It's a fascinating debate; I would add that there are multiple counter-cultures, because there are hundreds / thousands of cultures that are operating worldwide (so, not just an American perspective). Mobile usages in countries where DSL was not "normal" have shaped consumption in a totally different way (I think you'll like what's going on in Mali re: "videomania"), networks that have been built between users do and still exist etc. Also: countercultures don't necessarily mean "anti capitalist economic system": in China, new pockets of a certain vision of Internet are already implementing countercultures in very, very different ways vs what we experience in some Western countries.
It's funny because I was thinking about this just a couple days ago and referenced your work. I think that there was a major counterculture--the woke movement--and we just didn't recognize it as one because it was so large. But really it meets a lot of the hallmarks of a countercultural movement.
I have no idea why Carr thinks that a counterculture OUGHT to rebel against the internet, though. The timing is all wrong. Remember the internet is a recent thing--millennials' parents didn't commercialize the internet. Millenials did. The internet was their machine--a lot of GenX people built it, of course, but millennials were really the ones who settled into that particular war-mech and figured out how to pilot it. They retreated from their parents' culture into it, en masse, and they had far more power over it, and far more knowledge of how to leverage it for power, than their parents generation did.
By that token the early-internet counterculture we would *expect* to see is a culture that uses the new space--the net--to rebel against the norms of the society that existed immediately before it, and I really cannot think of a better illustration of that than a whole bunch of young millennials leveraging internet culture to censor their right-coded parents generation while questioning all of the norms of sex and gender from the generation before them and also redefining themselves as "the feelz generation" because they knew that kind of bleeding-heart performative vulnerability would allow them to create their own spaces away from the eyes of their parents because they found therapy-talk repulsive.
Carr's rebellion? The culture that rebels against the internet? That should be the millenials' kids. Not the millenials. Watch Gen Alpha; that will be your anti-internet counterculture, if any is.
I agree that there is an internet counterculture. The internet is just a forum for expression and not a culture in itself. Moving to “Little Red Book” or “RedNote” as it is called in English is analogous to peace protestors during the Vietnam War waving the flag of North Vietnam - it’s a performative act of solidarity with a culture that is very much at odds with the prevailing domestic U.S. power structure that the counterculture seeks to subvert.
Arguing that only logging off could be construed as true counterculture is like saying only leaving America entirely would be truly supportive of the peace movement in Vietnam. It’s silly.
We've seen (online and IRL) the Progressive Left become the culture and the Right become the counterculture. To put it another way, you can't stick it to the Man when you ARE the Man. Now we may be seeing a flip back (too early to say).
Not sure when this original Right-to-Left flip happened; did the Internet incubate the Left counterculture until it was ready to execute and take over? Do we need to dust off the "what is problematic with Tumblr" discussion again to help dissect this?
Of course, you'd have to ask the same question (in the future) about the Left-to-Right flip back, assuming that indeed happens.
A compelling argument can be made that the Internet is an incubator for a counterculture, regardless.
Reddit and Discord feel like new takes and new form of culture that maybe has seeds in and echoes the old school CompuServ, ICQ, Livejournal, forums Web 1.0 era, but the language itself is SO different. We had L33T and ASCII, now it's Tiktok speak like 'cap', 'bet', 'glazing' and emojis.
Controversial opinion: A counterculture is dependent on their being a homogenous culture in the first place. The mental model that people frequently have for the "counterculture" is the 60s. But we do not have a homogenous mainstream in the same way as we did back then so we cannot have a counterculture. We can only have subcultures that are more or less mainstream. The internet (among other things) killed the mainstream and the counterculture is collateral damage.
We're going to have to disagree there. I don't think "wokeness" is culturally dominant. Certain liberal nostrums are endemic in the entertainment industries. But they are not the same as culture.
I don't think something can be massively unpopular and culturally dominant at the same time. The only thing that I see crossing all cultural communities is a valorization of grifting & hustle.
I disagree, I think "wokeness" was a dominant register in most communities, even approximations of it. Otherwise the reaction to it wouldn't have been so strong. Certain memes and forms were also dominant in a way I think counts. It is different for sure, but I think the fragmentation is vastly ,vastly overstated and a product of people expecting watercooler talk about celebrities and sitcoms.
I think "wokeness" (I prefer Omnicause, it has less baggage) is proof that a dominant culture can exist (as well as rise up, and perhaps [hopefully!] fall), but it's certainly not evidence of a monoculture due to the existence of the now-emerging counterculture of a resurgent Right.
My 16-year-old son's use of the Internet is WAY closer to mine in the old BBS/Forum days than what it might have been ten years ago or so. What is different is that there is an electronic diaphragm now between those spaces and the mass Internet where as back when I was a kid they were wholly self-contained.
I'm EXTREMELY interested in all the multiple forms of counterculture forming, and the ways they might intersect with the one I come from (predating the 50's in which I was born). And because the mainstream is more than happy to monetize anything they can squeeze a dime from, all the countercultures run through there at one vector or another. Attacking and/or being subsumed from the inside AND out! (Sounds like life on the food chain to me!)
I’m exploring Interface as an art medium, as culture builder vs just utility because I think interfaces can be deeply feminine-principled.
https://thetechnomatriarch.substack.com/p/the-code-and-compassion-of-interface
One day I am going to build 10 foot long bathtub in honor of the dolphin religion.
It's a fascinating debate; I would add that there are multiple counter-cultures, because there are hundreds / thousands of cultures that are operating worldwide (so, not just an American perspective). Mobile usages in countries where DSL was not "normal" have shaped consumption in a totally different way (I think you'll like what's going on in Mali re: "videomania"), networks that have been built between users do and still exist etc. Also: countercultures don't necessarily mean "anti capitalist economic system": in China, new pockets of a certain vision of Internet are already implementing countercultures in very, very different ways vs what we experience in some Western countries.
It's funny because I was thinking about this just a couple days ago and referenced your work. I think that there was a major counterculture--the woke movement--and we just didn't recognize it as one because it was so large. But really it meets a lot of the hallmarks of a countercultural movement.
I have no idea why Carr thinks that a counterculture OUGHT to rebel against the internet, though. The timing is all wrong. Remember the internet is a recent thing--millennials' parents didn't commercialize the internet. Millenials did. The internet was their machine--a lot of GenX people built it, of course, but millennials were really the ones who settled into that particular war-mech and figured out how to pilot it. They retreated from their parents' culture into it, en masse, and they had far more power over it, and far more knowledge of how to leverage it for power, than their parents generation did.
By that token the early-internet counterculture we would *expect* to see is a culture that uses the new space--the net--to rebel against the norms of the society that existed immediately before it, and I really cannot think of a better illustration of that than a whole bunch of young millennials leveraging internet culture to censor their right-coded parents generation while questioning all of the norms of sex and gender from the generation before them and also redefining themselves as "the feelz generation" because they knew that kind of bleeding-heart performative vulnerability would allow them to create their own spaces away from the eyes of their parents because they found therapy-talk repulsive.
Carr's rebellion? The culture that rebels against the internet? That should be the millenials' kids. Not the millenials. Watch Gen Alpha; that will be your anti-internet counterculture, if any is.
I agree that there is an internet counterculture. The internet is just a forum for expression and not a culture in itself. Moving to “Little Red Book” or “RedNote” as it is called in English is analogous to peace protestors during the Vietnam War waving the flag of North Vietnam - it’s a performative act of solidarity with a culture that is very much at odds with the prevailing domestic U.S. power structure that the counterculture seeks to subvert.
Arguing that only logging off could be construed as true counterculture is like saying only leaving America entirely would be truly supportive of the peace movement in Vietnam. It’s silly.
We've seen (online and IRL) the Progressive Left become the culture and the Right become the counterculture. To put it another way, you can't stick it to the Man when you ARE the Man. Now we may be seeing a flip back (too early to say).
Not sure when this original Right-to-Left flip happened; did the Internet incubate the Left counterculture until it was ready to execute and take over? Do we need to dust off the "what is problematic with Tumblr" discussion again to help dissect this?
Of course, you'd have to ask the same question (in the future) about the Left-to-Right flip back, assuming that indeed happens.
A compelling argument can be made that the Internet is an incubator for a counterculture, regardless.
Reddit and Discord feel like new takes and new form of culture that maybe has seeds in and echoes the old school CompuServ, ICQ, Livejournal, forums Web 1.0 era, but the language itself is SO different. We had L33T and ASCII, now it's Tiktok speak like 'cap', 'bet', 'glazing' and emojis.
Also, I have been online for too long. :P
Bath? That’s dangerous, haven’t you heard of Matthew Perry and Aaron Carter
I took a bath today, brother
I’m glad you survived! 🙏🐬✨
Something new is brewing that’s for sure
Controversial opinion: A counterculture is dependent on their being a homogenous culture in the first place. The mental model that people frequently have for the "counterculture" is the 60s. But we do not have a homogenous mainstream in the same way as we did back then so we cannot have a counterculture. We can only have subcultures that are more or less mainstream. The internet (among other things) killed the mainstream and the counterculture is collateral damage.
I strongly believe a monoculture still exists, tbh
Interesting. What would be signs that a monoculture n longer exists?
Wokeness's cultural dominance is proof enough for me
We're going to have to disagree there. I don't think "wokeness" is culturally dominant. Certain liberal nostrums are endemic in the entertainment industries. But they are not the same as culture.
I don't think something can be massively unpopular and culturally dominant at the same time. The only thing that I see crossing all cultural communities is a valorization of grifting & hustle.
I disagree, I think "wokeness" was a dominant register in most communities, even approximations of it. Otherwise the reaction to it wouldn't have been so strong. Certain memes and forms were also dominant in a way I think counts. It is different for sure, but I think the fragmentation is vastly ,vastly overstated and a product of people expecting watercooler talk about celebrities and sitcoms.
I think "wokeness" (I prefer Omnicause, it has less baggage) is proof that a dominant culture can exist (as well as rise up, and perhaps [hopefully!] fall), but it's certainly not evidence of a monoculture due to the existence of the now-emerging counterculture of a resurgent Right.
Not one of my better posts
It wasn’t that bad.
I edited it after the fact, I was too ashamed of the original product
My 16-year-old son's use of the Internet is WAY closer to mine in the old BBS/Forum days than what it might have been ten years ago or so. What is different is that there is an electronic diaphragm now between those spaces and the mass Internet where as back when I was a kid they were wholly self-contained.
I wonder if that’s just always been the case. 4chan was once a very different place, for example.
I'm EXTREMELY interested in all the multiple forms of counterculture forming, and the ways they might intersect with the one I come from (predating the 50's in which I was born). And because the mainstream is more than happy to monetize anything they can squeeze a dime from, all the countercultures run through there at one vector or another. Attacking and/or being subsumed from the inside AND out! (Sounds like life on the food chain to me!)