The internet didn’t kill counterculture – you just won’t find it on Instagram

Charles Taylor, the philosopher, covered much of this about twenty years ago with far less snark and buzzwords. I strongly recommend reading <i>The Ethics of Authenticity.</i> It’s all about the trend of individualism and how it precedes social media by...centuries.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hup.harvard.edu&#x2F;catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hup.harvard.edu&#x2F;catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692</a><p>Social media is no longer <i>authentic</i> so you’re seeing a slowly growing backlash against it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seoulphilosophy.wordpress.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;charles-taylors-the-ethics-of-authenticity-chapters-1-5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seoulphilosophy.wordpress.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;19&#x2F;charles-tay...</a>

I think this is the biggest takeaway for me:<p>&gt; 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.<p>In other words, any large movement or discussion on &quot;clearnet&quot; spaces gets subverted by the algorithms and profit motive of the platform they live on.<p>However, where I disagree with the author is considering mainstream &quot;dark forest&quot; platforms like reddit or 4chan to be countercultural. In fact, I&#x27;d argue that mainstream social media can <i>never</i> be countercultural. While there may be no &quot;algorithm&quot; 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

Still reading the article, but this is an interesting blurb if nothing else:<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p>I hadn&#x27;t thought of boycotting much of popular online space as being counter-cultural. It&#x27;s an interesting thought.

I run an independent film&#x2F;animation&#x2F;music&#x2F;interactive studio- I have never owned any mobile phone and don&#x27;t use any social media except for youtube. Our studio is not on any social media platforms. We are the counterculture.<p>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&#x27;t hustling on Zuckerbergian platforms or playing the &quot;please look at me&quot; game on Youtube etc.<p>Trailerjacked trailer for counterculture game that makes animations <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vrMEQPtMO4c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vrMEQPtMO4c</a><p>Scene from a counterculture animated feature film in progress made in a game engine <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bgMeIaqjRvY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bgMeIaqjRvY</a><p>Counterculture is not dead, its just not playing in the sandboxes everyone else is playing in, because those sandboxes are lame as fuck.

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.

There&#x27;s definitely an old internet culture that eschews social media and it has seemed to grow (again) over the years. One example is Freenode:<p>- The network has some moderation, but bans are last resorts where on social media bans and temporary bans are part of the process.<p>- Much of the moderation is left to channel operators and guides are given by the network on how to moderate.<p>- 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 <i>your</i> politics with <i>known</i> dissidents.<p>- Nearly every channel is topic focused, where pop-culture and social media encourage broad, boundaryless discussion.<p>- Pseudoanonymity is still an option; in contrast to real identity policies in social media.<p>You can&#x27;t tell me that&#x27;s <i>not</i> culture, but maybe it&#x27;s not a <i>whole</i> culture just yet. That said, keep poking the bear cub and see if it doesn&#x27;t grow up.

Counterculture will never die, it always adapts. While it is hard to find there are aspects of counterculture ideas on mainstream platforms like Instagram but they are obstructed.<p>How do you define counterculture? It is outside the mainstream, yes, but it does not need to be hidden. There are still individuals and groups who are &quot;against the grain&quot; in our society and always will be.<p>In my experience these people are relatively private when it comes to their digital life (not absent!) but can be amazing storytellers in other mediums, through song, dance, writing, etc.<p>I think the biggest misconstruction is that the counterculture is a single shared idea or that it is freely accessible to the masses.

I&#x27;m going to have to read this again to see if it&#x27;s brilliant or just pretentious. But I&#x27;m going to print it and read it again more carefully, which suggests to me that it may lean toward the former.

My teenage son asked me the other day what &quot;grunge&quot; and &quot;goth&quot; were. I was then trying to explain &quot;subculture&quot; and &quot;counterculture&quot;, and it was surprisingly difficult to explain.. or convey, especially in the context of what he&#x27;s seen so far in his life.<p>I tried using examples of my own youthful adventures and communities -- still not easy.

One way to rebel without rebelling is to pursue the exact same ideals as those pushed by your culture, except better.<p>(Greg Egan proposed this technique in his novel, Quarantine)<p>Snarking off about the ubiquitous hypocrisy would be one level of that, of course. (Seen in much popular comedy.) But there are higher.

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

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.)<p>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.<p>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.<p>* 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.

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.

We are moving into a brave new world. Take your digital soma, stay at home, follow the rules and only speak the approved propaganda.

Nothing validates ones views more than a circle of like minded curmudgeons judging everybody else.

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)

The truth is that today the counter-culture is the right wing dudes (and ladies) who won&#x27;t be beholden to trigger warnings, won&#x27;t treat particular words as if they have magical powers and won&#x27;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&#x27;s natural - counter culture isn&#x27;t popular. By definition.

I think the closest thing to counterculture today would be the world of cryptocurrency. It is the least connected thing to the rest of whole mainstream ecosystem that has serious unstoppable vitality.<p>Btw, reading about Boyd Rice reminded me of Russian experimental electronic band GameBoydRice who makes music using a hacked gameboy and a mixer. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;lxzpatLthxE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;lxzpatLthxE</a><p>Just one of the billions of random little market segments and sub genres out there. The mainstream had much less hold on the world than it used to. The platform censorship though constrains it. Crypto doesn&#x27;t have those constraints though. One is reminded of how Wikileaks, getting locked out of every bank, took cryptocurrency donations and became hugely wealthy as a result.

Counterculture completely aligns with corporate America now, it’s fascinating.<p>The punk manifesto could be written by McDonalds.

One aspect of present-day counterculture that differentiates it from the past is the lack of focus on individualism. Individualism as culture has been sold back to us so often its relevance is necessarily less important now. Which may be another reason why it is difficult to find. It&#x27;s also genuinely more scary than a loner in a leather jacket, in front of his car, selling rock and roll, hamburgers and Coke. In the past it was easier because the the counterculture was easy to find - follow the well-worn path of individualism to the last corners of censored culture. Now that those paths are almost entirely explored, finding a different, more inspired counterculture is much more difficult.

This is a minor nitpick, but I think claiming that anarcho-primitivism is less fringe than it seems because the youtube channel &quot;Primitive Technology&quot; is popular is seriously reaching.

I was originally going to write a more thoughtful response, but then I got to this section:<p>&quot;The names of these e-deologies tend to be both fantastical and literal.&quot;<p>&quot;post-civilizationist&quot;<p>&quot;voluntarist post-agrarianist&quot;<p>&quot;Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism&quot;<p>I&#x27;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?<p>In this sense, it reads a lot like a &quot;cultural studies&quot; piece; there is some great individual insight, but the overall essay makes claims it hasn&#x27;t supported.

You will find it on 4chan. &#x2F;pol&#x2F; more precisely.<p>The counter-culture that goes against all political, media, financial and corporate institutions.

His definition of counterculture sorta seems limited. When punk and being a rebel is fully co opted by those in power, doesn&#x27;t that kinda defeat the whole image part of being counter culture.<p>Like in a fashion counter culture could be the Amish if the culture is extremely anti Amish.

Is there anything <i>but</i> 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.

It&#x27;s sort of ironic that the photographer for this article is on instagram.

The kids are alt-right.

&quot;We can imagine collectively held physical spaces reclaimed from empty retail or abandoned venues hosting esoteric local scenes&quot; Where is this happening?

If counterculture has changed in this context, so has détournement.

Yet his examples are people who did stuff to get clicks.<p>Arguably, the most effective counterculture in recent times was QAnon. That didn&#x27;t end well.

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&#x27;d mark Enron&#x2F;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&#x27;s milk, and have little interest in repeating history. That isn&#x27;t to say that conservativism doesn&#x27;t have a place among today&#x27;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&#x27;s thumbs in a small incantation.