[HN Gopher] The internet didn't kill counterculture - you just w...
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The internet didn't kill counterculture - you just won't find it on
Instagram
Author : isanengineer
Score : 266 points
Date : 2021-03-12 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.documentjournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.documentjournal.com)
| Nothereearlit wrote:
| Won't find it on Hacker News either
|
| All just SaAS and exits and praising Katie Haun and A16Z as Ross
| serves life in prison
|
| Uggh hate fake hackers and SV
| everdrive wrote:
| I was originally going to write a more thoughtful response, but
| then I got to this section:
|
| "The names of these e-deologies tend to be both fantastical and
| literal."
|
| "post-civilizationist"
|
| "voluntarist post-agrarianist"
|
| "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism"
|
| I've really never heard of categories like these. It makes me
| think the author has delved into subcultures I really have no
| experience in. In that sense her descriptions may or may not be
| valid. But, she makes no attempt to bring specificity to a lot of
| her claims. Who are these people in these subcultures? How many
| people are in them, and how many people are out of them?
|
| In this sense, it reads a lot like a "cultural studies" piece;
| there is some great individual insight, but the overall essay
| makes claims it hasn't supported.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > post-civilizationist
|
| http://www.johnzerzan.net/articles/why-primitivism.html
|
| > voluntarist
|
| https://voluntaryism.info/
|
| > post-agrarianist
|
| https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300182910/against-grain
|
| > Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism
|
| I can't help you there, sorry :)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Commu.
| ..
| NotChina wrote:
| Nothing validates ones views more than a circle of like minded
| curmudgeons judging everybody else.
| markandrewj wrote:
| It's sort of ironic that the photographer for this article is on
| instagram.
| jasonv wrote:
| My teenage son asked me the other day what "grunge" and "goth"
| were. I was then trying to explain "subculture" and
| "counterculture", and it was surprisingly difficult to explain..
| or convey, especially in the context of what he's seen so far in
| his life.
|
| I tried using examples of my own youthful adventures and
| communities -- still not easy.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Aesthetics
| pjc50 wrote:
| Kpop stans are a live example of a subculture, if not a
| counterculture, that teenagers may be familiar with.
| bena wrote:
| I wouldn't call them a counterculture by any stretch of the
| imagination.
|
| Kpop is deliberately manufactured culture. The personalities
| and music are meticulously curated by corporations.
| "Underground Kpop" is practically an oxymoron like a "married
| bachelor" would be.
|
| And that's not to insult or knock it.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Listening to KPop in a country where it is not a major
| genre, might still be counterculture. Think back to the
| 1960s and 1970s: a lot of the American rock 'n' roll even
| then was curated, but those young people in the Soviet
| Union, say, or Morocco who started listening to it where
| definitely seen as a counterculture within their own
| country.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Listening to KPop in a country where it is not a major
| genre, might still be counterculture.
|
| Abstractly maybe, but in actuality an enormous amount of
| money and effort is spent to market K-Pop in the US by
| some of the largest media companies in the world.
| [deleted]
| redisman wrote:
| Try explaining next that computing and gaming used to be
| subcultures/countercultures. I remember how Mortal Kombat and
| DOOM were going to cause the fall of civilization.
| juststeve wrote:
| > DOOM
|
| Now we're talking. Doom was a massive deal because of the
| violence (as you mentioned), but also because it moved
| entertainment revenue away from MSM and onto PC's and the
| internet.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It didn't though. By the time of Doom's release video games
| (console and PC) were a multi-billion dollar industry. Only
| a quarter of households had PCs and none had Internet
| access. Even by 2000 only half of all households had a
| computer and only about 40% had Internet access.
|
| Doom was _not_ some watershed moment in entertainment. It
| was a trend setter, or at least a meme, in the industry but
| it didn 't somehow change the trajectory of the game
| industry.
|
| The PlayStation was vastly more influential on the industry
| on the whole than Doom. It was less expensive than PCs yet
| had a good selection of the sort of "mature" titles (or
| even ports) typically found on the PC. The PlayStation was
| not a platform that moved money from the "MSM" since it
| Sony which was the very definition of mainstream.
|
| Doom was cool but it didn't even come close to doing what
| you suggest. It didn't even _have_ Internet multiplayer
| until Kali (originally iDOOM) came up with their IPX /SPX
| bridging years after its release.
| Kelamir wrote:
| > I remember how Mortal Kombat and DOOM were going to cause
| the fall of civilization.
|
| redisman, could you tell more about this?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Probably referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_co
| ngressional_hearings_on...
|
| Keep in mind when these games were released there was no
| rating system for video games. The ESRB came about because
| of these hearings.
| rchaud wrote:
| And yet by 1995 Bill Gates was appearing in a video promo
| for Doom on Windows, wearing a trenchcoat and carrying a
| shotgun. For obvious reasons, this kind of nerdy
| frivolity wouldn't really be palatable after 1999.
| monocasa wrote:
| You might be able to explain through an exploration of genz
| subcultures.
|
| E-Boys/Girls, VSCO Girls, and cottagecore are some examples.
| imaginationra wrote:
| I run an independent film/animation/music/interactive studio- I
| have never owned any mobile phone and don't use any social media
| except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media
| platforms. We are the counterculture.
|
| Our studio has released torrents of media over the past 15 years
| that I would classify as counterculture but you would never know
| because we aren't hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing
| the "please look at me" game on Youtube etc.
|
| Trailerjacked trailer for counterculture game that makes
| animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrMEQPtMO4c
|
| Scene from a counterculture animated feature film in progress
| made in a game engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMeIaqjRvY
|
| Counterculture is not dead, its just not playing in the sandboxes
| everyone else is playing in, because those sandboxes are lame as
| fuck.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _its just not playing in the sandboxes everyone else is
| playing in_
|
| Where is it playing?
| greenonions wrote:
| Youtube apparently.
|
| (This was sarcasm)
| wussboy wrote:
| And it was good sarcasm. The enemy isn't you tube. The
| enemy is the algorithm.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I too would like to know this. I realize there's a rule one
| of the internet issue, but it's worth asking all the same.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Not the OP but I'll bite -- I've seen some incredible
| counterculture emerging out of what I like to term the IRC
| revival, or Discord communities. Discord and Roblox have
| fueled the communities creating a ton of the more interesting
| music I've discovered over the past year.
| lozaning wrote:
| Not OP, but I feel like I come across more and more art house
| style stuff thats only on Vimeo. Which to be fair is still
| pretty mainstream.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Special sandboxes with purple sand surrounded in velvet ropes
| only the cool kids know about. And with unlimited fresh
| lemonade, chocolate milk, and warm chocolate-chip cookies.
| You can almost see one during the winter solstice.
| keiferski wrote:
| YouTube is filled with so many interesting little channels. I
| wish the algorithms highlighted them more.
|
| I remember one channel of an old guy just smoking a cigar for
| an hour. Said nothing, just sat there. There were thousands of
| videos of him doing this, going back years. I don't remember
| the name of it, unfortunately.
| the_duke wrote:
| Can you share a few?
|
| YouTube always seems to stick me in a bubble and never
| recommends any worthwhile new channels.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think you just have search for something, then go to the
| later pages of results.
|
| Not sure I'd call it obscure, as Nick Knight is pretty well
| known as a photographer, but I really love the ShowStudio
| channel. They experiment with film and fashion in really
| interesting ways.
|
| https://youtube.com/user/SHOWstudio
| Y_Y wrote:
| Kaztalek Eastory William Maranci 2SICH Syrmor
| dylanblanchard wrote:
| might you be thinking of Adolfo Mateo?
| https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOKERSOFCIGARSPIPES/videos
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah I think that was it! Thanks.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| What the hell is he saying? Every video he mutters
| similar phrases as he exhales. Maybe he was speaking in
| code.
| keiferski wrote:
| Sending messages to the youtubers of 2500 AD, most
| likely.
| wussboy wrote:
| Good God I'd be puking if I ever smoked that heavily
| pope_meat wrote:
| That's a sex thing. People are jerking off to videos of
| people smoking. The more you know.
| keiferski wrote:
| Man, why did you have to ruin it. Oh well...
| airhead969 wrote:
| > We are the counterculture.
|
| Isn't that a tad bit arrogant to stick a flag in all of it? See
| also: https://youtu.be/uEx5G-GOS1k
|
| Youtube is "lame as fuck." Release everywhere to not be
| arbitrarily silenced because anything good is controversial, by
| definition.
|
| Why abuse the word "counterculture" so many times? It comes
| across like you're trying too hard.
|
| Good luck and I hope you find an audience rather than make at
| obscurity for the point of staying in obscurity.
| bobthechef wrote:
| "anything good is controversial, by definition."
|
| No, it isn't.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > I have never owned any mobile phone
|
| Eschewing a mobile phone has been pretty counterculture these
| recent years, but I think we are close to a point where it will
| no longer be sustainable, at least for anyone wanting to cross
| borders - or depending on the country, even enter a restaurant
| or concert. Several governments have announced that their
| vaccine passports will exist as mobile phone apps, because
| paper certificates are too easily forged.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| At that point, countercultural starts looking like the only
| game in town, at least that is worth playing.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Wait till they see how easy it is to make a lookalike app :)
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The apps are expected to generate limited-time QR codes
| with the respective country's digital signature (just like
| the biometric data in your passport), so no, your
| suggestion won't work.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Unless they somehow figured out a flaw in thr crypto that
| allowed for spoofing countries in which case holy shit
| why are you using it to fake vaccine certificates?
| mdoms wrote:
| The truth is that today the counter-culture is the right wing
| dudes (and ladies) who won't be beholden to trigger warnings,
| won't treat particular words as if they have magical powers and
| won't try to get you fired if you openly believe that male and
| female are real concepts. If your cursor is hovering over the
| downvote button right now then that's natural - counter culture
| isn't popular. By definition.
| [deleted]
| astrea wrote:
| Ah yes, the playground bully martyr defense: "Anyone who
| disagrees with me is just proving my point."
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The bog standard opinions of CPAC, a recent President, nearly
| every straight-laced conservative, and the majority of
| Republicans aren't counterculture, they're just grievance
| culture. There are some grievances they like to complain about,
| but it is still part of mainstream, popular culture to do so,
| and plenty of people have ridden to fame and fortune repeating
| those grievances to mainstream audiences.
| klyrs wrote:
| LARPing with boffer swords is counterculture. Kink is
| counterculture. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is
| counterculture. You don't need to brandish a tiki torch to be
| sufficiently different -- but that's the loudest
| counterculture, and they're getting all the attention. I know
| of an ancient forum related to a counterculture intentionally
| not listed here, and it's ticking along just fine,
| thankyouverymuch.
|
| Of course, there's a difference between "unpopular" and
| "intentionally or callously offensive". All of my examples are
| of the former kind (so long as the kink happens in private
| spaces, I guess). Church of Satan is borderline in my mind, but
| I suppose that some Christians might put it in the latter
| category.
| Noos wrote:
| It's hard to say things like kink or spaghetti monster are
| counter culture when they were routinely held by people in
| high positions of power in the culture and used to destroy or
| attack the impediments to capitalism. Atheism is capitalism's
| best friend, because it completely defangs any spiritual
| argument against consumerism and productivity; kink is
| capitalism's best friend because it opens up many lucrative
| and well paying methods to commodify sex itself.
|
| Ironically, both are disliked some because of that. The nofap
| rose as a real counterculture to commodified kink and porn;
| and the "i love fucking science" type of reddit atheist the
| FSM people were at heart are mocked.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I agree those things you mentioned aren't very popular, and
| possibly where you are the mainstream culture is different
| than where I am, but I don't see any of those things as
| counter-culture in the sense that none of them are opposed by
| the dominant culture. e.g. If it came out at work that you
| were a member of a group that fought with foam swords, had
| unusual sexual preferences, or were funny atheists, you
| wouldn't be fired. People might say "oh, that's weird" but
| they aren't going to hate you.
|
| I'm not saying any of those things are bad (in fact, I like
| fighting with fake swords) but there's not hostility to them
| from the culture and they, in turn, are not hostile to the
| mainstream culture, so I just don't think they're
| countercultural at all.
|
| By definition I think countercultural groups will strike you
| as weird and bad unless you belong to them specifically.
| Q-Anon, for example, which speculates that the leaders of
| society are <bad things>, is a countercultural group because
| they both hate and oppose elements of the main culture and
| are hated and opposed by it. The kind of antifa or anarchists
| who are attempting to burn down courthouses or police
| stations in Portland are another clear example.
| klyrs wrote:
| I think that FSM does satisfy your stricter definition of
| counterculture. Like the Church of Satan, one of the stated
| goals is to force legal examination of whether or not
| "freedom of religion" actually means "freedom to practice
| Christianity".
|
| LARPing and kink also have some opposition by fairly
| mainstream religious-types. They're seen as counterculture,
| even if they don't define themselves that way. Sorry.
| Changing my mind on kink -- that's a really big umbrella.
| Some people get off on being shamed for whatever it is
| they're into. Those folk are only satisfied when seen as
| counterculture.
| pointer_pointer wrote:
| This comment is exactly on point.
|
| Hippies were counter-culture against their 'square' parents.
| Now 4channers are (extreme) right-wing against liberal boomers
| and reddit millenials.
|
| They really are the new punks and as punks did, will litter
| their posts with nazi references and imagery to scare-off
| 'normies'.
| codezero wrote:
| That's a fun and interesting way to look at it, thanks!
|
| TBH I think you got downvoted just for mentioning it, I don't
| think what you said is actually that controversial unless
| you're making a lot of assumptions about _your_ intent in
| sharing this, which doesn't seem fair.
| mdoms wrote:
| I'm not surprised by the downvotes haha. I never said I
| agreed with the things I mentioned - I am by no means one of
| those right wing people - but it's clear which way the
| cultural winds are blowing today.
| fumar wrote:
| What side of the counter culture position would you have
| been while MLK was pushing for reform? Would your line "its
| clear which way the cultural winds are blowing today" align
| with the prejudice side? I think so. Do you look back and
| see that movement as an evolution and betterment for all of
| mankind or do you see it as "winds were blowing the wrong
| way"? Change is hard and change requires you to acknowledge
| your line of thinking, beliefs, ethics, all of it may be
| out dated or no longer the form. Imagine how folks born at
| the turn of 1900's felt when MLK was popular.
| mdoms wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at here,
| but I will always side with human rights. I am not
| American BTW so this little piece of cultural trivia is
| not especially relevant to me.
|
| > Would your line "its clear which way the cultural winds
| are blowing today" align with the prejudice side?
|
| ??
| fumar wrote:
| I was trying to make a point, not well, that cultural
| trends are hard to understand while you are living them.
| quercus wrote:
| My finger was hovering over the upvote button but I think the
| downvotes were required to validate the comment.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's precisely the irritating image people like that have of
| themselves, which does not correspond to reality. What does it
| mean "beholden to trigger warnings"? I'm not sure in which
| sense you are beholden to something which you likely haven't
| even encountered outside of internet posts making fun of
| trigger warnings. What magic words are those? Not saying n*gger
| in polite company isn't censorship, it's just good manners. And
| who exactly has been fired for "believing male and female are
| real concepts"? This is some borderline delusional shit.
|
| The "I know I'll be downvoted for this brave opinion" bit is
| the icing on the cake.
| high_derivative wrote:
| You are conjuring up a lot of straw men here, really proving
| op's point. Getting fired for not directing a swear word but
| literally just saying a word in quotation is happening. The
| 'magical powers' is very much on point. Or do you deny this
| happened?
|
| https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-
| word-p...
| naringas wrote:
| well, he was downvoted. but not overwhelmining so; let's call
| it controversial.
|
| > And who exactly has been fired for "believing male and
| female are real concepts"?
|
| I recall some kind of minor debacle about a Stack Overflow
| moderator (or employee? details are vague) who got in trouble
| for something related to individual choice of pronouns. It
| seems to be what they're refering to.
| tw26436552 wrote:
| Recently, I applied for a position at a well-known tech
| company, one where the requirements and my experience were
| a very good fit (imo). For the first time in my career, I
| soon received a rejection email without any interaction
| with a human.
|
| The application form included a not-required field for
| "pronouns", which I left blank. Perhaps this was the test I
| failed.
| darepublic wrote:
| I've worked at at least one place where if I stated "male and
| female are real concepts" I would have raised eyebrows at min
| and received some official reprimand at max
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Not saying n*gger in polite company isn't censorship, it's
| just good manners.
|
| Is this not polite company? Do you think adding an asterisk
| makes a significant difference?
|
| I'm black myself, do I get to say it? Could the question be
| more complicated than you're making it out to be?
|
| edit: I mean - MCNeil at the NYT was quite literally doing
| what you just did: discussing whether certain language was
| acceptable or should be punished. Imagine being fired for
| this post two years from now. I don't care about McNeil in
| particular (the US is an "At-Will" country, workers have no
| real rights, he's a privileged guy), but the state of free
| expression right now is bizarre. The fact that it comes when
| old (and most of new media) media is more consolidated than
| it's ever been is not coincidental.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| While I don't think the GP post is correct, counter-culture
| necessarily has bad manners, because manners are all about
| cultural norms.
| echlebek wrote:
| This self-indulgent rhetoric is so tiresome, and its aims are
| so blatantly transparent.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| You're absolutely correct.
|
| Consider: your HR department is left leaning, your boss is
| probably left leaning, your teachers are left leaning, the
| government is left leaning.
|
| How on earth could the "counter culture" be the hegemonic
| culture of the most powerful billionaires on earth, and the
| people who have the most power over the most people in their
| daily lives (HR departments for adults, school administrators
| for children)?
|
| The people who you instinctively dislike, and who society
| counts as something that needs to be corrected are _by
| definition_ the counter culture.
|
| That doesn't necessarily need to be seen as a bad thing, btw.
| It just means that the hippies basically won and have all of
| the power now.
| rurp wrote:
| > Consider: your HR department is left leaning, your boss is
| probably left leaning, your teachers are left leaning, the
| government is left leaning.
|
| You are doing an awful lot of generalizing from your own
| experiences. I have met a LOT of conservative managers and
| business owners, including more than a couple openly sexist
| and racist ones, who are doing just fine for themselves in
| life. The idea that conservatives are some sort of tiny
| suppressed minority is bonkers.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _your boss is probably left leaning_
|
| Where did you work where your boss thought worker-ownership
| and workplace democracy were the best ways to get work done?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > your HR department is left leaning, your boss is probably
| left leaning, the government is left leaning
|
| .. if you think this, your definition of left leaning is
| completely broken and your Overton window is in a very
| strange place.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It entirely depends on where you work. If you work for a
| municipality or university, it's probably very accurate.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Look at California Prop 16 for a concrete example. It was
| universally supported by left-wing groups, endorsed by the
| Chamber of Commerce broadly and by many of the state's
| biggest companies individually, passed the legislature with
| 75%, but failed at the ballot box with only a touch above
| 40% in favor. When policies left-wing groups favor are that
| much more popular among business and government leaders
| than among the general public, I dunno what to call that
| other than "left leaning".
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I don't know about that specific legislation. The effect
| you describe makes me think that business and government
| are, in fact, right leaning. When left-wing groups agree
| with right-leaning govt and business, perhaps the general
| public is a bit wary of bipartisan policies. An argument
| like: If it's popular among partisans of both parties,
| then it must be particularly exploitative of the general
| public.
| bena wrote:
| Prop 16 was a repeal of a previous amendment to the state
| constitution that effectively banned Affirmative Action
| in the state for public positions.
|
| Basically, if Prop 16 passed, various public sector jobs
| would be able to consider race/sex/whatever when looking
| to hire.
|
| That's technically a double-edged sword. As while it
| allows for things like Affirmative Action, it also allows
| for discrimination based on those attributes as well.
|
| So I can see a perfectly reasonable reason while
| progressives would also be wary about passing Prop 16.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Prop 16 was certainly not a _bipartisan_ policy - the
| Republican party strongly opposed it, and all their
| legislators voted against it.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Please explain how a democratic (political left) controlled
| Senate, House of Representatives, and Executive branch are
| not "left leaning", or how HR departments which have pseudo
| mandatory diversity training for their employees are also
| not "left leaning".
| minikites wrote:
| Please explain how our entire culture flipped so
| thoroughly in the last 51 days to make it the dominant
| culture for 350+ million people.
| redisman wrote:
| Sounds like they mean `culturally "left"` ie. NYTimes-
| morality.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The left can lean much further. Someone advocating for
| socialist and welfare policies or even communism or anarchy
| would run afoul of HR departments and the powerful
| billionaires.
|
| Corporations pay lip service to the left but they don't
| really follow through. There's no divestment from China,
| fossil fuels, or even Diversity and Inclusion that reaches
| the board level.
| bitwize wrote:
| No, that's not the counterculture. Those are just bigots
| butthurt by the fact that society is starting to enforce norms
| of human decency which the counterculture has promoted through
| example for decades.
|
| Meanwhile a child who stands up for trans people is being
| censored. As in, actual censorship, by the government:
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/canc...
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| LGBTQ+ are establishment identities. Being straight with a
| nuclear family is counter culture.
|
| In 2021 Rolling Stone magazine is the epitome of
| establishment culture media.
| NotChina wrote:
| Same words were said in the 70s and 80s of non-
| christian/conservatives. They were absolutely adamant about
| their "norms" as the standard.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| funny to see how the term "counter culture" went from being
| associated to communists/anarchists to being associated to
| conservatives or even fascists.
| jandrese wrote:
| I mean if you can't openly express your dominance and
| superiority over some other group of people is life even worth
| living?
| mdoms wrote:
| Counter culture should make you uncomfortable. Otherwise
| what's it counter to?
|
| By the way, a lot of people here seem to think that the term
| "counter culture" has positive connotations. It doesn't,
| necessarily.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > By the way, a lot of people here seem to think that the
| term "counter culture" has positive connotations. It
| doesn't, necessarily.
|
| I would expand on this to say:
|
| If society and culture are unjust, then to be moral and
| just necessitates dipping into counterculture. Example:
| Participating in the underground railroad would be counter-
| culture in a society built on slavery.
|
| If society and culture are truly just, then the counter-
| culture is perhaps necessarily unjust.
|
| Of course, real life is never so clear-cut (we will never
| live in a truly just society), but I would argue that
| society now is substantially more just than it was for most
| of human history, and consequently this reflects back on
| the sort of counter-culture that exists.
| clairity wrote:
| this was an interesting point until,
|
| > "I would argue that society now is substantially more
| just than it was for most of human history, and
| consequently this reflects back on the sort of counter-
| culture that exists."
|
| that's a pretty broad claim, implying that the current
| counterculture is necessarily unjust because our current
| society is so relatively just. it's really difficult,
| likely impossible, to show how the justice delta is
| irrefutably positive now (not to mention the cutural-to-
| countercultural delta is negative). this instead likely
| merits an examination of perceptions and biases,
| especially of dichotomous reasoning, leading to that
| belief.
| klyrs wrote:
| In your original comment, and to a lesser extent here, you
| seem to be saying that counterculture necessarily has
| negative connotations.
|
| I listed some counterexamples in another comment, but take
| "bronies" for another. Does the notion (grown men obsessing
| over a kids show) make people uncomfortable? Yeah, kinda...
| but is that because dominant culture says only girls should
| like ponies? Or is it because we assume men who like stuff
| meant for kids are pedophiles? I find both of those
| viewpoints to be intolerant of diverse expressions of
| masculinity.
|
| Many countercultures are pretty much neutral (LARPing, for
| example -- which offends only the most religious and
| closed-minded). But, like the bronies, they make space for
| folks who fall outside social norms in harmless ways. They
| make space for diversity of thought and expression -- that
| is generally seen as a positive thing.
|
| Contrast to the rally in Charlottesville, where self-
| described nazis showed in force. Sure, folks who desire a
| white ethnostate tick the "diversity of thought and
| expression" box at a surface level (it certainly is
| different), but their stated desire is to eradicate (or
| evict) all other such diversity. So I don't see that
| particular counterculture as a positive thing.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Comparing to my comment[0], I think we're seeing a
| divergence in the meaning of "counter-culture" as either:
|
| a. Counter or opposing the dominant culture
|
| b. An uncommon or rare culture
|
| I argue in [0] that (a) is increasingly likely to be
| negative as society grows more just. However, as you
| mention, (b) can include all manner of neutral cultures,
| which are of course not necessarily negative.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26440512
| uniqueid wrote:
| Is there anything _but_ counterculture on the internet anymore?
| How I miss the occasional measured, adult point of view! The
| internet has destroyed most of my interest in eccentric artists
| or alternative viewpoints.
| swayvil wrote:
| One way to rebel without rebelling is to pursue the exact same
| ideals as those pushed by your culture, except better.
|
| (Greg Egan proposed this technique in his novel, Quarantine)
|
| Snarking off about the ubiquitous hypocrisy would be one level of
| that, of course. (Seen in much popular comedy.) But there are
| higher.
| kodah wrote:
| There's definitely an old internet culture that eschews social
| media and it has seemed to grow (again) over the years. One
| example is Freenode:
|
| - The network has some moderation, but bans are last resorts
| where on social media bans and temporary bans are part of the
| process.
|
| - Much of the moderation is left to channel operators and guides
| are given by the network on how to moderate.
|
| - Much of the network is apolitical and you can even be banned
| for talking about politics in many channels. This runs counter to
| pop-culture with encourages not only discussing politics but
| airing _your_ politics with _known_ dissidents.
|
| - Nearly every channel is topic focused, where pop-culture and
| social media encourage broad, boundaryless discussion.
|
| - Pseudoanonymity is still an option; in contrast to real
| identity policies in social media.
|
| You can't tell me that's _not_ culture, but maybe it 's not a
| _whole_ culture just yet. That said, keep poking the bear cub and
| see if it doesn 't grow up.
| simonh wrote:
| You just described the internet I've been using for almost 30
| years, split across various online forums, including this one.
| Couldn't agree more. I've managed to find a good handful of
| very high signal to noise Reddit topics too. G+ was good while
| it lasted.
|
| The trick is to have specific interests you care about and
| track down that community. They're out there. The encouraging
| thing is my kinds have found their own communities online and
| among friends without my help. They use Discord, Twitch, a bit
| of instagram and such. They're tech savvy geeks though, if
| somewhat differently geeky to myself. They know what they're
| interested in and look for that because most of mass culture is
| just occasionally amusing background noise to them. I'm very
| encouraged.
|
| I often see people bemoaning the passing of the old internet,
| but for me it's all still out there and thriving. Several new
| layers of it have developed too. It's just not the only, or
| 'biggest' internet anymore.
| kodah wrote:
| It is still out there, you just have to work to attain it.
|
| I'm happy to listen to the bemoaning, mainly because the
| newest and largest groups on the internet are the most
| problematic and most of them have no self-awareness to that
| end. Better that they hear the bemoaning and get a chance to
| change and choose not to.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Counterculture completely aligns with corporate America now, it's
| fascinating.
|
| The punk manifesto could be written by McDonalds.
| Animats wrote:
| Yet his examples are people who did stuff to get clicks.
|
| Arguably, the most effective counterculture in recent times was
| QAnon. That didn't end well.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| It didn't end at all, I still see people adding Q stickers to
| cars.
| [deleted]
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A lot of qanon came from flat earth and now have moved on to
| vaccines and other conspiracies. I wonder what they'll be doing
| next year but I am sure they will find something. There is a
| significant part of the population who are deeply uncomfortable
| with the state of the world and look for an explanation that
| comforts them. This used to be mainly religion but it's
| spreading out into things like qanon. Extreme partisanship
| probably has the same origin because it explains that the world
| is bad because of "others".
| Animats wrote:
| _There is a significant part of the population who are deeply
| uncomfortable with the state of the world and look for an
| explanation that comforts them._
|
| Yes. A real problem is that the US has no consensus on how
| society should work. It did, in, say, the 1950s. People were
| expected to get jobs, and work, and the spectrum of available
| jobs was matched, roughly, to the range of human
| capabilities. That was a generally stable situation. That's
| the US from 1945 to 1975 or so.
|
| That's changed, leaving behind a huge number of unemployed
| and under-employed people. More education doesn't help; about
| half of US college graduates are doing jobs that don't need a
| college education.
|
| Nobody really has a good answer to this. Which is why
| conservative populism looks to the past.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's been very interesting to see counter culture swing to the
| (arguably far but that part is up for interpretation) right.
| Terrifying, but nonetheless interesting.
| edrxty wrote:
| In a way this makes sense, the mega platforms have become a
| highly uniform slightly left leaning milquetoast walled city.
| That leaves being either a raging socialist (guilty) or a
| raging....bigot.
|
| The far right isn't tolerated as they're dangerous to
| advertisers sensitivities. Meanwhile the far left individuals
| are mostly tolerated but they're also all very aware that if
| the far right were to disappear overnight, they'd be the next
| target.
| shakezula wrote:
| I'm hesitant to even admit that far-left politics are more
| accepted; I've seen harsher rejection of socialist ideals
| than legitimate, objective fascism. But I agree with your
| general point - if the far right was gone overnight, the
| far left would be next up on the chopping block.
|
| > highly uniform slightly left leaning milquetoast walled
| city.
|
| This is absolutely true, though. It's become their
| immediate point of mockery for any right leaning people.
| They get to call us robots, NPCs, brittle snowflakes,
| etc... and the left doesn't have a good retort. :shrug:
|
| It's frustrating, because I think that the left should
| chill out with the identity politics and at least start
| trying to focus on larger issues and really drive those
| points home - healthcare, income inequality, etc... those
| are issues that have overwhelming public support but are
| constantly able to be derailed by republican talking points
| because of the identity politics.
| edrxty wrote:
| > I'm hesitant to even admit that far-left politics are
| more accepted
|
| Yea, I should have been more specific, it depends heavily
| on the circles you run in.
|
| > It's frustrating, because I think that the left should
| chill out with the identity politics
|
| It seems to me like this is not uncommon. There's a lot
| of oneupmanship in politics where whoever is the most
| rigid and unyielding to complexity in their belief system
| is the most worshiped because people can't distinguish a
| rigid ideology from an internally consistent one. On the
| left this results in constant twitter mobs and on the
| right it results in capitol mobs.
|
| That said, while it makes an easy target for the right to
| rally around, if that were to go away, the reality
| distortion field would just target the next-lowest
| hanging fruit.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| I know I'm counterculture when I'm shadow banned. Suck it boot-
| licking conformists!
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'm going to have to read this again to see if it's brilliant or
| just pretentious. But I'm going to print it and read it again
| more carefully, which suggests to me that it may lean toward the
| former.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Got about halfway through and feels like it's taking a lot of
| words to say very little, the author seems to think it's hard
| to be an anarchist today and that's sad.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I think platforms like onlyfans will end up bringing back
| counterculture, especially if more platforms emerge outside the
| uber-censorious US and esp, if they can embrace new forms of
| payments. porn is showing the way once again
| reilly3000 wrote:
| From what I see on TikTok, GenZ are coming out as low-key
| marxists in droves. As a millennial I grew up through a process
| that started with believing in free-market ideals and slowly
| seeing them shattered with each passing atrocity of monopolists.
| I'd mark Enron/Worldcom times as a coming-of-age for my economic
| cynicism, and its been exponentiating ever since, especially
| through my journey as an entrepreneur and employer. These kids
| have had cynical humor and class struggle as mother's milk, and
| have little interest in repeating history. That isn't to say that
| conservativism doesn't have a place among today's youth, but its
| largely promoted with billions of dollars being poured into
| targeted influence campaigns. Bullshit has a tiny half-life these
| days as fact-checking anything is a matter of moving one's thumbs
| in a small incantation.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I think this is the biggest takeaway for me:
|
| > We saw this dynamic metastasize in the wake of George Floyd's
| murder, when well-intentioned claims of "silence is violence"
| (recalling the powerful 1987 ACT-UP "Silence = Death" campaign)
| spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small following
| who hadn't come forward with a timely public statement of
| solidarity or remorse. Yet public posts were subject to popular
| scrutiny and judged based on sincerity, originality, and tone.
| Not surprisingly, many people defaulted to posting a somber plain
| black square. But this generated criticism of its own by clogging
| the feed with an informational blackout during a moment when
| community resource sharing was critically important. Amid a
| chaotic time, the platform functioned exactly as designed:
| amplification of emotions, uptick in user interaction, growth in
| platform engagement and data cultivation. Cha-ching, the platform
| cashes in.
|
| In other words, any large movement or discussion on "clearnet"
| spaces gets subverted by the algorithms and profit motive of the
| platform they live on.
|
| However, where I disagree with the author is considering
| mainstream "dark forest" platforms like reddit or 4chan to be
| countercultural. In fact, I'd argue that mainstream social media
| can _never_ be countercultural. While there may be no
| "algorithm" controlling the narrative you see on 4chan (or a
| straightforward and ostensibly fair one on a site like reddit),
| the content you see (and by extension, the narrative) is shaped
| by profit motive: From well-compensated marketing teams, to
| hordes of self-interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to
| propaganda teams looking to influence public opinion, mainstream
| dark forest sites simply shift the balance of power from the
| platform itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of
| the platform
| TameAntelope wrote:
| What you're saying is and isn't true. One example of a
| countercultural movement that's been in the news recently is
| the DDoSecrets leaks/hacks (they get upset if you aren't clear
| that they're hackers). They've got a strong Twitter presence
| that helps them get their message out, but they conduct no
| "real" business on Twitter.
|
| So a counterculture can use the mainstream platforms, but they
| choose to do so only as a microphone, not as a gathering place.
|
| Edit: That said, one of the members of a related group just (as
| in, after I wrote this but before editing was made unavailable)
| got banned from Twitter, so maybe they can't actually use the
| platform as a microphone for very long. It looks like the law
| is getting involved, specifically related to the Verkada hack.
| satellite2 wrote:
| It seems like a very strong stance to say that the publicly
| advertised leaks and hacks are not financially motivated.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I've thought a lot about what you're saying here, and I see
| no indication that's the case (corrupt/ulterior financial
| motivations related to their leaks/hacks). I am very
| curious how the members of DDoSecrets make their money,
| though (not that it's any of my business), mostly because
| the Twitter accounts I've been following seem to have a
| pretty strong disgust response to the idea of making money
| off of hacking in general.
| satellite2 wrote:
| My bad, I tought you were talking in general. I'm not
| familiar with DDoSecrets so I cannot say much about their
| case specifically.
|
| What I can say though is that generally the threat model
| for attackers slightly more sophisticated than script
| kiddies suggests that the preparations involve a non
| negligible amount of time from highly specialized
| engineers and that somehow, someone has to pay for it.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| DDoSecrets targeted the most vulnerable voices in society,
| people banished to Gab for their political beliefs. They
| literally work for the liberal ruling system.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > most vulnerable voices
|
| It's really sad you apparently posted this seriously.
| [deleted]
| retrac wrote:
| > While there may be no "algorithm" controlling the narrative
| you see on 4chan (or a straightforward and ostensibly fair one
| on a site like reddit), the content you see (and by extension,
| the narrative) is shaped by profit motive: From well-
| compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-interested
| proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams looking to
| influence public opinion
|
| I've realized I have exactly one outlet free of this left. It's
| an IRC channel I've been in since the 90s. I thought about it
| and none of us are there for any reason other than that we have
| a common interest and like each other. No money involved, no
| names involved, and it's one of the more supportive and
| insightful communities I've ever found online. We've sometimes
| wondered why it's such a different community from the other
| places, and this article articulates why quite well, I think.
| We're old-timers holding out in a little pocket of what has
| been almost fully absorbed by corporate social media. I'm sure
| there are others. And I'm sure they won't tell you where to
| find them, either.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| I find plenty of these types of communities through Discord,
| and I think that is part of the equation that's left out
| here. I don't really like discord much, but the reason I get
| when I do is to go check in on those friends. Usually these
| communities are just people that I've met playing games.
|
| I don't know that these would qualify as counter-culture or
| subculture, but they are free of marketing and advertising,
| and people are there because we have shared interests. The
| conversations are organic and not curated for us and we are
| isolated from anyone else we don't want to be part of that
| group.
|
| So, my gut tells me that the younger generations are using
| Discord like people used IRC.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| Old farts still had irl friends. The amount of teens who
| have no tangible friendships outside of Discord is
| sobering.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-
| interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams
| looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest
| sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform
| itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the
| platform
|
| This is making the perfect the enemy of the good.
|
| Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because naked
| propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> From well-compensated marketing teams, to hordes of self-
| interested proselytizers (see: bitcoin), to propaganda teams
| looking to influence public opinion, mainstream dark forest
| sites simply shift the balance of power from the platform
| itself to the most motivated and well-funded members of the
| platform
|
| > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because
| naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users.
|
| I disagree: crowdsourced moderation can only really take care
| of the most obvious crap, so it doesn't really take care of
| this problem.
| michaelpb wrote:
| Right, crowdsourced moderation works for badly done spam,
| poorly coded bots, etc. It does nothing for pseudo-science,
| "self-interested proselytizers" or PR teams. I think
| there's a mentality that if we just "crowdsource"
| something, somehow the work just goes away. It's a little
| like hand-waiving "the cloud" or "serverless" -- just
| because it's not your problem doesn't mean it disappears.
| It's still work that still needs to be done by _somebody_
|
| On top of that, moderation of anything sufficiently popular
| isn't easy -- e.g., dealing with trolls or PR teams
| targeting a forum can get extremely complicated sussing out
| who is who and figuring out where to draw the line -- and
| like many things is inherently subjective, which means it's
| the last thing you'll want to hand-waive, but is instead
| integral to whatever is being built.
| helen___keller wrote:
| > This is making the perfect the enemy of the good.
|
| To be fair, I'm not saying that we should all ditch Reddit
| and only congregate on obscure message boards with maximum
| user limits; I'm simply saying that a place like a default
| subreddit should never be considered counter-cultural.
|
| > Also, voting systems take care of a lot of this, because
| naked propaganda spam gets downvoted by the users.
|
| Strong disagree. Naked propaganda is downvoted, sure, but
| good propaganda is never naked. Add enough eyeballs and
| increasingly sophisticated and coordinated actors will find a
| way to get their message to the top.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Voting systems often amplify propaganda spam. Every day
| r/science has multiple posts upvoted to the top with titles
| exaggerating findings, and/or linking to shoddy studies.
|
| Upvote/Downvote is very susceptible to headlines that exploit
| confirmation bias, and bot activity.
| partyboat1586 wrote:
| >spiraled into calling out individuals with even a small
| following who hadn't come forward with a timely public
| statement of solidarity or remorse.
|
| >timely public statement
|
| Being a public figure sounds exhausting.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| This happened to random 18 year old college kids who were
| just not active on social media. I saw it first hand. I
| actually saw an entire group of girls let go of one of their
| friends who didn't post in support of BLM along with them.
| She had like 60 followers on Instagram (mostly family).
| echoradio wrote:
| I signed on to the internet when everything was handled through
| terminals, so I've always viewed cyberspace -- and the culture
| which developed there -- as completely separate from IRL. People
| can take on different personas, customs, etc. So it's no surprise
| to me the customs within this "new" world are mirroring how a
| physical world society spreads across a spectrum of ideology.
| (Granted, the ideas don't always blend with what exists in the
| real world.)
|
| I've often thought of the counterculture to online space as those
| who are breaking free of centralization and the digital
| "monopolies." They're the people who are homesteading on tildes,
| Mastodon, or their own self-hosted instance, for example. In
| cyberspace, FAANG are the new industrialists (the new
| informationalists?), so to me it makes sense that a portion of
| online society wants to separate or rebel from this establishment
| which controls a good portion of this cyberspace.
|
| As IoT becomes more prevalent, I can see those who seek a break
| from connectivity in general as countercultural, too. Some of the
| ideas in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," or Ted Kaczynski's*
| "Industrial Society and Its Future" reflect this.
|
| * I do not condone Kaczynski's actions. I'm merely stating the
| concern about technology's negative impact on society has long
| been thought about. It makes sense that there would be those who
| seek to shun it entirely.
| NotChina wrote:
| Easy enough to identify that which the powers that be, deny a
| platform. The unaffiliated are generalized, and grouped together
| despite not being real bed fellows. What modern labels did not
| exist for the entirety of human discourse? Yet our modern
| generation is the first to recognize some condition that eluded
| all those previous generations. Persecution unifies, and becomes
| a self fulfilling prophecy. (e.g. the alienation of moderate
| Islam post 911)
| kart23 wrote:
| I agree that you have to be essentially anonymous to take part in
| counterculture these days. But the author claims that Discord and
| Reddit are examples of counterculture. I wholeheartedly disagree,
| these platforms are overly sanitized, moderated by the company,
| not the community. On Discord, people get banned for empty mass
| reports, and they can delete servers as they please. Reddit is
| valuable for driving communities to self-hosted, private forums,
| where I believe that counterculture has and will be born from.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| Reddit is the least countercultural site I can imagine. It's
| still Top 10 in sites visited, is it not? It's the very
| zeitgeist of the times.
|
| Those examples weaken an otherwise good article.
| redisman wrote:
| It used to be fairly "counter-culture"ish back in the day
| before it was run like a corporation.
| monocasa wrote:
| Reddit is a meta site. The default subs are of course the
| default consensus, but you can find subs of nearly every
| other position under the sun.
| cambalache wrote:
| No. Most "radical" subs will be suppressed or otherwise
| banned by selectively enforcing the rules. For every rule
| broken in r/thedonald or r/chapotraphouse you could find
| dozens of similar examples in r/news and r/politics.
| [deleted]
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Maybe Reddit as a whole, but what are your thoughts on
| WallStreetBets? It seems that WSB has all of the elements of
| a counterculture, although maybe diluted after the wide
| spread GME interest.
| deliveryboyman wrote:
| WSB is a shade of its former self now due to the onslaught
| of new members
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Check out /r/wallstreetbetsogs. It's an attempt to bring
| back the old school WSB.
| monocasa wrote:
| Has a "what was WSB before the eternal September" escape
| hatch subreddit popped up yet?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Yes, /r/wallstreetbetsogs.
| satellite2 wrote:
| WSB seems like the definition of a smart hedge fund that
| managed to manipulate the market transparently. Everything
| there reeks of fake, manufactured and engineered "counter"
| culture
| juststeve wrote:
| Yeah because WSB uses another language that many do not
| know, or care to know.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm really not sure "diamond hands" and "retard" count so
| much as another language. I think the big gap between
| there and other places on the same subject is on
| "gambling logic", not right or wrong, I've seen more
| people there admit that than "Wallstreet Types" who would
| be trillionaires if they actually knew how to win.
| edrxty wrote:
| Further, reddit is built from the ground up to force consensus.
| Counterculture cannot exist on the site by definition, as
| anything prevalent on the site is there by consensus.
| monocasa wrote:
| I'd argue that the way reddit is currently designed is to
| hold on to it's user base without them having consensus. The
| way that subreddits allow separation of their user base (but
| they're all still users and seeing ads, buying gold, etc)
| allows communities to exist in a way other social media sites
| don't really allow (except maybe facebook groups).
| juststeve wrote:
| Agree - and People should also be aware who funds these
| sites. Especially reddit.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| So is HN and any other platform with where upvote/downvote is
| the primary factor in the algorithm.
| juststeve wrote:
| Yep, or self hosted sites
| ontekhunhsentuh wrote:
| I'll add that Discord does not support right-to-read. They will
| occasionally remove a server and ban everyone who had access to
| that server, regardless of whether or not they had posted or
| participated in that server or contacted any members of that
| server. They view the act of reading the server posts as a
| bannable offense.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| What incident are you referring to? Having trouble searching
| for it.
| edrxty wrote:
| I think this ties in well with all the recent discussion around
| advertising and its effect on internet discourse. To become
| counter-cultural now inherently means foregoing ad revenue
| supported platforms, which inherently means you lose audience.
| keiferski wrote:
| Charles Taylor, the philosopher, covered much of this about
| twenty years ago with far less snark and buzzwords. I strongly
| recommend reading _The Ethics of Authenticity._ It's all about
| the trend of individualism and how it precedes social media
| by...centuries.
|
| https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692
|
| Social media is no longer _authentic_ so you're seeing a slowly
| growing backlash against it.
|
| https://seoulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/charles-tay...
| airhead969 wrote:
| "Antisocial media" would a truthful title.
|
| I don't even like texting. Email is a letter replacement. Call
| me and pickup when I call, or GTFO.
|
| Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak,
| LinkedOut can all listen to the flushing sound of me deleting
| their advertising monetization. "Buh buh all of your Ivy and
| Pac12 associations that made you look important on a resume."
| Too bad, I haven't talked to most of those people in years
| anyhow.
| wussboy wrote:
| I hadn't heard "antisocial media" before but I love it
| airhead969 wrote:
| The antisocial social club most def raises the Jolly Roger
| flag against "social" media. ;-]
|
| At some point, I just want a private platform that is paid
| for using microcredits, no ads/data harvesting, requires
| verified named people with faces (improved communication
| quality), connections only stay alive if you actually
| interact with them IRL, doesn't automatically share
| everything with everyone in a single context, and doesn't
| promote dangerous behaviors for likes/shares. The only
| purpose of hidden rating tags (in lieu of likes and shares)
| should be that a viewer's own incoming content gets
| slightly prioritized. Oh and no instant notifications, no
| news link sharing/"retweeting", no messaging or chat
| (there's email), and a user only gets to look at it twice a
| day. Basically, solve many of the societal and social
| problems FB exploits and creates.
| alea_iacta_est wrote:
| I just read the first few chapters, what a great reference,
| thank you.
| seniorgarcia wrote:
| JSTOR and the Harvard press needs to just go away. As someone
| who does IT for a university library in Germany JSTOR access is
| just ridiculous, even ignoring their fees.
| keiferski wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Authenticity-Charles-
| Taylor/dp...
| seniorgarcia wrote:
| I can ship a 30 year old paperback of it for my personal
| use to my home for 60$, that is true. I'm not sure what
| else you are trying to tell me.
|
| Do you personally think that is a good offer?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| How ironic you need to click on a link to Harvard.edu. What
| times we live in.
| ret2plt wrote:
| This is a minor nitpick, but I think claiming that anarcho-
| primitivism is less fringe than it seems because the youtube
| channel "Primitive Technology" is popular is seriously reaching.
| everdrive wrote:
| Still reading the article, but this is an interesting blurb if
| nothing else:
|
| "To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony,
| one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the
| form of betraying or divesting from your public online self."
|
| I hadn't thought of boycotting much of popular online space as
| being counter-cultural. It's an interesting thought.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I hadn't thought of boycotting much of popular online space
| as being counter-cultural. It's an interesting thought
|
| I think the interesting part is that it's kind of counter-
| culture but it itself is not really a culture at all. There are
| no groups (as far as I know) for people who eschew social
| media. They don't meet up at the pub and talk about it, they
| don't have any kind of organization, even a loose one. People
| just kind of decide to wash their hands of Facebook and
| Instagram and Twitter and such, then go about their lives. I
| don't think they generally feel a part of some larger culture
| (or counter-culture)
|
| Maybe I'm wrong about that. To me though it almost seems like a
| stand-alone complex.
| briankelly wrote:
| Yes, I think that's an important distinction - you need a
| critical mass of people sharing in countercultural
| behavior/practices in some way to get an actual
| counterculture. Many people have eschewed social media for
| one reason or another but not in some unified way that I know
| of.
| itronitron wrote:
| A culture doesn't require that people meet up and agree on
| some way of doing things. Hence a counterculture does not
| need to be organized or even acknowledged while in process.
| It just happens and then gets written about a decade later.
| greenonions wrote:
| Imagine the Instagram posts profiling the weirdos like
| myself who simply have not been using Instagram for the
| past decade for the Instagram audience.
|
| "What do you do when you visit a scenic vista, if not
| take pictures?"
|
| "I look at it for a time and leave."
| psychomugs wrote:
| Reminds me of the tyranny of the remembering self.
|
| How much would you pay for a vacation where you can't
| take any pictures and your memory is erased afterwards?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I stopped taking pictures on vacation (and other events)
| quite a while ago because I realized I never look at them
| later. So I spend the time being more focused on the
| actual thing, and have better memories. I wouldn't like
| the memory erased thing.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I find that is a mortons fork sort of thing - you
| basically can wind up with regrets for taking and not
| taking pictures.
| medicineman wrote:
| About 20USD for a fifth.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| There's 40% of the population you're missing that doesn't
| participate in social media because their ideas have been
| banned. Sure, they might have a Facebook or a Twitter but
| nothing substantive happens there. They believe in things
| like gun rights, freedom of speech and religion, and they
| often go to meeting places called a "church", which these
| days could be considered "counter-culture". Their values
| don't come from TV or Hollywood movies but instead have
| been passed down from generation to generation.
|
| From my experience people from US costal states seem to
| think these people are a small minority (5%) and tend to be
| shocked every time an election comes around.
| everdrive wrote:
| >doesn't participate in social media because their ideas
| have been banned.
|
| >Sure, they might have a Facebook or a Twitter
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this.
| MikeGale wrote:
| I see something which may be referred to here.
|
| I'm acquainted with people on social media who find that
| what they write on Facebook (say) is banned by the
| algorithmic being that reads before you post. Sometimes
| posts disappear. Sometimes they get sent to the naughty
| corner for 7 days.
|
| The reason for a ban is sometimes a real head scratcher,
| as far as I can tell, but not always.
|
| They've tried other places to have conversations. Some of
| those have also been torn down.
|
| Some have gone away. I generally don't know where to, but
| some are setting up their own discussion spaces. (I've
| recommended that to those who've asked.)
|
| Maybe a return to a former age where you controlled your
| own discussion spaces. A braai/BBQ in the back yard, a
| table in the corner of the pub, a ten day tramp through
| the mountains with four friends.
| watwut wrote:
| There is huge amount of Christians and gin rights
| advocates on Twitter. The TV actually caters to them _a
| lot_.
|
| Yet also, people from coastal states are like 75% od USA
| population.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| > There are no groups (as far as I know) for people who
| eschew social media.
|
| There is at least one group who (arguably in part) eschews
| political social media: the grillpilled.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Eschewing social media is not a culture in and of itself,
| anymore than eschewing the telephone or TV is a culture. But
| it is an attribute that some cultures have. Cultures have to
| be based around the actual ways they do interact, whether in
| person meetings via church groups, in person hiking groups,
| bike riding, falconry, camping, whatever. Similarly many
| people prefer to use person-to-person communication such as
| text messages, email, telephone calls, rather than
| broadcasting an edited version of their own thoughts to the
| world all the time. To assume that if you are not constantly
| engaging in this type of one-to-many communication, then you
| must be absolutely alone is to have serious tunnel vision.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| It seems somewhat counter-cultural to not have social media
| and tv, though rejecting those things doesn't define a
| culture. I've had visitors to my house that realize I don't
| have a TV and they assume I'm some kind of judgemental
| weirdo.
| greenonions wrote:
| I don't own a TV and most people here don't seem to know
| how to react to this information. Often they don't seem
| to have considered the possibility that someone wouldn't
| own one. I haven't watched television for entertainment
| in a decade or so, so I only get references which I
| absorb through YouTube, Twitch. I wouldn't think of
| myself countercultural, but it shows just how conforming
| many people are without realizing.
|
| Edit: by here, I'm referring to the Midwestern United
| States Edit 2: would > wouldn't
| matwood wrote:
| What is television now? You're watching YouTube and
| Twitch, so what you're really avoiding is broadcast TV.
| The large and growing cord cutting movement is exactly
| that with people using their TV as a large screen
| for...YouTube and Twitch.
| drdrey wrote:
| > most people here
|
| Can you define "here"? I live in a country that is not
| your country of origin?
| randycupertino wrote:
| > I don't own a TV and most people here don't seem to
| know how to react to this information.
|
| Really? We don't own a TV and it's very common within my
| friends group. I do watch occasional shows on my laptop
| and we streamed the superbowl on my husband's large
| computer monitor screen.
|
| But I would say not having a TV is becoming more and more
| common.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I own a computer monitor I can use for gaming, streaming
| TV shows or movies, or just a bigger screen for my
| laptop.
|
| That's the only standalone powered screen I own, but
| honestly I don't see any difference between that and a
| regular TV. TV is about watching television shows
| regardless of whether they are downloaded from the
| internet, piped through a cable channel, or received with
| an antenna.
|
| Similarly people that don't own stand-alone monitors but
| have laptop screens or iMac screens they use to stream TV
| shows have TVs in my opinion. To insist that they don't
| because they are using wifi instead of an antenna to
| receive the data seems a bit pedantic.
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| There is a big difference between selecting content and
| watching it; and having a selection of curated streams.
| Autoplay on youtube definitely hacks away at this
| difference, which is probably why youtube keeps turning
| autoplay on for me after I turn it off.
| jdefelice wrote:
| I think there will be such a group but you won't know about
| them because they won't be on social media telling people
| about it. I don't think their identity will be anti-social
| media, but an identity to strive for a slower way of life.
| Kelamir wrote:
| > I think the interesting part is that it's kind of counter-
| culture but it itself is not really a culture at all.
|
| It reminds me of a chapter from Kino's adventures, where she
| finds a city, which has a culture of cat lovers. When she
| leaves them, she meets their king, who tells the story of the
| land: people had decided they don't need the king and any
| culture, so they've decided to appear to every traveller with
| a different culture.
|
| However, the king says, they are not aware that that is their
| new culture.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| We're on Signal. You don't see us unless invited.
| medicineman wrote:
| Yeah, they organize, and yeah there are groups. You just wont
| hear about them on social media. It's better this way.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| As one of these people, totally agree. I don't really have
| people I sympathize with over this stuff (except a few
| friends with whom its a minor topic of conversation) or
| anything I'd consider a culture. Mostly I just deleted my
| accounts and moved on. On the other hand, despite the lack of
| other people to commiserate with, it does feel a little
| countercultural insofar as I'm doing something different from
| most people, and it sticks out on occasion.
| iYNGcKqrdNPPmcA wrote:
| I've similarly ghosted social networks and other
| "platforms" some years back. A culture is usually formed
| around shared experience. In the case of social media
| escapists there are two sets of shared experiences:
|
| The escapists themselves are simply living their lives as
| usual. This sort of baseline human experience is a rare
| thing these days, but it doesn't get much exposure because
| escapists aren't likely to go out of their way to broadcast
| their experiences - that would be antithetical to the idea
| of disconnecting from social media.
|
| Other people are wondering where the escapists have gone.
| Did they die? Move to Mars? Get convicted of a major crime
| and sentenced to a long stint in state prison? This too
| takes places quietly: it's not as if anyone's mounting a
| nationwide search to locate the escapists.
|
| These experiences to me form a kind of bifurcated culture.
| vageli wrote:
| > These experiences to me form a kind of bifurcated
| culture.
|
| I think what the GP was pointing at is that culture tends
| to have community, and there is no community of people
| who have fled the larger platforms (until you consider
| groups on mastodon, secure scuttlebutt, etc).
| ryandrake wrote:
| To steal and modify a saying: "Non-use of social media"
| is a community as much as "not collecting stamps" is a
| hobby.
| aeturnum wrote:
| In an age of corporate sponsored wildly increasing visibility &
| reach, it's a counter-cultural act to forgo visibilty & reach
| for other goals.
| franklampard wrote:
| Really? Isn't it already trendy to bash big tech and diss tech
| platforms?
| akurzon wrote:
| I think so, but for most people it doesn't stop them from
| using the platforms. And then the criticism doesn't amount to
| much.
| lukebuehler wrote:
| I think there is something similar at work with decentralized
| platforms: they might never be as slick as their centralized
| counterparts, but it's a kind of ascetic choice that opens new
| doors.
| edrxty wrote:
| I find this is a good way to learn. Comfortable mega-
| platforms don't really foster anything productive
| (generalizing, obviously) but when you start to play with the
| bleeding edge decentralized options it allows you see "what
| could be".
|
| Trying to rid my life of google has opened all sorts of
| doors. If you're a tinkerer there are a plethora of options
| available for you to customize your experience and discover
| new capabilities.
| AshleighBasil wrote:
| Do people perceive popular platform UI's as 'slick'? To me
| they always seemed like a mess that is insane to navigate
| because the company's massive org chart digests into a
| massive turd that gets smeared over the landing page.
| Facebook is the worst, but they all seem to have this
| problem.
| achairapart wrote:
| One big problem with decentralized platforms is that, while
| technologically and conceptually fascinating, they offer a
| complex and not average-user-friendly UX.
|
| Users are so inured by the down-to-earth, nanny-ready,
| repetitive and instant-gratification driven UIs of
| mainstream platforms that many of them have a hard time
| just understanding where to start with the decentralized
| ones.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I think there is something slick about them, if you just go
| with what they put in front of you. Don't try to navigate
| beyond a very high level, just take what it brings and hope
| for that momentary reward that comes from the likes and the
| comments.
| 1propionyl wrote:
| The analogy to Cixin Liu's "dark forest" concept also seems apt
| and enlightening. (Basically: it's a game theoretic response to
| the Fermi Paradox that suggests that any sensible galactic
| civilization would avoid making contact with any other
| civilization and attempt to stay hidden.)
|
| More and more over the past few years, I've seen my own social
| circles migrate away from public forums like Facebook and
| Twitter and into private WhatsApp group chats, Discord groups,
| and so on.
|
| In some cases these are groups of people I know in real life,
| and in some cases everyone is anonymous or pseudonymous.
|
| And there is definitely an unspoken rule of "don't unilaterally
| invite anyone, don't advertise that this group exists, stay
| hidden, we like what we have going on here."
|
| It's in some ways a reversion to the style of older private
| Usenet/BBS/IRC channels, but in other respects it's a lateral
| move. For one, it's still mostly happening on centralized
| platforms.
|
| What I think is interesting is how our media ecology (in the
| sense of media as means we communicate and express ourselves,
| not "mass media") is an interplay between these big public
| spaces and a proliferation of smaller private spaces. It's not
| _just_ a dark forest, there's also a bright canopy into which
| people emerge, forage, and carry back down into the forest.
| jaspax wrote:
| The Dark Forest analogy strikes me as apt as well. All of the
| best (most interesting, most active, most insightful) groups
| that I belong to are off of the public internet these days.
| Some of them are just small Discord servers, some are even
| more heavily encrypted groups on Signal, Mattermost, or
| Mastadon. But what they have in common is that not everyone
| is welcome, and we don't even advertise our presence.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The thing that I hate about what social media has done is
| that it is resistant to persistance of knowledge. I grew up
| in the heyday of forums (late 90s to mid-late 00s). It seems
| like a lot of these groups have moved to facebook (or
| discord, or whatsapp), and now a lot of that knowledge for
| specialty stuff is unsearchable and behind a wall.
|
| One of my hobbies is boatbuilding, and there is a LOT of good
| material that is still available on forums since they just
| happily sit there seemingly forever, and are easy to archive.
| But a lot of the new stuff is now done on FB, and it means
| that knowledge gets pushed to the bottom of the feed, and it
| is impossible to archive.
|
| My feeling is that the switch to algorithmic feed-based
| discussion is a serious regression for a lot of interest
| groups.
|
| An excellent illustration of this is Stack Overflow. They
| take after the forum model of preserving knowledge to the
| degree that they shut down discussions that have happened
| before. Stack Overflow's database of solutions brings
| literally billions in value to the world, and it simply would
| not work without persistance of information.
| datavirtue wrote:
| That was the beginning of the end for me. Trying to search
| for a post I saw a few hours ago resulted in nothing but
| frustration. What a joke.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > But a lot of the new stuff is now done on FB, and it
| means that knowledge gets pushed to the bottom of the feed,
| and it is impossible to archive.
|
| Are there any maintained Facebook scrapers, akin to
| youtube-dl? I think there's definitely a need for
| /r/datahoarder style archiving of certain parts of social
| media.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming
| ghgdynb1 wrote:
| How about exit from the platforms while continuing to build on
| the Internet?
|
| balajis.com vs twitter.com/balajis
| lmarcos wrote:
| I've been thinking exactly that. The problem is that the
| average internet user would have to: - buy a domain name (and
| pay for it every year) - rent hosting (cheapest provider is
| probably DO at 5$/month) - setup your machine so that it's
| secure enough it doesn't end up hacked - setup whatever is
| needed to publish content in your machine (could be as simple
| as HTML, but then the average internet user doesn't know
| HTML. It could be wordpress... But then you have to install
| it by yourself)
|
| It's a lot of hassle for the average internet user. The worst
| case scenario: you end up paying ~70$/year for something you
| have no idea how to setup property. Beast case scenario: some
| startup takes over the hassle for you for "only" 50$/year...
| But that's not that different from Facebook (except that you
| would "own" a domain name and a host you have no idea how to
| "own").
| pochamago wrote:
| "To be truly countercultural in a time of literate hegemony,
| you must become illiterate"
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| What's posted on social networks makes you feel like we live
| in a time of literate hegemony?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The fact the contents are text and many prefer texting to
| voice calls for one? It may not be high art or even proper
| grammar but it is still literate.
|
| Plus it demonstrates how vacuous defining something by what
| it is not really is - you can put anything in that hole.
|
| To give a deliberately stupid as possible version - have
| you ever eaten toxic ocean snails? No? Then you are part of
| the not eating ocean cone snails hedgemony oppressing us
| all by their force of the not eating ocean snail ways.
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