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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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

> most people here

Can you define “here”? I live in a country that is not your country of origin?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

I didn't have a TV for a long time out of spite towards the TV licencing system in the UK and the heavy-handed way it's enforced. I'd love someone with a background in RF engineering to explain how those TV detector vans are supposed to work with modern TVs and the massively higher electromagnetic noise floor!

I expect vegans get the same, I know getting rid of my car led to some people thinking I was the green police and they had to justify why they still owned theirs.

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.

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.

> 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).

To steal and modify a saying: “Non-use of social media” is a community as much as “not collecting stamps” is a hobby.

That's been pretty much my experience. My wife thinks I'm crazy to have deleted my Facebook and Twitter but that's really about the only interaction I have on the topic.

> 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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

I find that is a mortons fork sort of thing - you basically can wind up with regrets for taking and not taking pictures.

Does "memory" include fundamental changes to the self and perception along with personal growth due to exposure to new experiences and situations and time away from the grind?

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.

>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.

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.

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.

> ... gin rights advocates...

You mean, people who are against Prohibition?

;-)

I've seen some hard to understand opinions on the web over the years, but church as counterculture really takes the cake.

Churches (specifically Christian churches) can be dead center in the culture. Or they can be solidly Christian, and still be countercultural. They might say things like:

You're looking for social unity? Politics isn't going to create that, no matter which side wins. We can show you a real social unity.

You're looking for security? The government's Covid response isn't going to give you that, even if they do it perfectly. We can tell you where you can find real security.

You're looking for happiness (or, more deeply, for joy)? You're not going to find it on Facebook, or at Walmart. We know where you can find it.

Now, you may think that Christianity can't actually supply any of that. But it claims that it can. And the point is, that claim is very countercultural.

Some things that count as churches may have sprung up to make such offers, but I am assuming most churches have been standing since before Covid, before Facebook, before Trump and Obama and Bush.

If say 40% of people are attending these gatherings, it's a tough sell that they are so far from mainstream as to be countercultural.

People have been visiting churches in search of unity, security, and joy for thousands of years.

And for thousands of years the churches have been saying, "The culture isn't going to give you that."

I don't understand why churches would say that, when they were the cornerstone of culture until a few tens of years ago.

Traditionally, they say that because even when their outward trappings are all over popular culture, they know that their core message is difficult to live out in practice, and most of the people who show up aren't doing it.

Before about 300 AD, they weren't the cornerstone of culture. In much of the world, they never were.

I think AnimalMuppet is talking about more evangelical churches, whereas you are talking more about what used to be called "mainline" churches.

I think that's right.

> 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.

I'm from the Midwest and grew up going to church just like everybody else I knew. Much of my family and friends are conservative and I still have views that I might not readily share in NYSFLA but probably would after a couple of beers because I'm not going to get crucified over them. If you honestly think conservatism isn't anything but mainstream then you are the one living in the bubble. (We literally just had trump as president!)

I had a longer comment written out before chrome crashed but the gist is Hollywood and Silicon Valley don't dictate the entirety of mainstream culture.

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.

It doesn’t need to be a culture, or atomized in that way. It isn’t a statement of identity, either.

It is being intentional about one’s time, attention, and emotions. Me, I play a lot more guitar these days, and really enjoy having something that I can learn.

Social media just doesn’t work for me. I can’t deal with a constant stream of people dumping their emotions. I’m aware that most other people can. And that’s fine. But I’m happier just ignoring it and working hard on work, family life, and guitar.

We're on Signal. You don't see us unless invited.

> 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.

>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.

Hacker News is basically that culture. A lot of people here spend their time complaining about how much they hate every aspect of social media, the web and modern culture (except for HN, of course) and make a point of virtue-signaling how unplugged, and detached from the mainstream they are, including their refusal to touch any form of social media.

I think it's fair to say that a part of the userbase here has built a cultural identity around its contrarianism.

Yet there are groups here that tend to downvote certain not necessarily evil views to oblivion. For example if you support capitalism and in context write your opinion in favour of some events, expect a rain of downvotes or if you dare to criticise Apple. Quite ironic.

I don't see any particular irony. Hacker News has always accepted that downvotes for any reason are allowed, because upvotes for any reason are allowed. It's not surprising that in a contrarian culture, casual downvotes would be commonplace.

There are PR companies but also individual groups that monitor and downvote certain views on a daily basis.

Hacker News is that culture but it is a subculture, not a counterculture.

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