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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

> Counter-culture is supposed to be [... list of stuff...]

No, it's not. The words explain themselves perfectly fine: an opposing culture.

What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture.

And just in case someone takes "counter-productive" and tries to argue that being against trying to make everything productive is counter-culture: that's not what I mean and you know it. If you were to find yourself not aligning with anything out in the world and you wish to alter that, there are a whole lot of things you could be doing to get there, but what people do on 4chan gets nobody anywhere, unless the digital version of sniffing glue is considered an alteration of the status-quo.

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> being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive

I don't like 4-chan but isn't that what they said about hippies? That they are stunted (e.g. they spend all their time smoking pot instead of cutting their hair, getting a job and being productive members of society. They are irrationally angry at society and refuse to recognize the grim realities of the real world. They are destructively brain washing our youths. Etc.)

Ultimately i think counter cultures can be good or bad and that is separate from if they are counter culture

You don’t get it man. The counter culture is cool, hip and trendy and I’m a cool, hip and trendy kind of guy. I’m part of the counterculture, and I’m not part of 4chan, so obviously they’re not counterculture.

The fact that my views align much closer than theirs with many mainstream political parties, almost all of academia, most major media outlets and most major corporation’s stated values is because they all are also part of the counter culture now.

There’s literally no way that an awesome, too cool rebel like myself somehow became part of the mainstream instead of the hip and trendy counter culture movement.

> What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive... It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture.

Just because something isn't PC doesn't mean it isn't counter-culture. Hip-hop for example is riddled with extremely homophobic, violent, and sexist content but has become by far the biggest music genre in the world. That doesn't mean it isn't culture and it definitely was counter-culture (at least in the 80's and 90's).

>irrationally angry

Angry to be sure, but Irrationally? Take a closer look.

>stunted in various ways

To be sure. C’est la vie. But also undeniably brilliant on occasion.

>generally destructive

Not unlike the hippies then.

>If anything, it is devoid of culture.

Simply ignorant.

> What you describe boils down to being irrationally angry, stunted in various ways, and generally destructive

Like punks? Mods and rockers? Beatniks? Greasers?

A counter culture that has been productive and changed the status quo is no longer a counter culture by definition, since that implies that they have the power to alter the dominant culture, which implies that they are the dominant culture.

I think what you are really referring to is a social movement, which often aligns with a particular counter culture that has decided to organize. But there can be many counter cultures and not all of them the deliberate goal of social change.

Your list is literally what the main stream would specify about hippies: stunted in growth and irrationally angry at society for its goals and aspirations (hippies would be seen as man children who will rather do drugs and have sex than grow up, get a job and start a family).

It appears to me that you are so angry at 4-chan for its perceived ideas that you cannot see things from their perspective.

> It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive

IOW, reactionary

> It's not a counter-culture but just counter-productive and essentially a defect. If anything, it is devoid of culture.

This is literally what was said about the hippies.

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