5 ms·

there are still subcultures: the ones unpalatable to corporate interests; ones around topics that are illegal, very politically fringe, or centered on weird sex

there are still subcultures: the ones unpalatable to corporate interests; ones around topics that are illegal, very politically fringe, or centered on weird sex stuff

torginus 2y ago
I would also add things that are unprofitable and/or participating in them requires a high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money. Which describes a lot of things if you think about it.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Curious what subcultures comes to mind for you. I havent finished my coffee, but and drawing a blank on cultural interests that cant be commodified.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    Carnival.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      You mean the traditional Month of Partying? Nah, that's been thoroughly commercialized already.
  - technofiend 2y ago
    Not sure how mainstream furries are. Sure, they have conventions and whatnot but do you expect to see one on a box of cereal anytime soon? Probably not.
    - idle_zealot 2y ago
      I... assume this is a joke? https://cereal.fandom.com/wiki/Chip_the_Wolf https://cereal.fandom.com/wiki/Chip_the_Wolf
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        I think the charitable interpretation is that parent-poster meant it like how cereal boxes have featured famous athletes, as opposed to brand mascots. For example, Frosted Flakes has "Tony the Tiger", but he is widely understood to be a fictional tiger, rather than an endorsement by a real human who got famous for wearing a tiger-suit.
        technofiend 2y ago
        Yes, exactly.
      - technofiend 2y ago
        Do you mean Chip the Wolf is actually a human who wears a wolf costume? Because he looks like a cartoon character to me, so he doesn't qualify as a "furry" in my mind.
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      I thought of furries too
  - torginus 2y ago
    Playing an instrument (or being part of a band), being part of a writing club. Anything where the meat of the activity either requires genuine ability and/or effort, or enjoying skillful humans performing that activity for you. The problem of a lot of subcultures is that they define themselves in large part by flashy externalities, and commodification is part of their DNA. For example: You like an underground band's music, as you feel the message they broadcast through their music resonates with you, and you'd like to display your participation, so you buy their merch and go to their shows. No matter how authentic they may seem, they've already sold themselves off as a commodity, and you've participated in the low effort transaction of buying a piece of identity, like you'd buy a share of a company's stock. Now, if later the band gets popular, that share of identity gets diluted, and you get to be one of those annoying people who insist you like the band before they were cool.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I think it's important to distinguish between an act and a culture. I wholeheartedly agree that individuals can act in ways that aren't commodified. If people like it, there's almost always someone packaging it and selling it. Now, I don't think that means you can't enjoy playing or listening to music. If someone stops listening or playing a genre of music because someone is commodifying it, that just means a big part of what they enjoyed was the idea of being underground, transgressive, or counter cultural for its own sake. Also, some things can be more easily commodified without losing authenticity. Gutter punk music doesn't have the same impact when sung by a sold-out multi-millionaire. Inversely, it doesn't much matter how much money Yo-Yo ma has in the bank and that he's a guest at davos.
    - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      Musicians are notorious for fetishising gear ownership. Old synthesizers routinely sell for five or sometimes six figures. Some of the buyers are talent-free collectors, others are industry successes who have the cash to spare and both collect and use them. Post your beat made on a $100 commodity synth, and everyone will be "Good effort.." no matter how good it is. Writing on social media is a lifestyle activity. You'll see endless reels showing "My cute working space", which inevitably has trailing plants and a lovely perfectly arranged bookshelf, probably with fairy lights, and never looks like anyone's random messy office. And so on. These are both promotional activities that signify belonging to cultures that allow you to buy a lifestyle identity by spending money on the appropriate gang signs and uploading them to your chosen forums and accounts. Original creativity and artistry are incidental to this. If someone doesn't show the gang signs and doesn't respect the standard tropes and genre signifiers, many consumers don't know what to do with them.
  - bakuninsbart 2y ago
    Funny that no one yet mentioned the elephant in the room given that this is HN: Hacker and FOSS culture. Of course there are attempts to commercialize it, but people are naturally resistant.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      I would argue that Big Tech has successfully commercialized FOSS culture simply by using FOSS output to build commercial software Cloud Services like AWS probably would not exist without the foundation that FOSS provided
    - tsumnia 2y ago
      I sort of disagree, as we've seen a significant increase in small scope tools like the FlipperZero, Arduinos, and Raspberry Pis. Each one has a slew of shields/extensions/whatever that subculture calls their plug and play option. That isn't to say the groups are mindless sheep or naturally resistant; just pointing out that the space does have some commercialization happening.
    - finnthehuman 2y ago
      The DIY-spirited software scenes were so thoroughly commercialized that appealing to their aesthetics is now in the past. FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm. All the subculture has been thoroughly power-washed out of any commercial useful corner of their online communities. You can encounter more pressure to be a milquetoast office-job persona in the open source space than your actual office job. We're in so deep you can't even see how deep we're in.
      - bakuninsbart 2y ago
        > FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm. Ok, I didn't see the forest for the trees there, which is quite funny. But I still get together with friends to build stuff for the sake of it, without any intention of commercializing the things we build, and there is still a very large corpus of FOSS software being maintained by people simply because they think it is cool, or because they are idealists who want free software to be free.
  - boerseth 2y ago
    Dancing is a good example, though not perfect. It's hard to convince a club to have a salsa/bachata/tango/swing centered evening, because the interested crowd actually comes to dance and socialize. It is much more profitable and easy to turn down the lights and up the music and get customers that buy alcohol. Not to say that dancing is not commodifiable. People make a living offering classes, outfits, shoes, and travels centered on specific dance genres. But as a participant, you can get pretty far for a lot less money than the price of the proverbial night on the town.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I think it's important to distinguish Acts which individuals perform from the culture around those Acts. Commodification of a subculture is spoken about as if it is a binary a purity test but that isn't reflective of reality. You can pay $500 to watch some aged punk rockers perform in an arena, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an illegal Warehouse show going on at the same time in the same city.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Anything unsavory to associate a major brand with is generally actively ignored in mass media. Could be something weird or heinous or merely frowned upon like partying culture these days.
  - judahmeek 2y ago
    Wildness Survival?
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      Huh? Corporate brands sell everything from footwear and clothing to water filters and backpacks targeted directly at that "Wildness Survival" subculture. In fact, "Wildness Survival" is actually one of the most profitable subcultures at the moment.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Those get commercialized quickly, too. You'd think that e.g. dumpster-diving for food would be "unprofitable" and require "high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money", but freeganism already turned into aspirational hobby for many, and has its own little ecosystem of influencers selling books. It fits in nicely among its even more commercial cousins, like "minimalism", "healthy eating", "organic food", "zero waste", "frugal lifestyle", etc.; together, they form a larger "anti-consumerist"/"degrowth" market segment, which is happily growing as more people buy merch. The irony. But as the old adage goes, the market can merchandise everything; it'll happily sell you a hi-vis vest, baclava, baseball bat and a chain you can use to cuff yourself to an utility pole as you camp in front of the supermarket to protest capitalism ruining the world.
  - ndileas 2y ago
    I'd say excessive commercialization so that the whole activity is centered around buying and selling, or most members are gearheads who rarely go out and do stuff, etc, is definitely unfortunately common. But I see it mostly as an individual failing, enabled and made worse by media environment. Tune out.
  - Miraste 2y ago
    None of those require any personal investment. I think GP meant something that takes a lot of your personal time to do, while staying unprofitable no matter the skill level. For example, ROM hacks and emulators: they're difficult and time-consuming to create, and they can't be monetized for legal reasons.
    - robocat 2y ago
      > they can't be monetized Yeah difficult to corporately commercialise, however they can be statusified.
  - barbecue_sauce 2y ago
    All protests need good baklava.
- jongjong 2y ago
  But the participants need to have money on the side. People who are trapped in 9-to-5 jobs are too busy making ends meet to engage in activities which don't tie directly into their survival.
ajsnigrutin 2y ago
You mean the ones banned by most social media, hard to find on google and even harder to find in real-life?
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Some non commodifiable sub cultures are easy to find in real life. E.g. drinking or doing drugs in public.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    Oh man, drinking is not the example I'd use That's big industry
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Not really in the style of degenerate drinking. Bud light can’t put out an ad of people beer bonging in a public park. They have to look upstanding, grilling in the backyard of a private home, not overindulging. Likewise with creme brule torch companies; they can’t advertise on grounds for drug use.
      - spencerflem 2y ago
        but like, they sell the commodities that that subculture relies on, and while im sure the Whipped Cream Canister Companies (home kitchen use only) etc would rather come out and advertize normally, commerce is still happening
        kjkjadksj 2y ago
        With that logic everything one might do is also commoditized by virtue of someone making it and selling it. That isn’t really the case. You can use for your inputs plenty of precursor designed for other use. Miracle grow certainly isn’t in the home bomb making business even if fertilizer is a potential input. Vodka is not made for molotov cocktails. 3d printers aren’t made for ghost gun manufacturing.
tsumnia 2y ago
They don't need to be obscene - I think a good example would be non-sparring martial arts like Aikido or Tai Chi. There isn't really an incentive to pay to watch top performers in the arts demonstrate technique beyond a handful of people wanting DVDs. There's zero stakes because you aren't competing against another person to be "the best". BUT, the physically can also be a turn off to many people. The joke I was taught was "to make a small fortune, start with a large one and open a dojo". The martial art business model therefore is pretty small scale - kids classes, seminar fees, clothing and equipment sales, that's about it. But none of those things are really going to make you super wealthy because the non-competing aspect removes a lot of that business-oriented focus.
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  BJJ feels like it fits well because it's super fun to play but super boring to watch. Gyms make a killing and some super stars exist, but at its core you'll just find dudes rolling around on mats for fun.
  - adammarples 2y ago
    Every single bjj name makes their money off instructionals. I'd say it's well on the way to being commodified.
notnaut 2y ago
Sam Hyde and his canceled adult swim show World Peace seem to stand out in my mind in that it feels hard to call it “very” politically fringe these days (which is a scary thought from plenty of reasonable perspectives). He’s pretty hugely popular on the internet, could almost certainly be swallowed up by standard old corporatism, but has so far been spit back out for the most part. Perhaps a sign of just how dominant vanilla corpora-liberalism is as the defining filter culture is sifted through. Maybe the chapo trap house people or Adam Friedland or other socialism adjacent people fit the bill a little bit as well, but they seem more in line with the types that are ultimately corporately unpalatable, like you mention.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  How would you define corporatism?
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  I mean old boy's super racist so that acts like kryptonite to repel normies.
- arkaic 2y ago
  Didnt believe a bug got a mention here in hn
- arkaic 2y ago
  I would say a heavy YouTube presence is almost on par with corporate palatableness with respect to how not counterculture you may think something is. Want something "punk" in say the comedy world? Redbar
- zeroCalories 2y ago
  These people are all exemplary of commodification. Sam, Chapo, Adam, etc. package up their pet ideology/movement and make tons of money selling it to people. They're not activists or intellectuals slaving away in the dark corners of the internet for scraps, they are pretty much b or c-tier celebrities.
CM30 2y ago
I'd say fanworks are a good example of this, albeit more in the legally grey area than the proven illegal one. You can't really run a business selling derivative works, so things like fan fiction, fan games and mods kinda remain unaffected by gentrification and hustle culture.

there are still subcultures: the ones unpalatable to corporate interests; ones around topics that are illegal, very politically fringe, or centered on weird sex stuff

torginus 2y ago

I would also add things that are unprofitable and/or participating in them requires a high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money. Which describes a lot of things if you think about it.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Curious what subcultures comes to mind for you. I havent finished my coffee, but and drawing a blank on cultural interests that cant be commodified.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  Carnival.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    You mean the traditional Month of Partying? Nah, that's been thoroughly commercialized already.
- technofiend 2y ago
  Not sure how mainstream furries are. Sure, they have conventions and whatnot but do you expect to see one on a box of cereal anytime soon? Probably not.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    I... assume this is a joke? https://cereal.fandom.com/wiki/Chip_the_Wolf https://cereal.fandom.com/wiki/Chip_the_Wolf
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      I think the charitable interpretation is that parent-poster meant it like how cereal boxes have featured famous athletes, as opposed to brand mascots. For example, Frosted Flakes has "Tony the Tiger", but he is widely understood to be a fictional tiger, rather than an endorsement by a real human who got famous for wearing a tiger-suit.
      - technofiend 2y ago
        Yes, exactly.
    - technofiend 2y ago
      Do you mean Chip the Wolf is actually a human who wears a wolf costume? Because he looks like a cartoon character to me, so he doesn't qualify as a "furry" in my mind.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    I thought of furries too
- torginus 2y ago
  Playing an instrument (or being part of a band), being part of a writing club. Anything where the meat of the activity either requires genuine ability and/or effort, or enjoying skillful humans performing that activity for you. The problem of a lot of subcultures is that they define themselves in large part by flashy externalities, and commodification is part of their DNA. For example: You like an underground band's music, as you feel the message they broadcast through their music resonates with you, and you'd like to display your participation, so you buy their merch and go to their shows. No matter how authentic they may seem, they've already sold themselves off as a commodity, and you've participated in the low effort transaction of buying a piece of identity, like you'd buy a share of a company's stock. Now, if later the band gets popular, that share of identity gets diluted, and you get to be one of those annoying people who insist you like the band before they were cool.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think it's important to distinguish between an act and a culture. I wholeheartedly agree that individuals can act in ways that aren't commodified. If people like it, there's almost always someone packaging it and selling it. Now, I don't think that means you can't enjoy playing or listening to music. If someone stops listening or playing a genre of music because someone is commodifying it, that just means a big part of what they enjoyed was the idea of being underground, transgressive, or counter cultural for its own sake. Also, some things can be more easily commodified without losing authenticity. Gutter punk music doesn't have the same impact when sung by a sold-out multi-millionaire. Inversely, it doesn't much matter how much money Yo-Yo ma has in the bank and that he's a guest at davos.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    Musicians are notorious for fetishising gear ownership. Old synthesizers routinely sell for five or sometimes six figures. Some of the buyers are talent-free collectors, others are industry successes who have the cash to spare and both collect and use them. Post your beat made on a $100 commodity synth, and everyone will be "Good effort.." no matter how good it is. Writing on social media is a lifestyle activity. You'll see endless reels showing "My cute working space", which inevitably has trailing plants and a lovely perfectly arranged bookshelf, probably with fairy lights, and never looks like anyone's random messy office. And so on. These are both promotional activities that signify belonging to cultures that allow you to buy a lifestyle identity by spending money on the appropriate gang signs and uploading them to your chosen forums and accounts. Original creativity and artistry are incidental to this. If someone doesn't show the gang signs and doesn't respect the standard tropes and genre signifiers, many consumers don't know what to do with them.
- bakuninsbart 2y ago
  Funny that no one yet mentioned the elephant in the room given that this is HN: Hacker and FOSS culture. Of course there are attempts to commercialize it, but people are naturally resistant.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    I would argue that Big Tech has successfully commercialized FOSS culture simply by using FOSS output to build commercial software Cloud Services like AWS probably would not exist without the foundation that FOSS provided
  - tsumnia 2y ago
    I sort of disagree, as we've seen a significant increase in small scope tools like the FlipperZero, Arduinos, and Raspberry Pis. Each one has a slew of shields/extensions/whatever that subculture calls their plug and play option. That isn't to say the groups are mindless sheep or naturally resistant; just pointing out that the space does have some commercialization happening.
  - finnthehuman 2y ago
    The DIY-spirited software scenes were so thoroughly commercialized that appealing to their aesthetics is now in the past. FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm. All the subculture has been thoroughly power-washed out of any commercial useful corner of their online communities. You can encounter more pressure to be a milquetoast office-job persona in the open source space than your actual office job. We're in so deep you can't even see how deep we're in.
    - bakuninsbart 2y ago
      > FFS, the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" is based on a venture capitalist co-opting a rebellious term to convince a bunch of impressionable youths that they can have this alluring label and that the cool kids software club is actually working for his vc firm. Ok, I didn't see the forest for the trees there, which is quite funny. But I still get together with friends to build stuff for the sake of it, without any intention of commercializing the things we build, and there is still a very large corpus of FOSS software being maintained by people simply because they think it is cool, or because they are idealists who want free software to be free.
- boerseth 2y ago
  Dancing is a good example, though not perfect. It's hard to convince a club to have a salsa/bachata/tango/swing centered evening, because the interested crowd actually comes to dance and socialize. It is much more profitable and easy to turn down the lights and up the music and get customers that buy alcohol. Not to say that dancing is not commodifiable. People make a living offering classes, outfits, shoes, and travels centered on specific dance genres. But as a participant, you can get pretty far for a lot less money than the price of the proverbial night on the town.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think it's important to distinguish Acts which individuals perform from the culture around those Acts. Commodification of a subculture is spoken about as if it is a binary a purity test but that isn't reflective of reality. You can pay $500 to watch some aged punk rockers perform in an arena, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an illegal Warehouse show going on at the same time in the same city.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Anything unsavory to associate a major brand with is generally actively ignored in mass media. Could be something weird or heinous or merely frowned upon like partying culture these days.
- judahmeek 2y ago
  Wildness Survival?
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    Huh? Corporate brands sell everything from footwear and clothing to water filters and backpacks targeted directly at that "Wildness Survival" subculture. In fact, "Wildness Survival" is actually one of the most profitable subcultures at the moment.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Those get commercialized quickly, too. You'd think that e.g. dumpster-diving for food would be "unprofitable" and require "high degree of personal investment which can't be substituted with money", but freeganism already turned into aspirational hobby for many, and has its own little ecosystem of influencers selling books. It fits in nicely among its even more commercial cousins, like "minimalism", "healthy eating", "organic food", "zero waste", "frugal lifestyle", etc.; together, they form a larger "anti-consumerist"/"degrowth" market segment, which is happily growing as more people buy merch. The irony. But as the old adage goes, the market can merchandise everything; it'll happily sell you a hi-vis vest, baclava, baseball bat and a chain you can use to cuff yourself to an utility pole as you camp in front of the supermarket to protest capitalism ruining the world.
- ndileas 2y ago
  I'd say excessive commercialization so that the whole activity is centered around buying and selling, or most members are gearheads who rarely go out and do stuff, etc, is definitely unfortunately common. But I see it mostly as an individual failing, enabled and made worse by media environment. Tune out.
- Miraste 2y ago
  None of those require any personal investment. I think GP meant something that takes a lot of your personal time to do, while staying unprofitable no matter the skill level. For example, ROM hacks and emulators: they're difficult and time-consuming to create, and they can't be monetized for legal reasons.
  - robocat 2y ago
    > they can't be monetized Yeah difficult to corporately commercialise, however they can be statusified.
- barbecue_sauce 2y ago
  All protests need good baklava.
jongjong 2y ago
But the participants need to have money on the side. People who are trapped in 9-to-5 jobs are too busy making ends meet to engage in activities which don't tie directly into their survival.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago

You mean the ones banned by most social media, hard to find on google and even harder to find in real-life?

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Some non commodifiable sub cultures are easy to find in real life. E.g. drinking or doing drugs in public.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  Oh man, drinking is not the example I'd use That's big industry
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Not really in the style of degenerate drinking. Bud light can’t put out an ad of people beer bonging in a public park. They have to look upstanding, grilling in the backyard of a private home, not overindulging. Likewise with creme brule torch companies; they can’t advertise on grounds for drug use.
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      but like, they sell the commodities that that subculture relies on, and while im sure the Whipped Cream Canister Companies (home kitchen use only) etc would rather come out and advertize normally, commerce is still happening
      - kjkjadksj 2y ago
        With that logic everything one might do is also commoditized by virtue of someone making it and selling it. That isn’t really the case. You can use for your inputs plenty of precursor designed for other use. Miracle grow certainly isn’t in the home bomb making business even if fertilizer is a potential input. Vodka is not made for molotov cocktails. 3d printers aren’t made for ghost gun manufacturing.

tsumnia 2y ago

They don't need to be obscene - I think a good example would be non-sparring martial arts like Aikido or Tai Chi. There isn't really an incentive to pay to watch top performers in the arts demonstrate technique beyond a handful of people wanting DVDs. There's zero stakes because you aren't competing against another person to be "the best". BUT, the physically can also be a turn off to many people. The joke I was taught was "to make a small fortune, start with a large one and open a dojo". The martial art business model therefore is pretty small scale - kids classes, seminar fees, clothing and equipment sales, that's about it. But none of those things are really going to make you super wealthy because the non-competing aspect removes a lot of that business-oriented focus.

zeroCalories 2y ago
BJJ feels like it fits well because it's super fun to play but super boring to watch. Gyms make a killing and some super stars exist, but at its core you'll just find dudes rolling around on mats for fun.
- adammarples 2y ago
  Every single bjj name makes their money off instructionals. I'd say it's well on the way to being commodified.

notnaut 2y ago

Sam Hyde and his canceled adult swim show World Peace seem to stand out in my mind in that it feels hard to call it “very” politically fringe these days (which is a scary thought from plenty of reasonable perspectives). He’s pretty hugely popular on the internet, could almost certainly be swallowed up by standard old corporatism, but has so far been spit back out for the most part. Perhaps a sign of just how dominant vanilla corpora-liberalism is as the defining filter culture is sifted through. Maybe the chapo trap house people or Adam Friedland or other socialism adjacent people fit the bill a little bit as well, but they seem more in line with the types that are ultimately corporately unpalatable, like you mention.

robertlagrant 2y ago
How would you define corporatism?
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
I mean old boy's super racist so that acts like kryptonite to repel normies.
arkaic 2y ago
Didnt believe a bug got a mention here in hn
arkaic 2y ago
I would say a heavy YouTube presence is almost on par with corporate palatableness with respect to how not counterculture you may think something is. Want something "punk" in say the comedy world? Redbar
zeroCalories 2y ago
These people are all exemplary of commodification. Sam, Chapo, Adam, etc. package up their pet ideology/movement and make tons of money selling it to people. They're not activists or intellectuals slaving away in the dark corners of the internet for scraps, they are pretty much b or c-tier celebrities.

CM30 2y ago

I'd say fanworks are a good example of this, albeit more in the legally grey area than the proven illegal one. You can't really run a business selling derivative works, so things like fan fiction, fan games and mods kinda remain unaffected by gentrification and hustle culture.