Who are the culture heroes of today? | Hacker News Reader

Who are the culture heroes of today?

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

26 pointsluu43 comments

Culture can be defined as the qualities that make one society, whether separated by space or time, notably distinct from another. With that said:

* Joe Rogan: Podcasting is now a legitimate profession and long form interviews are common.

* Joe Rogan: Juijitsu and MMA were previously obscure.

* The former U.S. President: Never compromise, form a strong opinion without any or few facts, and never admit mistakes. We now have an epidemic of this personality type. When I was young I was warned this "street thug" way of thinking is what kept people in my neighborhood poor. But now it's everywhere.

* Sam Altman and PG: They literally created a new culture: Startup Culture

* David Goggins: Democratized extreme athleticism

* Jordan Peterson: Millions of bedrooms are cleaner today than they were 10 years ago.

The thing is that you're largely talking about people who have influenced culture, whereas the article seems to define "culture heroes" as people with name recognition across society (presumably including across ages, regions, religions, politics, etc). Not super clear but I read it as "in the US" since language barriers make it very clear that the median culture is very much on the other side of the globe.

I don't think any of those people other than the former (two) US presidents cut the mustard. They might have changed culture, but they're not "heroes" in the "icon" sense.

For cultural icons that everyone across society recognizes, for better and worse I have to imagine those ridiculous segments where they go around and interview random people to ask them who people who I think are comically well known are only to find that people don't know who like Kamala Harris is. Terrifying, but that's what I think the OP was getting at.

Who else might I add? Who would a 15 year old from Chicago recognize as well as a 73 year old in Tallahassee?

Robin Williams maybe? Literally Mickey Mouse? Payton Manning? Elon Musk?

I know I'm out of touch, but I didn't recognize the name for Joe Rogan, Sam Altman, David Goggins, or Jordan Peterson. I have no doubt they have impacted my life, I've even studied karate for over a decade and had friends training MMA and BJJ in class with me; Joe Rogan himself never came up though so while it's awesome that culture now includes MMA and BJJ, Joe Rogan himself is not a culture hero by this classification.

I think you’re attributing a lot to a few there. Absolutely Joe Rogan helped make podcasts the phenomenon they are today, but so did a whole lot of other people. Same with PG and Altman: “startup culture” exists outside of their influence.

I guess my metric is “if they didn’t exist, would their achievements have still happened?”. I’d argue with PG and Rogan they would have, but that Trump would not. Another I’d include on that list is Steve Jobs.

>Absolutely Joe Rogan helped make podcasts the phenomenon they are today, but so did a whole lot of other people. Same with PG and Altman: “startup culture”

Ricky Gervais really got the ball rolling on podcasts early on. I'd credit much of it to him, Steven Merchant and Karl Pilkington. Frankly I think that podcast still represents the best work in the medium.

Street thug thinking makes people rich, all those listed business executives became rich this way.

It seems likely that the author has just aged and is noticing different things about the world. And people who didn't seem like culture heroes at the time, now seem in hindsight like they were always culture heroes.

Rich people and politicians didn't used to be culture heroes? That must be why when I was growing up everyone was a fan of Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, and all the conspiracy theories were about the Rockefellers and Kennedys.

Entertaining anecdotes are okay, I guess, but not sure why it's on Hacker News?

Remember The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan's last season with the Chicago Bulls? Remember that weird talk show clip where the host describes Jordan as close to a living god? Now, Michael Jordan was an awesome athlete, but I think his mythos owes a lot to the specific media landscape at the time.

That is, media was extensive enough for a person to be a truly global star, but for the most part it only went one way. The media gave you an image of Michael and, for the most part, the image was pretty close to "living god". In contrast, modern media is intensely participatory. There are vicious comment sections and viral Tweets dunking on every person. Nobody seems to stay above it for very long.

There's a famous, maybe apocryphal quote where John Updike explains Ted Williams' decision to mostly ignore fans as "gods do not answer letters". But at this point, fame seems to require answering letters. I think people need to maintain some kind of distance to be the sort of heroes described in this article, but the culture we have seems pretty opposed to this kind of distance.

I'll talk about those (heroes/villains) who single handedly changed the trajectory of entire domains and the culture around it. (for better or for worse).

* Narendra Modi - Modi is a phenomenon. You have to visit India to realize the extent to which everything revolves around him. A tier of popularity that was reserved for a Gandhi before this. The only man in India who can use the word 'privatization' without being cancelled. Did things that were considered political suicide (370 abolishment, Ram mandir, triple talak, now the Farm Bill).

* Arnab Goswami - changed the entire TV news landscape of India. Uprooted an entire entrenched industry and redefined what 24hr TV looks like for the whole country.

* The Viral Fever (a group) - Spearheaded the rise of stand up comedy in India. It had been simmering underground, until their comedy skits blew the entire industry up in a matter of months. It was all everyone talked about for a 2 yr. span in the early 2010s. The industry has risen at an incredible pace (thanks Netflix) and now a 'normal' way to spend a weekend evening in urban India.

* Netflix founders - Duh

* Boris Johnson - Brexit was THAT big of a deal

I’d take issue with Boris Johnson there. If the issue is Brexit I honestly think Nigel Farage would have better claim to the crown. Boris is a largely ineffectual leader that goes wherever the wind is blowing. Farage, for his many sins, was pushing Brexit on day one.

As a dirty gora, Indian stand-up comedy is one of the most infuriating things in existence. Video title in English. Start of the routine is in English. Then just before delivering the punch line, the comedian invariably performs a full 180 and switches language to Hindi or Telugu or something. The whole audience erupts into laughter and you're left there not even knowing why.

Narendra Modi is also a person who can jail random journalists critical of him (or anyone for that matter) without getting cancelled. In fact, at this point I think he can do anything without getting cancelled. A lot (or most) of that 'popularity' was (is being) built through outright lies, fear, suppression of dissent, polarisation etc.

Everybody will have their own list, but there won't be a huge overlap. Even on HN, which is theoretically a very homogeneous group compared to the wider world, there just isn't a monoculture anymore.

That is a very odd definition of culture hero. "Whose name does everyone know?" seems a better headline.

I feel like this article is missing a key point: the impact of social media on cultural "heroes."

I genuinely feel like I'm talking to someone from another culture when I chat with people 10 years younger than me. Most of them are heavy into Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. Their music icons, fashion icons, acting icons, activism icons, and business icons are mostly people I have never heard about.

I think this article is an example of that: With the exception of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, I can't think of any "business" heroes that most people outside of the academic/tech social bubble would be familiar with. But for those of us inside the bubble (including the author), yeah, it feels like there's a billion business "heroes" popping up all over and drawing adoring fans.

Another interesting trend: these "heroes" seem to come and go much more quickly, moving at the rapid-fire pace of social media.

I think cultural heroes still exist. They're just fragmented into various cultural bubbles, and they come and go much more quickly. So, yes, there do seem to be less "heroes of the masses" that every person under the sun knows of. But the "heroes of the moment" seem to be multiplying daily.

> With the exception of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, I can't think of any "business" heroes that most people outside of the academic/tech social bubble would be familiar with.

Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, (when he was alive) Steve Jobs, and maybe Jeff Bezos are probably the only other business people of the era that most people would recognize. Now Zuckerberg would probably not be seen in a good light by most people, but Jobs would, and Buffett and (less probably) Bezos probably would by anyone with a smattering of interest in business world.

The interesting thing is that my generation (mid-twenties) and younger seem to view all those names as villains. I'm quite interested in all the people you listed for their achievements, but I feel like most of my friends are more interested in their shortcomings.

Buffett is a "rich old white dude." Zuckerberg is evil. Jobs was sexist and a crappy father. Bezos is taking over the world and also evil.

It's an odd trend in my generation to eagerly try to dismantle any respect earned by people who belong to older generations. On one hand, I appreciate that people are more skeptical of treating rich people like gods. On the other hand, the constant judging of character feels uncomfortably close to the cult-like religion I grew up with.

Malcolm Gladwell would be a serious thinker and cultural hero.

Hell Yes!! What a swindler of swindlers!

Think of a world without MG. Is that world notably different? Do you think that even your communication style with others changed in noticeable way ? If it can't be externally measured or noticed then it is arguably not part of culture.

I think you forgot Tony Robbins and Bear Gryllz...

Harry Potter and comic book superheroes are really popular.

My culture heroes?

* The Ingham Twins

* Lemmy

* HST

* And of course, because because because, Alan Turing

Definitely agree on the Hubble Space Telescope! Total hero.

Elon Musk!

Do you get to make the call for someone else ?

i suppose not, but what's heroic about the exploitation of labor or spreading covid misinformation?

Different attributes of people can be considered heroic. I personally don't think he's heroic either.

Yes. Though 9/10 of things he tries may go the way of the dodo, at least he's carrying flag for trying things and spending money on cool tech.

Edit: I worded that badly

On what planet is that "non-political"? Both in the sense of your two examples and 60s-style activism.

He had to have been sarcastic, I can't imagine a world otherwise, I'm going to upvote to counteract the downs.

>non-political activists

This is so far from the truth I'm curious how you could possibly come to this conclusion.

I admit to being a bit skittish about heroizing anybody who might turn out to have been a horrible misogynist or racist. Or in the business world, some tycoon who turns out to be a first rate scoundrel or ends up in prison. Maybe we can move away from needing to identify movements and culture changes with individual people.

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