultures do not have to be opt-in) Yes, it does, and it has to have aspirational elements, distinct from those of the mainstrram it is defined against. Otherwise, while it is a a distinct (possibly sub-)culture, it isn’t a counterculture. When you have to alter the widely understood meaning of a term to argue everyone else is overlooking an example, its a pretty good clue that its not an example. > I think the 1960’s mythology confused a lot of people into thinking that counterculture is what young white people choose to do to seem cool, Well, yes, “counterculture” was largely a label of the 1960s version of the boomer/millenial fight, but for “Greatest" vs Boomers, and without the adoption of marketing generational terms, and then as now it mainly applied to whites, because if it wasn’t intergenerational cultural conflict within White America, it got other labels.
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    So the Roma aren’t a counterculture? I agree homeless people aren’t a political movement that’s trying to abolish homes, but they are completely rejecting mainstream culture (by choice or not). > Countercultures are often described as radical groups of people who reject established social values and practices and who embrace a mode of life opposed to the mainstream. Countercultures emerge in the wake of dramatic economic and social developments. They are reactions to social dislocation and alienation from society. Countercultures share many similarities with subcultures, but rather than modifying dominant values and norms, they seek to reconstruct an alternative social order that rejects or subverts those values and norms. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/countercultures https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/counter...
ekianjo 3y ago
Real radicals dont have phones
dogman144 3y ago
I think this is accurate. I feel more on the outside the more I push into keeping costs low, not opting in to millennial megaplex apartments, all the consumption, all the social media. I hate feeling like in this position of a Luddite-hipster but I’m not hustling in my career and comp just do I can suck all my money and time into that. But increasingly, doing this brands you as “alternative.”
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  My non-tech-working buddies don’t understand why I don’t want to PC game on discord all night at the same desk I just spent all day working in. Hell, even some of my tech-working buddies don’t either. Kinda ironic that it’s more often than not the techie folks who are unplugging more often so to speak.
  - dogman144 3y ago
    Ya I work in tech for the opp to keep it all at a distance from me. I’ve specifically thought about how stupid the loop is of building stuff at the computer and then turning around and consume all the same stuff I build for work (so to speak). Every time I’m on Reddit I hate myself. I also hate that that I can’t install an easy DNS blocking tool that isn’t likely selling my traffic and also works always (ie mobile and Wi-Fi, so PiHole is only half of this). It’s like being too far past the abstraction to see the tech product galaxy as a “worthwhile activity” and I try to keep it out of my life now.
    - jonasdegendt 3y ago
      Just thinking out loud here because I haven’t actually looked into this, but isn’t the second half just running your own DNS with black lists and pointing your phone at it? Just did a quick search in my iPhone settings and it seems like I can’t actually set up DNS myself. I do know I can configure a VPN, point it at your home network, at that point the PiHole can do its thing again.
      - 3y ago
lom888 3y ago
>pub trivia This was one of my two outlets for social participation until about 10+ years ago, but this pursuit has been ruined by phones. Participants cheat without a second thought and the emcees refuse to enforce rules.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  That's why I stopped participating in pub quizzes. There's no point or fun to them anymore.
username332211 3y ago
The living in a virtual reality and consuming insects (or owning nothing and being happy, or whatever other creepy thing the Davos crowd comes up with) part is rejected completely by the predominant culture. The WEF is therefore closer to counter-cutural movement than you are. A counterculture doesn't have to be a thing for commoners. It can be limited to the upper classes. The most famous example is probably the Socrates and his academy. Athenians saw him as a dangerous sophist that corrupted the youth, a common trope with regards to counter-cultural leaders. Eventually he was executed for that very reason. Of course, by the time the man was executed, young aristocrats who had been under Socrates' tutelage had killed about 5% of the citizens in an attempt to abolish democracy and establish a proto-totalitarian regime in the Spartan model, which may or may not prove the Athenians right.

spacemadness 3y ago

I 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 ago

Agreed 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 ago

You had me until the weird put-down of soy and insects.

helen___keller 3y ago
Some people really really hate tofu I guess. Probably never had a great mapo tofu, that stuff slaps
- extr0pian 3y ago
  Tofu scrambles are awesome. One of my favorite meals is fried tofu with steamed broccoli and soy sauce.
- alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
  Mapo 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.
  - helboi4 3y ago
    Pretty much every asian tofu dish in its authentic form includes meat. Tofu was never seen as a meat replacement in its countries of origin. However, if you think about it, mixing tofu and meat as protein sources does reduce the overconsumption of meat. My Japanese friend who came to visit recently was shocked by the large steaks and whole chickens that you could buy here. There they usually eat very small slivers of meat with other stuff. So, yeah, still probably helpful to the environment and probably healthier considering humans are not herbivores.
  - helen___keller 3y ago
    Is a tofu+pork dish not considered “consuming soy products”?
extr0pian 3y ago
Same. Soy is great source of protein that's far less resource intensive and generally cheaper than factory farming. And the only times I've heard of people eating insects are from people attacking/insulting another group of people.
ycomuser 3y ago
What's weird about it? I don't know about soy, but for insects if it weren't for the internet, they would be on far fewer people's radar. It's not an unrelated thing.
- dingusdew 3y ago
  [dead]

reportgunner 3y ago

A strange game.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

I don't know why you needed to derail a good point with the insect conspiracy theory dog whistle tho. If me and the homies get together weekly for bible study and fried crickets does that not fit into what you're describing?

Pannoniae 3y ago
The best indicator for "is this a conspiracy theory" is "is this true, or at least plausible?" The "live in virtual reality and consume insects" is a point pushed by at least a few people, so it's not a baseless conspiracy theory. You might say they are not influential or whatever, but it's not like this was made up on the spot. Even if it was a baseless conspiracy theory, it doesn't detract from the value of the rest of the comment.
- maxbond 3y ago
  No, the best indicator is, "does this rhetoric serve to promote an agenda more than it serves to explain a phenomenon we did not understand previously?" Lots of conspiracy theories are plausible. With the sheer number of them, some of them will have strong elements of truth, even. Conspiracy theory isn't an epistemological designation, it's a political and rhetorical one. [ETA: To clarify, by political, I mean "within political science" not "for political ends". That also happens, of course, it's just not what I refer to here.] A conspiracy theory purports to explain something, but actually serves to justify an ideology by stealth. Lots of anti-LGBTQ ideology disguises itself as concern about transhumanism ("they want to turn us into soy boy sheep plugged into virtual reality" sort of rhetoric).
  - Pannoniae 3y ago
    "Conspiracy theories isn't an epistemological designation, it's a political and rhetorical one." Well, that's the problem. If the word was only used for baseless things, it would be taken seriously. But nowadays, "conspiracy theory" is mostly used to discredit legitimate opinions or ideologies just because the powers being don't like them.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

I work seasonally and spend the other half of the year trying to disconnect and focus on real-life, outdoor hobbies. Even if I leave my phone turned off, the majority of the people around me, young and old alike, are on their phones. They feel a need to document what they are doing on social media. Even in countercultures that draw on the 1960s hippies for examples, people might frown on photos going on social media, but participants are still whipping out their phones constantly to look at stuff. Today, the person who takes that radical act finds it much more difficult to have a community of like-minded people.

jehb 3y ago
> I work seasonally and spend the other half of the year trying to disconnect and focus on real-life, outdoor hobbies. A bit off-topic, but I'm curious if you have any advice for finding seasonal jobs? It feels a bit ironic to be working in tech, making twice what I actually need to live off of, but with no real option to just work half as much.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Any primary industry plus tourism will find you those kind of jobs. They're advertised just the same way as any other jobs. Pay and benefits are usually bottom-tier, with much dishonesty among employers. Work is usually very tough and stressful physically and mentally. Work mates can be some of the most fun people you've met.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Sorry, I don’t work in tech at all but a different profession, one where seasonal work is easily arranged. I’m on HN because I learned shell/Python/Emacs as part of installing Linux decades ago and so I enjoy a “news for nerds” site, and I ended up here just because there was little place else to go after the decline of Slashdot.
  - jehb 3y ago
    Thanks. I should have been clearer, I am okay leaving tech. :)

reaperducer 3y ago

the radical sets their phone to "do not disturb" and plays frisbee-golf or pub trivia I have recently been surprised to learn how robust both the stamp collecting and model railroading hobbies are these days. Living in the HN bubble, I just assumed they were both dead. They're not. Not by a long shot. I wonder what other "old timey" hobbies are still popular.

softfalcon 3y ago
Railroading is and has always been huge as far as I can tell. I know quite a few folks who are into it and the projects they build are featured in our local museums. It turns out that kids LOVE trains and of the 3 history museums in my city, all of them have an exhibit for model trains. One of them (our heritage park) provides funding to the creators, paying them to transport and set up their models in their museum. So far, the room that has such exhibits shows off 20+ large scale train models. It's pretty cool seeing the older train hobbyists training new folks on how to create trees, little homes, automated circuits, etc. What's even more cool is them interacting with the community and sharing their knowledge to wide-eyed little kids. Warms the heart seeing people of all ages bonding over a shared interest.
JohnFen 3y ago
I don't think any "old timey" hobbies are dead, at least not in my area. There are even subcultures like blacksmithing, cobbling, etc. But you won't find any of these online.
RugnirViking 3y ago
that's funny, I saw a thing recently covering the death of stamp collecting, with participants obsessive but aging, very few young people entering the scene and very few interesting stamps (to collectors) being made. I'm confident railroads will continue to be a thing though, its ajacent to wargaming which I know is going strong from my own participation :)
- notadev 3y ago
  > with participants obsessive but aging, very few young people entering the scene I believe amateur/ham radio is experiencing a similar aging out of interest as well.

williamcotton 3y ago

The truly radical have combined frisbee-golf and pub trivia into a single, chaotic event with the introduction of ping-pong balls, water clocks and questions asked in made up languages.

xhkkffbf 3y ago

There are dozens of memes floating around claiming that the counterculture is made of of people getting married to someone of the opposite sex, raising a family, practicing a religion, eating meals together, celebrating the holidays together etc. Naturally, these folks have left social networks like Facebook and Instagram far behind.

helboi4 3y ago
All sounds nice and I've love that. But I do happen to be gay and it's not a choice so it would need to be a same sex partner. Seems like being straight can't be a counterculture because you can't just do it to be edgy and it is still the majority and the hegemony bro
hotpotamus 3y ago
I would say that those subjects dominate my social media feed, but that wouldn't actually be true as my social media feed is currently mostly pictures of women whose nipples I can clearly see through their clothes which I would think would be against Meta's guidelines, but if it drives engagement, I suppose guidelines be damned. Either way, I consider it a big upgrade from political rage/engagement bait that they used to serve me constantly. But the social media I see from my actual human friends is in fact about 95% what you posted, and is actually what I want from social media.
rchaud 3y ago
They have? Facebook is the only place where you'd even see memes like that, always shared from one of the million "traditional values' Pages.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

Precisely this. Deleted my Facebook, barely on Instagram, haven't wasted time on Snapchat, and TikTok what? Maybe I'm a millennial boomer, but I don't care. Social media is cancer and the world would benefit from a return to a time when everyone wasn't on it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hammock 3y ago

Networks of cottage industry. During Covid lockdowns I joined a powerlifting gym that was a startup in an old dry cleaners, had to “try out” to get in (make sure I wasn’t a narc), was the only gym in a city of 5+ million that was open and they had papered over the windows so prying eyes couldn’t observe the no-masks inside. I had the fewest tats in the place, you only wear black, there will never be any TVs and the heaviest lifter in there at the time gets to control the Spotify station which is always metal. They have both a pro-2A plaque and a trans flag on the wall. One of the co-owners is gay and films onlyfans in the gym at night. Fast forward years later and I get my coffee beans from a startup local roaster who hosts an Elvis impersonator, for the motorcycle meetup, I learned where the tats get done, I support a local microbrewery, there is a cafe where I get lunch, I got my black t shirts from a designer…every single business owner I just mentioned goes to the same gym. It’s a neat little community. And I’ve NEVER seen one of these people pull out a phone around others (unless they were filming a PR for their trainer)

dogman144 3y ago
Yes agree. Finding small local interest groups usually leads towards communities that’ll run again the Insta-grain. This is most of my social life as well.
jhartwig 3y ago
(Make sure I wasn’t a narc) What does this mean in the context? Were they afraid of getting shut down during covid or something? I’m assuming that is what you meant.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  Could be roids. When I used to powerlift that stuff was all too common. When I was kid lifting with the grownups they sold GHB next to the protein bars.
  - dogman144 3y ago
    Yes my thought was juicing. Beyond the obvious bodybuilders in gyms the world over, when fitness is needed past a certain level of seriousness it’s much more common than expected.

NiloCK 3y ago

It's maybe telling that even imaginary radicals own smartphones.

RC_ITR 3y ago

I always think it’s so interesting that on the threads about counterculture, nobody brings up the obvious counterculture that is a huge topic of conversation in America: Homeless people. A large group of individuals who live their life very differently from the mainstream (countercultures do not have to be opt-in), who have completely different goals/morals/motivations than the mainstream, and are fully and violently rejected by the mainstream. I think the 1960’s mythology confused a lot of people into thinking that counterculture is what young white people choose to do to seem cool, but homeless people are actually probably the most prominent counterculture America has ever had. In practice, it’s hard to think of something more core to American culture than private property ownership and we have an increasing large group of people who are not participants in that.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> A large group of individuals who live their life very differently from the mainstream (countercultures do not have to be opt-in) Yes, it does, and it has to have aspirational elements, distinct from those of the mainstrram it is defined against. Otherwise, while it is a a distinct (possibly sub-)culture, it isn’t a counterculture. When you have to alter the widely understood meaning of a term to argue everyone else is overlooking an example, its a pretty good clue that its not an example. > I think the 1960’s mythology confused a lot of people into thinking that counterculture is what young white people choose to do to seem cool, Well, yes, “counterculture” was largely a label of the 1960s version of the boomer/millenial fight, but for “Greatest" vs Boomers, and without the adoption of marketing generational terms, and then as now it mainly applied to whites, because if it wasn’t intergenerational cultural conflict within White America, it got other labels.
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  So the Roma aren’t a counterculture? I agree homeless people aren’t a political movement that’s trying to abolish homes, but they are completely rejecting mainstream culture (by choice or not). > Countercultures are often described as radical groups of people who reject established social values and practices and who embrace a mode of life opposed to the mainstream. Countercultures emerge in the wake of dramatic economic and social developments. They are reactions to social dislocation and alienation from society. Countercultures share many similarities with subcultures, but rather than modifying dominant values and norms, they seek to reconstruct an alternative social order that rejects or subverts those values and norms. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/countercultures https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/counter...

ekianjo 3y ago

Real radicals dont have phones

dogman144 3y ago

I think this is accurate. I feel more on the outside the more I push into keeping costs low, not opting in to millennial megaplex apartments, all the consumption, all the social media. I hate feeling like in this position of a Luddite-hipster but I’m not hustling in my career and comp just do I can suck all my money and time into that. But increasingly, doing this brands you as “alternative.”

soupfordummies 3y ago
My non-tech-working buddies don’t understand why I don’t want to PC game on discord all night at the same desk I just spent all day working in. Hell, even some of my tech-working buddies don’t either. Kinda ironic that it’s more often than not the techie folks who are unplugging more often so to speak.
- dogman144 3y ago
  Ya I work in tech for the opp to keep it all at a distance from me. I’ve specifically thought about how stupid the loop is of building stuff at the computer and then turning around and consume all the same stuff I build for work (so to speak). Every time I’m on Reddit I hate myself. I also hate that that I can’t install an easy DNS blocking tool that isn’t likely selling my traffic and also works always (ie mobile and Wi-Fi, so PiHole is only half of this). It’s like being too far past the abstraction to see the tech product galaxy as a “worthwhile activity” and I try to keep it out of my life now.
  - jonasdegendt 3y ago
    Just thinking out loud here because I haven’t actually looked into this, but isn’t the second half just running your own DNS with black lists and pointing your phone at it? Just did a quick search in my iPhone settings and it seems like I can’t actually set up DNS myself. I do know I can configure a VPN, point it at your home network, at that point the PiHole can do its thing again.
    - 3y ago

lom888 3y ago

>pub trivia This was one of my two outlets for social participation until about 10+ years ago, but this pursuit has been ruined by phones. Participants cheat without a second thought and the emcees refuse to enforce rules.

JohnFen 3y ago
That's why I stopped participating in pub quizzes. There's no point or fun to them anymore.

username332211 3y ago

The living in a virtual reality and consuming insects (or owning nothing and being happy, or whatever other creepy thing the Davos crowd comes up with) part is rejected completely by the predominant culture. The WEF is therefore closer to counter-cutural movement than you are. A counterculture doesn't have to be a thing for commoners. It can be limited to the upper classes. The most famous example is probably the Socrates and his academy. Athenians saw him as a dangerous sophist that corrupted the youth, a common trope with regards to counter-cultural leaders. Eventually he was executed for that very reason. Of course, by the time the man was executed, young aristocrats who had been under Socrates' tutelage had killed about 5% of the citizens in an attempt to abolish democracy and establish a proto-totalitarian regime in the Spartan model, which may or may not prove the Athenians right.