John Wilkes Booth

yea i guess you're right it is a bull**** theory.

innerspaceboy

Alternative counterculture (not anti-socialites but counter-CULTURISTS) are a generational reactionary embrace of a set of sociopolitical principles and values contrary to those of the establishment and of the prior generation.

The Dadaists arose as a reaction to the nationalism and rationalism that brought about WWI. Its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes was counter-culture to the society surrounding it.

"Longhairs" were a later incarnation of the same anti-authoritarian spirit which celebrated peace and free love as a response to the Vietnam war. And like most of these movements, they adopted their own fashion trend to communicate their position and value-set socially. Nearly all subcultures adopt a uniform to identify their brethren in the wild.

Punk and later indie music were still further rejections of the status quo which dominated commercial television and radio - the then-primary mediums of media consumption.

And the so-called hipster culture was effectively the postmodern equivalent of the dandy as observed by Michael Reeve, who noted that Baudelaire’s description of the nineteenth century dandy almost perfectly mirrored the hipster in all its incarnations:

"a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self."

Like the dandies, hipsters co-opted antiquated fashion elements of aristocracy (both classical and retro) to create an ironic and anachronistic identity in defiance of the norms of their day.

Each of these and countless other countercultural, alternative social movements were reactions to popular culture. However, each was inevitably consumed by pop, ever-hunting the hip and the new. Soon after the birth of each movement, one could simply go to the mall and buy its uniform, ready to wear off the rack.

Sure, there are "pousers" in every social group great and small. Many put on the uniform to superficially occupy the newest cult on the block. But the true spirit of every "alternative" counterculture is the norms it rejects and the values it adopts. New Wave, Post-Punk, Indie... each is a manifesto of a subculture's search for identity and a clarion call to like-minded misfits the world over - that they are not alone.

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John Wilkes Booth

^good post. very informative.

innerspaceboy

Thank you. The bit on hipster culture was an excerpt from a paper published on academia.edu titled, The Hipster as the Postmodern Dandy: Towards an Extensive Study (2013) by Michael J. Reeve. For all the trite conversations I've seen online poking fun at the social group, this paper really enlightens the reader and validates hipsterdom as a culturally-significant movement.

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The Batlord

I guess the only logical argument against JWB's and my position that I can see, is that for counter-culture movements to have remained as prevalent as they have throughout history, then they have to have some kind of cultural evolutionary purpose, which would make them not anti-social, since they would be serving a purpose that increased human society's progress as a whole, even if the adherents were themselves anti-social.

I suppose they introduce and preserve ideas that would otherwise never exist (for example, the liberal/hippy movements of the fifties and sixties' rebellion against blind government trust that had existed almost unchallenged previously), thereby going some way to prevent cultural stagnation in a society. Whether each individual movement is itself useful or not can only be considered on a case-by-case basis, but in general, they may very well be "social" in a wider sense.

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Exo

Holy balls. I spent the last five or six years of my life thinking she was a man. Mind is blown.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

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John Wilkes Booth

nah, not sarcasm. they're right it's bull****. it's just some **** that sounded good to me atm. but reading through the last few posts i realized it is basically an empty shell game

grtwhtgrvty

Transgender. You must've not delved too deeply into her music because gender dysphoria is a huge element in the lyrics.

Exo

Yeah I'm not that into her.

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