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Comment by almost_usual | Hacker News Reader

Counter culture stopped existing a decade ago. Everything is profitable now, capitalism is pretty efficient.

I'm 100% sure that countercultures still exist in general, and I think most people who say otherwise are from a specific counterculture that's gone mainstream.

Think about things that are outright criminal, that breach the TOS on most websites, or that are wildly offensive or ridiculous. Being repulsive doesn't mean something isn't a counterculture; in fact, it can be sign that it is.

Fire up IG and you can find people vandalizing property illegally. Really search anything graffiti related. That didn’t exist 15 years ago, maybe hosted on some niche forums, other content was underground magazines and shops. Flickr was the first place you really started seeing this start, IG changed eveything.

Illegal shows? Well dead city punx just had an illegal show in the LA river! Cops couldn’t even break it up. Streamed live on IG, lots of good advertising content.

All counterculture is mainstream, all of it is profitable with advertising. Burn a house down, riot about capitalism, at the end of the day you’re making a capitalist or mega corp money if someone can get the content from a device.

Want to truly be rebellious? Be boring and stop using social media.

So well put, captures precisely why capitalism has been so successful and still persists. everything, even anti-capitalist rhetoric, gets folded into the money machine and keeps it moving.

I would cite heroin users, thinspo anorexics, (real) Neo-Nazis, some varieties of paedophile, and credit card skimmers as examples of communities with their own unique cultures (disclaimer: often awful ones) that are counter to the mainstream. The first two you can maybe make an argument for being integrated into the mainstream, but the last three are totally against the current culture.

Don't strap a tracking device to your wrist. Don't experience the moment filtered through a slab of magic glass. Don't broadcast your thoughts and actions to the world.

This is today's counter-culture. Something like the final scene in 'Fahrenheit 451'.

People were saying "Counter culture stopped existing a decade ago" when I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. I'd bet good money they said it before that too.

Correct - Burning Man was already lame by 1999 among the contributing counter-culture!

>Counter culture stopped existing a decade ago.

Maybe in America

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