> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels
This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.
> 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.
> 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.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines with flamewar and ideological battle comments, and ignoring our requests to stop.
> 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).
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.
That argument seems to rationalize 4chan behavior by simply saying 'it's counter-culture', as if that makes the behavior better or worse, more or less bad or justified. It changes nothing; it's posers imitating counter-culture (by that definition).
Yeah, there's a million corners of non-mainstream culture today that aren't 4chan and aren't just "edgy" middleschoolesque trolling that are also "countercultures". There's more variety than ever thanks to the ease of people connecting.
If you're betting that 4chan is the one that's going to stand out of "ahead of its time" you aren't doing it because "counterculture is always ahead" you're doing it because it's the one you personally focus on. Otherwise you'd have to be evaluating it against all the other counterculture things. And many of them are much less derivative and backwards-looking.
> jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy
This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
Edgy because the status quo was so defined. The status quo is loosening up, so edges aren't so apparent. I'm in my 40s and my high school experience in the 90s sounds nothing like what I hear about today. We had well defined cliques. Today, except where bullying exists, it sounds like people aren't so hive minded but individuals and just float around various friend groups.
This may be unpopular topic, but I actually think having a non-traditional sexuality/gender is the new 'edgy'. I know that implies it's just a trend/fad and not a reality for some individuals. It seems to have increased in such a massive relative basis that I can't help but think it actually is a trend versus following some natural occurrence. Or perhaps, given significant hindsight I could see that the definitions around these things is just undergoing an accelerating foundational shift. We know ancient societies had massively different ideas for what was and wasn't normal. Hell, very recently ago our own society had very different norms for age of consent and age of "child".
Sorry if any of this is or sounds offensive, I look at it from a statistical mindset and what baseline seems to have existed. It's totally possible that societies around the world have used religion and such to suppress the baseline and it's starting to naturally come back - I wouldn't be able to observe things like that.
> This list implies that "homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels" is destined to be normal and acceptable in the future. That sounds awful.
I'm not so sure about "emotionally and mentally stunted incels," but homophobia, racism, and sexism were all acceptable in the past, and given enough time will most likely be acceptable in the future.
Progress is a lie; change can go in all directions. It's a mistake to draw a line across living memory or the recent historical era and extrapolate whatever trend you find very far into the future.
Homophobia is enshrined in law in the majority of countries in the world. You will literally be stoned to death for having sex with the same gender in several countries.
Racism is core to nearly every country in the world. It may seem bad in the US, but it's worse elsewhere. And while people won't admit they're racist in the US, racism itself is pervasive.
Sexism might be the most prominent and long lasting parts of the culture across the world for millenia. Just look up the rape stats, and then keep in mind that most rapes are not reported.
Homophobia, racism, and sexism are deeply ingrained in nearly every culture on the planet today.
>queerness is very much still edgy and not particularly accepted by the dominant/mainstream culture
Being supported by advertising, movies, tv shows, signaled by major corporations and workplaces, and supported top-down by the government means its edgy and counterculture? We live in completely different realities I guess.
Where are all these ads, movies, and TV shows depicting non-monogamous queer relationships? How is the government providing this "top-down" support? Are there now tax breaks for people in poly relationships?
Being LGBTQ is one of the few identities or choices that will result in being disowned by a significant portion of American families. That attitude is edging out of the mainstream but it’s practically dogma among evangelicals and other socially conservative groups. So yes, those people do live in a different reality, where Biden admin policy and “Will and Grace” don’t matter at all.
You're making an emotional argument (LGBTQ people get disowned by families) against a logical argument (LGBTQ is supported at so many levels of culture that it no longer counts as "counterculture").
No I’m not. The culture of many, many Americans is so anti-LGBTQ that they’ll disown their family. Thats their culture! There is not one American culture, social conservatism is a very common culture in America, and being LGBTQ is counter to that culture. Ergo LGBTQ culture is counterculture.
That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
> That's not what counterculture is. Counterculture is counter the mainstream culture. Which is more mainstream in the US, (ie, in media, art, products, government, businesses, etc): suppressing LGBTQ people or giving LGBTQ people a platform? It's pretty obvious if you're being honest. You appear to be suggesting that it counts for nothing because some LGBTQ people get disowned by some conservative or religious people.
It could also be their outdated picture of "mainstream" culture is a fossil embedded in the self-justifications of the current mainstream culture.
Some people will forever pretend current-year is the 1950s, because, not because they want to live in the 50s, but because they see themselves as the people who are abolishing it.
This thread keeps conflating a subset of culture which exists within families or small subsets of already small towns within America which is a subset of western culture... in order to dismiss the dominant mainstream culture from which counter cultures are sprung from on the wider internet.
Despite the fact these current cultural trends and related ideologies are very much dominant on every major western social media platform and even more so among dominant traditional media platforms (and their executives and journalists). Yet they still pretend it's not the default culture in the west.
The existence of pushback from significant/influential parts of the population != you're not the dominant mainstream culture.
I think it’s less an issue with the thread and more an issue with people in general. The amount of people who view themselves or want to be viewed as a member of a dominant mainstream culture that is trying to force others to assimilate to the mainstream culture is incredibly small. Almost everyone prefers to view themselves as the plucky rebels fighting for survival and what’s right. There’s more than a few former hippie boomers who still view themselves as part of a counterculture sticking it to the man as they use the money they get from their cushy VP of marketing position at a major bank to sue any developers that try to build affordable housing near their gorgeous McMansion.
My aunt went from burning American flags and marching in support of interracial marriage and civil rights to clutching her pearls about Marilyn Manson ripping up bibles and gay marriage becoming legal, but even as she supports censorship and state mandated injustice, she will always view herself as the protestor that fought against censorship and state mandated injustice.
Even I find myself occasionally saying things about zoomers that sounds just like stuff my dad used to say about me and it’s a lot easier to rationalize it as “no, TikTok is actually hurting kid’s attention spans, it’s different this time” than admit that I might be acting just as silly as he was when he said exactly the same thing about my Game Boy.
I think you yourself are a little mixed up - these attitudes and opinions arent limited to small failing towns, its entire states when you get off the coasts.
There isnt really a default culture across america the way you are insisting. The place is fucking huge.
Yes, I agree that corporate businesses and the entertainment industry have broadly adopted acceptance of LGBTQ people. My point is that what counts as mainstream culture is still different in Florida and California. America is not a perfect homogenate.
That is by design and I consider it a feature rather than a bug. We have options to live at a local or state level closer to our own values rather than being forced to conform at a national level.
Our national institutions are very accepting of LGBTQ as well as the federal government. Looking at LGBTQ equality by state, https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps the majority of the country, 29 states are fair or pro LGBTQ vs 21 that have negative policy or low equality.
Is it still counterculture when it is accepted and embraced by the overwhelming majority of citizens, education and cultural institutions, and protected by laws in the majority of the country?
> [...] LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.
This is a vile take. It is sickening to compare liking a genre of music or wearing a certain style of dress or being queer to hating people because they're queer, not white, not male, or because they're a woman who won't have sex with you.
Jazz and Rock was the music of african americans that became mainstream in white america just like rap did later. Punk was a reaction to rock becoming boring and stale. Disco came out from the african-american AND LGBTQ community, and the eventual "disco sucks" mainstream backlash was at least somewhat motivated by racism/homophobia, not anything inherent with disco.
None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone. That they offended was a side effect of them changing the world, and the mainstream reaction to it, not the core motivation.
Now, I don't want to paint 4chan with one brush. I actually think a significant amount of internet creativity and beautiful creation occurs on it, and they never get enough credit for it. Most legendary memes - offensive or not - originate on 4chan. Internet memes are some of the most unique artistic creations of our generation.
But the parts that people get mad at 4chan for (the homophobic/racist/misogynistic parts) are not that. Those are creations intentionally made to get a reaction: "You tell me I can't say <blank>? Watch me!!"
There is a charitable interpretation of this that they are bucking against censorship and fighting for self-expression on principle. And some may draw comparisons to what they're doing to times in history when "blasphemers" criticized religious dogma. That making a homophobic or racist meme is the modern equivalent of proclaiming "There is no God" 200 years ago.
The difference comes down to the Paradox of Intolerance. Religion and the dominant culture associated with it, actively repressed everyone who didn't match their worldview. People were told you have to believe this in faith and act as if you do, or you will be punished. The modern "dogma" of LGBTQ/race acceptance is instead saying "You CANNOT tell others how to believe and act, and punish them accordingly. You cannot discriminate against those different from you by birth race/gender/sexuality."
It is highly childish to associate all "you cannot do <blank>" guidances as repressive and similar. And I meant that literally. Children can't tell the difference between "No, we can't have desert because i told you so" and "You can't touch the hot stove because it will hurt you".
So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out.
> None of these creative outlets were a result of anyone overtly TRYING to offend anyone.
Rock'n'roll, punk, etc were definitely trying to overtly offend. Many rockers claimed to worship Satan, mocking the older generation was widespread ('hope I die before I get old'). Look up the Sex Pistols.
Those counter-cultures were for something, for their identities at least. What is 4chan for?
> So, no, THAT side of 4chan is not counterculture. It's at best children trolling on the internet (I know, I was one), and at worst hateful bigots angry that their acceptance is diminishing in the world and lashing out.
The problem is, young idiots were ordinary young idiots in the past. They didn't do much more than maybe snatch a car for a joyride or kick off someone of IRC by sending them a direct message with "DCC SEND" or whatever that caused middleboxes to drop the connection. Annoying, sometimes causing a bit of damage, but nothing too serious.
Nowadays? They radicalize each other into a spiral that often enough ends in real-world violence - or in bullying people to suicide, which is just as bad. And unfortunately, the importance of hateful bigots is not diminishing. Not at all. The Tea Party and, following it, the Trumpets are recently risen developments - and they're still rising.
Most of these countercultural ideologies confront oppressive bigotry in the status quo. 4chan is using bigotry against the status quo. Opposition alone is not the important dimension here.
Sid Vicious, Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper and many other artists who were undebatably part of counterculture very often did stuff to intentionally offend members of mainstream culture.
Manson did a ton of stuff to piss off Christians and rightoids. While it might seem hilarious with modern day sensibilities, Rage saying fuck on BBC live did offend quite a lot of people. Hell, Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux used to regularly wear literal Swastikas for the shock value.
Much of today's "counterculture" I suppose was more mainstream back in the 60s. Outsiders, delinquents, atavists and reprobates of many sorts are grouped together with, and generally accepted by the prevailing counterculture, but do not necessarily represent the counterculture's core beliefs and practices. They do, however, share a common antagonist.
This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.