> Now the tastemakers are gone or impotent, replaced by automated systems that optimize for engagement and revenue (within whatever constraints of safety and integrity that each company applies). I’m not sure how any countercultural work would make it into the mainstream at this point or how the mainstream could shift going forward.
that’s the point that sticks out to me. optimize aggressively for revenue, everywhere, and we get what you describe. the counter culture can’t always be productive in a way that the mainstream can capture. the counter cultures that try for that today are things like darknet/drug markets or just cryptocurrency broadly. the latter, for the time being, seems pretty widely viewed as a dishonest, selfish, destructive thing. the former seems much more in-line with existing systems of commerce than with a social movement: full of distrust, no interactions other than buy & click.
i feel that the counter-culture at this point has to be fighting for some alternative to that optimization process. was Occupy counter-cultural? were WTO protests counter-cultural? communist/anarchist ideals — presented as an alternative to that optimization — do seem more popular with the newer generations than the older ones, but almost entirely in dialogue form than in actual, physical ways of living. perhaps the counter-cultural streak is still here but the barrier for it to progress from a flare up to a sustained thing has risen.
I can believe in arguments for crypto as a counter-culture, personally. Both in terms of building on the cypherpunk legacy, and also in "utopian visions meet experienced reality" with the associated ups and downs. The hippies had visible lives and lifestyles, and pieces of that entered the mainstream and became influential.
The difference is that there is, and intentionally so, little legibility to how crypto "does" anything. Increasingly so as you go down the rabbit hole into less prominent projects that are untethered to traditional finance or venture capital. And if we're seeing like a state, that makes it a useless technology, ties it only to crime and the underground, because it can't be seen and controlled using men with guns or tattling gossips. And from a counter-cultural perspective, that should make one go, "hmm, that's interesting." Someone who is able to access state resources while being insulated fron state coercion could be seen as "useless parasite" or "bold counter-culturalist".
Right now it is highly inconvenient to adhere to a "crypto lifestyle", even more so than it was to be a hippie. As you say, buying drugs with it is a common entry point, and it's hard to use a crypto wallet for any kind of consumer activity. And everywhere you go, the discussion is unhinged speculation with an "exit strategy". The actual believers are quite a bit fewer in number, and are more likely to be along the lines of a Vitalik than an SBF - living relatively simply and focused primarily on intellectual concerns, vs a grand-scale dishonest charlatan.
And protest movements, while visually impactful, don't seem to terrify the mainstream like crypto. In many respects they have become co-opted, part of the show.
I think the idea that cryptocurrency terrifies the mainstream is a hilarious one. It certainly doesn't seem to terrify anyone on mainstream finance.
It may 'terrify' some ordinary folks and mainstream journalists, but that's more about the massive amounts of fraud and the enablement of crime than it is about it taking over in any significant way.
The lie flat movement is a physical embodiment of anti-capitalism or economic optimization. You could also say “quiet-quitting” is similar. Starving capital of labor is the only non-violent form of protest that works
It is funny seeing Laying flat/Tang Ping in action. People for decades have said "the revolution is coming!". It always has their own specific flavor or manner of mass action - typically in the form of something big and bombastic.
And yet the one protest that looks to have a chance of actually making any significant change is the once that starves the very systems itself. Doing less instead of more actively works. It is a fascinating thing to see in action.
that’s the point that sticks out to me. optimize aggressively for revenue, everywhere, and we get what you describe. the counter culture can’t always be productive in a way that the mainstream can capture. the counter cultures that try for that today are things like darknet/drug markets or just cryptocurrency broadly. the latter, for the time being, seems pretty widely viewed as a dishonest, selfish, destructive thing. the former seems much more in-line with existing systems of commerce than with a social movement: full of distrust, no interactions other than buy & click.
i feel that the counter-culture at this point has to be fighting for some alternative to that optimization process. was Occupy counter-cultural? were WTO protests counter-cultural? communist/anarchist ideals — presented as an alternative to that optimization — do seem more popular with the newer generations than the older ones, but almost entirely in dialogue form than in actual, physical ways of living. perhaps the counter-cultural streak is still here but the barrier for it to progress from a flare up to a sustained thing has risen.