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It feels like we went from an era where people were valued for being contrarian/independent, to one where people find value in being conformist. What changed?

It feels like we went from an era where people were valued for being contrarian/independent, to one where people find value in being conformist. What changed? And I don’t mean this in a strictly partisan way, like its not popular to have unique perspectives on conservatism anymore, it’s more popular to fall in line with the current administration's narrow definition of conservatism.

fyrn_ 2y ago
Propably that's because trump politically attacks anyone who has an independent thought. I also expect more informed people are wary of cult of personality type contrarians, like trump or musk, who have weaponized the social media contrarian reaction engine to an extreme
- pwenzel 2y ago
  On top of that, when people are are attacked politically by Trump, they are also threatened physically by his followers.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
What changed is the economy went bad, both for the tech industry and the public in general. No more job hopping because there were more openings than people to fill them, no more easy capital to start a business, no more appetite for risk by anyone, etc. You don't see any BLM-sized protests or million-man marches or even walkouts at FAANG because everyone are fearful for their paychecks.
benmmurphy 2y ago
its always the same its just what is considered conformist is pivoting at the moment. the reason these contrarian/independent thinkers were valued were because they were really conformist. but they will be truly contrarian and independent once the pivot is over but then they won't be valued.
ViktorRay 2y ago
It feels like we went from an era where people were valued for being contrarian/independent, to one where people find value in being conformist. This is the opposite of what is going on. The conformist era was what began around 2018 to 2019. That is when the term cancel culture became mainstream. That was when one was expected to conform to the dogmas or risk being cancelled and having one’s career ruined. It increasingly got worse over the years. Cancel culture and all that dogmatic conformism is still around but now there is more free thinking than 6 years ago. So the situation is the opposite of what you are saying.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  > The conformist era was what began around 2018 to 2019. The conformist era was [the beginning of time] -> now, and into the future. 'Cancel culture' has always existed and still exists. It's the dominant socioeconomic group deciding a person must be shunned because they have breached the group's value system, and must be made an example. The United States, firmly based in puritanism, has shunned from the beginning, and there's probably at least a dozen churches getting together and shunning some member right now as I type this. The only thing that changed in that period from around 2016-2020 was the dominant socioeconomic group wasn't entirely white conservative males. That was a problem, the event had to be digested, analyzed, the situation had to be labeled (as we see here, it's the "conformist era") and work had to be done to eliminate it and ensure it didn't happen again.
  - ViktorRay 2y ago
    Yes I agree that conformist eras have existed before in American history. The 1950’s were another example of a conformist era that I think was bad. Conformism of any kind is bad. There are those of us (such as myself) who are against the conformism of the 1950’s (which was also a type of puritan cancel culture) and the conformism of Victorian England (just throwing out an example) and what happened starting in 2019. I distinctly remember in the early 2010’s that conformism had diminished. Maybe I felt that way because I was in college at the time but I remember there were a wide variety of options across the political spectrum being expressed and vigorous debates both in the media and around college campus. No talk of “deplatforming” back in the 2010-2015 era. The idea I remember was to invite people of different views and listen and debate them. Tv shows and movies had many scenes that were “offensive” without the kinds of responses you see nowadays. The “white conservative male” was not dominant in 2010-2015. Many voices existed. I myself am not white. When I was in college over 10 years ago I never got the feeling white conservatives were dominant. Around 2018-2019 the conformism began again. It was a different type of conformism than the 1950’s. A conformism in a different ideological direction. But it was still conformist.
mjd 2y ago
Does it really feel that way? I don't think I've ever lived in or heard of an era where people were valued for being contrarian and independent. In some eras those things are tolerated, when they produce results, and in some eras they are not. Most places and times, tbe nail that sticks out is the one that gets the hammer.
- Nevermark 2y ago
  > I don't think I've ever lived in or heard of an era where people were valued for being contrarian and independent. Agreed! The majority doesn't value contemporary contrarians, and it only values past contrarians once their ideas win over the majority. The majority values winners, not contrarians. Although while doing so, they often give lip service to valuing contrarians, and everyone imagines they would have been early supporters.
- techpeach 2y ago
  Maybe it was just sort of professionally coming of age for the rise of Silicon Valley in the early 2000’s
numpad0 2y ago
COVID? The US seemed to have weathered it fine, on paper, but I can't think it would be absurd to think that it might have left massive impacts to its capabilities.
borgdefenser 2y ago
It seems like we are largely rewarding conformity and punishing individuality more and more. I think it is because the modern internet is an amazing tool for assembling conformist mobs of thought. The individual really becomes a type of outcast in this structure. The way to get more likes and views is in out-conforming the next person. The radical individual is most likely to just be ignored. It is almost like we have evolved a structure of a conformity lottery. If you can reach a certain threshold of public conformity display, then you might get your lottery number called for cash and prizes. The radical individual is basically doing some 80s cable access show that not only no one watches but most don't even know exists so most don't even bother. I consider myself a radical individual but if I was 15 right now? I know without question I would be as conformist as possible.
- poopoopadoo 2y ago
  If only someone had seen this coming: https://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s https://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s It’s because humans latch onto language as if their map is reality Even here there’s a pretentious filtering to conform to the memory of the group in charge; this syntactic structure is of course the proper and correct format! It’s our biology choosing self which socially is to conserve our own perception Online everyone is being normalized the conserve the perception of mods/platform owners (aka just more normal vain humans, no need to deify them) rather than out in the world normalizing to a more unique creole of sorts The abstracts of STEM are a terrible philosophy for building social life. Created a bored and repetitive culture that depends on taking a knee before some webmaster rando for comments to avoid shadow bans
togetheragainor 2y ago
I don’t think this is entirely wrong, but we’re coming off a long period of intolerant liberal groupthink, where if you strayed too far from the progressive Democrat orthodoxy, you risked excommunication from your liberal friends and family, getting fired from your job, etc. Where you’d be labeled evil or a fascist for daring to question progressive policies, which may have been well-intentioned but often had terrible second-order effects. Where the administration strictly restricted what could be said by news media and on social networks under threat of political and legal retribution. So this isn’t a new phenomenon, or a conservative phenomenon, and it hasn’t nearly reached the levels we’ve been living under from the left. The liberal tech cohort was just unbothered by these issues when it aligned with their ideology.
- techpeach 2y ago
  I would sort of argue it probably is a conservative phenomenon, but small-c conservative. It serves to entrench or protect a set of views and not allow a classical liberal approach, whether or not that’s from a “left” perspective or a “right” perspective. In fact I think a lot of the dynamics playing out right now make more sense from the lens of the Democratic/left leaning parties being more “conservative” and right leaning parties being more change/reactuonary
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  You parrot all this like there hasn’t been a huge conservative groupthink push at exactly the same time. Don’t act like cancel culture is an “intolerant liberal” thing (although that does make up part of it). I’ve lost count of the number of businesses and celebrities that have been canceled and protested by the “intolerant conservatives”. Not to mention, some of those causes have been wholly made up. Nobody has been forbidden from saying “merry Christmas”, no matter how many times your uncle shares some post about it in Faceboook.
coldtea 2y ago
[flagged]
- keernan 2y ago
  >Obama happened Being born in 1952 and having lived though the 1960s riots in both Newark NJ and LA, by the time Obama was elected, I believed my world (defined as 'away from the Confederacy') had radically different than the overt racism I witnessed in the 1960s. The year Obama was elected, I would have guessed less than 10 percent of my northern white America was racist. What I learned shortly after Obama's election rocked me to my core. The reaction was relatively immediate. There was a sudden rush of racism by some family members and far too many friends. It was hushed. But it was there. In private email chains. It stunned me. I didn't understand where it was coming from. What rocks had these people been hiding under? Then came 2015 and Trump and the racism was suddenly no longer limited to hushed email chains. And now? Now the wealthiest man in the world is using the election to unilaterally (and clearly illegally) decide how much Federal money should be spent. And on what and for whom. And while people of color are bearing the brunt of the sudden change coming their way, I have no doubt that anyone holding less than 100 million dollars in wealth will soon feel the impact too. But you are absolutely right. It all started with Obama.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Now the wealthiest man in the world is using the election to unilaterally (and clearly illegally) decide how much Federal money should be spent. And on what and for whom. You mean the person appointed by the elected POTUS to curb useless public money spending? Oh, the humanity! God forbid somebody takes a look at such spending, as the current president promised, was voted for that, and delivered. It was only OK when unelected appointed special advisors adviced on trillion dollar wars and trillion dollar bailouts and trillion dollar wastes of public money. But sure, it was so much better when not rich people got to control such spending: they got to become rich in the process, with bribes and post-term job offers from companies they favored. >I have no doubt that anyone holding less than 100 million dollars in wealth will soon feel the impact too. Yeah, the destruction of the middle class, loss of industry jobs, extra college, health, housing and insurance costs, and mega inflation was so great, things can only go downhill from here!

fyrn_ 2y ago

Propably that's because trump politically attacks anyone who has an independent thought. I also expect more informed people are wary of cult of personality type contrarians, like trump or musk, who have weaponized the social media contrarian reaction engine to an extreme

pwenzel 2y ago
On top of that, when people are are attacked politically by Trump, they are also threatened physically by his followers.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

What changed is the economy went bad, both for the tech industry and the public in general. No more job hopping because there were more openings than people to fill them, no more easy capital to start a business, no more appetite for risk by anyone, etc. You don't see any BLM-sized protests or million-man marches or even walkouts at FAANG because everyone are fearful for their paychecks.

benmmurphy 2y ago

its always the same its just what is considered conformist is pivoting at the moment. the reason these contrarian/independent thinkers were valued were because they were really conformist. but they will be truly contrarian and independent once the pivot is over but then they won't be valued.

ViktorRay 2y ago

It feels like we went from an era where people were valued for being contrarian/independent, to one where people find value in being conformist. This is the opposite of what is going on. The conformist era was what began around 2018 to 2019. That is when the term cancel culture became mainstream. That was when one was expected to conform to the dogmas or risk being cancelled and having one’s career ruined. It increasingly got worse over the years. Cancel culture and all that dogmatic conformism is still around but now there is more free thinking than 6 years ago. So the situation is the opposite of what you are saying.

mullingitover 2y ago
> The conformist era was what began around 2018 to 2019. The conformist era was [the beginning of time] -> now, and into the future. 'Cancel culture' has always existed and still exists. It's the dominant socioeconomic group deciding a person must be shunned because they have breached the group's value system, and must be made an example. The United States, firmly based in puritanism, has shunned from the beginning, and there's probably at least a dozen churches getting together and shunning some member right now as I type this. The only thing that changed in that period from around 2016-2020 was the dominant socioeconomic group wasn't entirely white conservative males. That was a problem, the event had to be digested, analyzed, the situation had to be labeled (as we see here, it's the "conformist era") and work had to be done to eliminate it and ensure it didn't happen again.
- ViktorRay 2y ago
  Yes I agree that conformist eras have existed before in American history. The 1950’s were another example of a conformist era that I think was bad. Conformism of any kind is bad. There are those of us (such as myself) who are against the conformism of the 1950’s (which was also a type of puritan cancel culture) and the conformism of Victorian England (just throwing out an example) and what happened starting in 2019. I distinctly remember in the early 2010’s that conformism had diminished. Maybe I felt that way because I was in college at the time but I remember there were a wide variety of options across the political spectrum being expressed and vigorous debates both in the media and around college campus. No talk of “deplatforming” back in the 2010-2015 era. The idea I remember was to invite people of different views and listen and debate them. Tv shows and movies had many scenes that were “offensive” without the kinds of responses you see nowadays. The “white conservative male” was not dominant in 2010-2015. Many voices existed. I myself am not white. When I was in college over 10 years ago I never got the feeling white conservatives were dominant. Around 2018-2019 the conformism began again. It was a different type of conformism than the 1950’s. A conformism in a different ideological direction. But it was still conformist.

mjd 2y ago

Does it really feel that way? I don't think I've ever lived in or heard of an era where people were valued for being contrarian and independent. In some eras those things are tolerated, when they produce results, and in some eras they are not. Most places and times, tbe nail that sticks out is the one that gets the hammer.

Nevermark 2y ago
> I don't think I've ever lived in or heard of an era where people were valued for being contrarian and independent. Agreed! The majority doesn't value contemporary contrarians, and it only values past contrarians once their ideas win over the majority. The majority values winners, not contrarians. Although while doing so, they often give lip service to valuing contrarians, and everyone imagines they would have been early supporters.
techpeach 2y ago
Maybe it was just sort of professionally coming of age for the rise of Silicon Valley in the early 2000’s

numpad0 2y ago

COVID? The US seemed to have weathered it fine, on paper, but I can't think it would be absurd to think that it might have left massive impacts to its capabilities.

borgdefenser 2y ago

It seems like we are largely rewarding conformity and punishing individuality more and more. I think it is because the modern internet is an amazing tool for assembling conformist mobs of thought. The individual really becomes a type of outcast in this structure. The way to get more likes and views is in out-conforming the next person. The radical individual is most likely to just be ignored. It is almost like we have evolved a structure of a conformity lottery. If you can reach a certain threshold of public conformity display, then you might get your lottery number called for cash and prizes. The radical individual is basically doing some 80s cable access show that not only no one watches but most don't even know exists so most don't even bother. I consider myself a radical individual but if I was 15 right now? I know without question I would be as conformist as possible.

poopoopadoo 2y ago
If only someone had seen this coming: https://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s https://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s It’s because humans latch onto language as if their map is reality Even here there’s a pretentious filtering to conform to the memory of the group in charge; this syntactic structure is of course the proper and correct format! It’s our biology choosing self which socially is to conserve our own perception Online everyone is being normalized the conserve the perception of mods/platform owners (aka just more normal vain humans, no need to deify them) rather than out in the world normalizing to a more unique creole of sorts The abstracts of STEM are a terrible philosophy for building social life. Created a bored and repetitive culture that depends on taking a knee before some webmaster rando for comments to avoid shadow bans

togetheragainor 2y ago

I don’t think this is entirely wrong, but we’re coming off a long period of intolerant liberal groupthink, where if you strayed too far from the progressive Democrat orthodoxy, you risked excommunication from your liberal friends and family, getting fired from your job, etc. Where you’d be labeled evil or a fascist for daring to question progressive policies, which may have been well-intentioned but often had terrible second-order effects. Where the administration strictly restricted what could be said by news media and on social networks under threat of political and legal retribution. So this isn’t a new phenomenon, or a conservative phenomenon, and it hasn’t nearly reached the levels we’ve been living under from the left. The liberal tech cohort was just unbothered by these issues when it aligned with their ideology.

techpeach 2y ago
I would sort of argue it probably is a conservative phenomenon, but small-c conservative. It serves to entrench or protect a set of views and not allow a classical liberal approach, whether or not that’s from a “left” perspective or a “right” perspective. In fact I think a lot of the dynamics playing out right now make more sense from the lens of the Democratic/left leaning parties being more “conservative” and right leaning parties being more change/reactuonary
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
FireBeyond 2y ago
You parrot all this like there hasn’t been a huge conservative groupthink push at exactly the same time. Don’t act like cancel culture is an “intolerant liberal” thing (although that does make up part of it). I’ve lost count of the number of businesses and celebrities that have been canceled and protested by the “intolerant conservatives”. Not to mention, some of those causes have been wholly made up. Nobody has been forbidden from saying “merry Christmas”, no matter how many times your uncle shares some post about it in Faceboook.

coldtea 2y ago

[flagged]

keernan 2y ago
>Obama happened Being born in 1952 and having lived though the 1960s riots in both Newark NJ and LA, by the time Obama was elected, I believed my world (defined as 'away from the Confederacy') had radically different than the overt racism I witnessed in the 1960s. The year Obama was elected, I would have guessed less than 10 percent of my northern white America was racist. What I learned shortly after Obama's election rocked me to my core. The reaction was relatively immediate. There was a sudden rush of racism by some family members and far too many friends. It was hushed. But it was there. In private email chains. It stunned me. I didn't understand where it was coming from. What rocks had these people been hiding under? Then came 2015 and Trump and the racism was suddenly no longer limited to hushed email chains. And now? Now the wealthiest man in the world is using the election to unilaterally (and clearly illegally) decide how much Federal money should be spent. And on what and for whom. And while people of color are bearing the brunt of the sudden change coming their way, I have no doubt that anyone holding less than 100 million dollars in wealth will soon feel the impact too. But you are absolutely right. It all started with Obama.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Now the wealthiest man in the world is using the election to unilaterally (and clearly illegally) decide how much Federal money should be spent. And on what and for whom. You mean the person appointed by the elected POTUS to curb useless public money spending? Oh, the humanity! God forbid somebody takes a look at such spending, as the current president promised, was voted for that, and delivered. It was only OK when unelected appointed special advisors adviced on trillion dollar wars and trillion dollar bailouts and trillion dollar wastes of public money. But sure, it was so much better when not rich people got to control such spending: they got to become rich in the process, with bribes and post-term job offers from companies they favored. >I have no doubt that anyone holding less than 100 million dollars in wealth will soon feel the impact too. Yeah, the destruction of the middle class, loss of industry jobs, extra college, health, housing and insurance costs, and mega inflation was so great, things can only go downhill from here!