Punk is dead and so are we

https://bananapeel.substack.com/p/punk-is-dead-and-so-are-we

by pickledish • 2 years ago

107 179 2 years ago

bananapeel.substack.com

I think the author misattributed who the modern era punks would be. At least based on the described framework of what punk counter-culture was about and what it was countering.

Given how much of the mainstream is organized around overwrought advertising, influencering, guruing, and being terminally online... it seems like the modern punks would be the counter-culture that prioritizes being offline, being private, and being whatever the opposite of "fake it 'til you make it" would be called. Genuine and modest?

perihelions• 2 years ago

- "the counter-culture that prioritizes being offline, being private"

Punk's not dead; it's just camera-shy?

rapind2• 2 years ago

All the best punks are on insta...

pjmorris3• 2 years ago

If an old punk ethic was 'Do It Yourself' (DIY), maybe the modern punk equivalent would be 'Do It Offline' (DIO.)

wizerdrobe• 2 years ago

I don’t know to what degree it’s “a thing” but I know a lot of 30-something punks from my old scene that are now into a kind of homesteading vibe. Moved out to the surrounding countryside as much for economic as ideological reasons. Some are all the way into off-the-grid, home schooling, etc.

Nothing says “Fuck the System!” like solar panels and a wood burning stove I guess?

sfmz• 2 years ago

The dominant behavior will always be buying instead of making, so (DIY) will always be counter-culture (and sometimes create interesting little communities).

dfxm126• 2 years ago

Online or offline has nothing to with doing it yourself or not. Social media, websites, etc. makes organizing events, people, projects incredibly easier and more inclusive.

Punk isn't sitting over a xerox machine for a few hours printing flyers. It is actually putting a (music, performance art, benefit, whatever) event together at an all ages venue in a town where live nation owns all the venues and keeps shows 21+ so they can make money on booze. Doing stuff yourself is easier with the Internet.

csallen• 2 years ago

I'm not sure this is the same "type" of group.

There have always been those who neglect to adopt the technology of the day or buy heavily into the culture, without also buying into some sort of counter-cultural movement. Today it might be those who eschew social media and being terminally online. In the 90s perhaps it was those who limited their TV time.

In my view, it would be inaccurate to describe this group as "subcultural franchise[s] putting on against-the-grain airs" in the way of the punks and the goths and the "blue-haired pronoun bearers."

If anything, these are more likely to be people who've spent some time adopting and evaluating what the dominant culture has to offer, then wisely adjusting their participation to healthy levels (which may mean zero), despite societal pressure.

They're more "opt-outs" than "opt-againsts".

im_down_w_otp2• 2 years ago

I'd also expect them not to be luddites, but rather subversive rejectors. This probably isn't an entirely apt example, but think people who use things like PiHole rather than people who never adopted the internet in the first place.

timeagain• 2 years ago

The punks are alive and well tagging freeway overpass signs, dumpster diving, planting flowers in public parks, making their own clothes, and living in communal housing where it’s always someone else’s turn to do the dishes.

toyg7• 2 years ago

Most of them are lazy scions of well-off families, who will eventually take the studs off once the trust fund cuts them out. Culturally they are largely dead, reproducing models (like the communes you mention) popularized more than half a century ago.

abetusk• 2 years ago

Punk rose to prominence, in part, because of their acceptance of technology. They used technology that was once the expensive and in the domain of conservative corporations that was turned into accessible and cheap ways to disseminate ideas.

Xerox machines were prominently used to create flyers for shows and distribute zines. Cassette tapes were copied and passed around to anyone who wanted one. VHS was used to record shows and distribute other media. Lowered cost for TV transmission meant not only punk was a topic that could be seen on TV but that local access shows could be used to disseminate media further.

"Punk" is tied to the aesthetics of brightly colored hair, Mohawks, patches on jackets, jack boots etc. which coerces anyone who makes claims of being punk in the modern era into a anachronistic pastiche of what punk was in the late 1970s or early 1980s, with washed out "xerox effect" flyers or physical zines. Aesthetics aside, punk was primarily about a DIY ethos of using whatever tools were available to create art, discuss politics or create a scene.

The modern day equivalent exists, we just don't call it "punk" because it doesn't have the aesthetics attached. You want to know what modern day punk-rock looks like? It's not emulating some juvenile interpretation of Meditations, it's standing up Mastodon social networks, using Nostr, advocating for the freedom of Julian Assange, creating custom AI models that diagnose breast cancer, pushing libre/free/open source, creating art installations with custom electronics, and on and on.

There's one aspect of punk, not the whole aspect but one splinter faction, that was defeatist and pretty much dead on arrival. I only skimmed the article but that's the vein of punk rock the article seems to be channeling. Any movement that positions itself as a rejection of culture is doomed to fail, either because it fizzles out or because it becomes incorporated. The measure shouldn't be how contrary a movement is, it should be how it's trying to shape culture for the better.

anthk4• 2 years ago

Gopher and Gemini communities with cheap Atom netbooks or Pentium III-IV/athlon era machines.

At least the DIY spirit it's there.

coldtea3• 2 years ago

The punk ethos, shortlived as it was as a mainstream culture, and a little longer lived (still short) from some totally uncommercial die-hards, was not about technology at all.

Xerox was not some fancy new technology, it as 15+ year old staple at the time.

Cassetes were not a thing in the punk scene at the time. They were insignificant in sales in the UK, and no mixtapes, they caught on in the tail end of the 70s, several years after the original punk movement commercialized and died "Punk is dead" came to be.

Same, of course, for VHS.

dfxm126• 2 years ago

Counter culture is one thing, but the important bit is DIY, maybe more specifically DIT, do it together. This isn't about being offline, private, modest, etc., it's about seeing the rat race coming and stepping aside. They understand that ticketmaster & live nation probably own most of the venues in town, so if you don't want to play by their rules, you'll have to spend your entertainment dollars elsewhere, or if you're really into it, start your own venue for you and your friends and fly under the radar.

This goes for other industries too. While someone is bellyaching that amazon owns publishing, a "punk" is self publishing, and using their lessons learned to help their friends. In that way, it's like the hacker community...

I'm reminded by posts here complaining about ubereats, even in dense cities like LA, SF or NY. Why does it never occur to these people to call the restaurants directly to cut uber eats out of the equation? Yeah, it's like 5% less convenient, but it allays a ton of concerns on both ends of the transaction. It's things like this, regular people helping regular people, not rent seekers...

BlueTemplar2• 2 years ago

Speaking of counter-cultural (?) publishing...

https://www.ecosophia.net/writing-as-microcosm-part-one-publ...

MSFT_Edging• 2 years ago

to call the restaurants directly

I love doing this. I don't understand why people bother with the apps, it's just psychic torture knowing some MBA is getting my hard earned money just for making some radio boxes to middle-man it.

PaulDavisThe1st8• 2 years ago

While it is probably not possible to speak of "the entire punk movement" as a single thing (to the extent that there even is a punk movement per se), but the 1970s punk movement in London was not motivated by:

seeing the rat race coming and stepping aside

it was a response to several different elements occuring alongside and simultaneously:

  * the bleakness of 1970s Britain
  * the perception of significant barriers to entry into the world of artistic creation (i.e. you needed to be "very good" or even "virtuosic" to participate)
  * racial dynamics unfolding as the children of the Windrush generation began to come of age, and new waves of immigrants from the "Commonwealth" were more visibly present. 
  * boredom with the latest Yes album

There was no rat race coming - almost nobody was going to participate in that (a good and a bad thing, all at once).

Now, punk in NYC at about the same time might have been very different, and I'm certain that punk in other places and later times has almost certainly been very different. But that original incarnation was not an attempt to avoid the rat race, it was a desperate reaching for something of one's own (even if that was just a white riot), because society wasn't going to give you anything worth having.

coldtea3• 2 years ago

Given how much of the mainstream is organized around overwrought advertising, influencering, guruing, and being terminally online... it seems like the modern punks would be the counter-culture that prioritizes being offline, being private, and being whatever the opposite of "fake it 'til you make it" would be called. Genuine and modest?

The genuine ones - outside all media attention yes.

Because otherwise even that has been packaged and sold by "minimalist" and "slow living" influencers.

blah-yeah• 2 years ago

What a great article. Great analogy with the Matrix's architect scene.

Reminds me of a recent podcast featuring Will Storr, author of "The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play it", where, to paraphrase, he discusses how those who claim that social hierarchies are unethical... don't actually want to do away with hierarchies but rather simply want to destroy/disrupt the current hierarchy and place themselves at the top of the next one.

I really appreciate this section of the article:

"the only visible instantiation of a subcultural franchise putting on against-the-grain airs similar to those of the punks and goths of the 1990s (who had all been thoroughly domesticated by that point) has lately been...
"the “blue hair & pronouns” crowd...
"Where their presence in affluent suburbs or in gentrified or gentrifying urban neighborhoods is concerned,
"...only the most myopic and self-satisfied of the “blue hair & pronouns” set can possibly believe that they’re swimming against the mainstream at this point."

.... In terms of alternatives to capitalism discussed at the start of the article-- I think we are seeing pseudo-socialism-mixed-with-capitalism on small scales in cases of sharing economy related companies, some tiny-house communities which involve resource & workshop sharing, and the decentralized finance/media/social networks/ movement.

lenerdenator2• 2 years ago

Would that make metal the new punk?

mattgreenrocks2• 2 years ago

No, metal is just another tent underneath the larger tent of rock. It has a defined place to be slotted in.

lenerdenator2• 2 years ago

True, though it's subversive in its current form because there's just not much commercial success to be had from it. The kid who's into metal is the weirdo (I should know; I was that weirdo) and the weird are a naturally-limited market.

You have to be in it for the love of the game.

TotalCrackpot5• 2 years ago

There are actually 2 libertarian socialist/anarchist-inspired revolutions happening in the world right now - Zapatisas and Rojava. There are even more horizontal projects of this nature, you can check the list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W1wWjWNXhvHjMzzyxT5z5Es_...

If you want to learn more about Zapatistas and Rojava you can check those videos:

https://youtu.be/tqjfqy-2Wv4?si=rVFyuH26G_QVXMTR

https://youtu.be/_BQVHb5NYe8?si=vDUuVdWf_nkNvKKJ

vehemenz• 2 years ago

The author sort of alludes to it, but I will cast some doubt on the "every generation" theory that seems to prevail amongst most educated people. As the theory goes, every generation is just as tasteless, naive, foolhardy, ignorant, and as impatient as the last, and the perception that each generation actually _is_ getting worse in measurable ways is born from lack of experience or lack of wisdom.

There's no reason that this should be taken for granted. Institutions, governments, political parties, and entire cultures rise and fall due to local and global economic circumstances, wars, religious extremism, or even complacency. How odd would it be if young people were entirely immune to these effects?

Gimpei• 2 years ago

I don’t understand how you can devote so many words to the staying power of “capitalism” and not once give any concrete sense of what the economics of an alternative would look like and how you would make it work. The degree to which people microanalyze culture seems bonkers to me. If you don’t like our current economic system, then it’s kind of on you to come up with a viable alternative using empirical evidence. Nirvana was a great band, but they have absolutely nothing to do with this.

TotalCrackpot5• 2 years ago

Alternative would be libertarian socialism, with economy of some mixture of cooperative economics, decentralized planning, gift economy and library economy.

colonwqbang• 2 years ago

Do you have any good links that explain more?

In my mind the ideas of socialism and libertarianism are polar opposites.

parineum2• 2 years ago

I don't understand how what you've just said isn't the same as what we would currently call a social democracy with a capitalist economy. Specifically, "decentralized planning" is a synonym of capitalism and the other concepts your using exist already, enabled by the capitalist ethos of allowing the individual to use their capital as they see fit.

ericmcer2• 2 years ago

The bit about Cobain's suicide felt like it was probing around something important but blaming it on Capitalism felt a bit off. Cobain would have experienced something similar at any period in history, that is what happens to talented people who rise from the masses. If anything capitalism gave him way more freedom to use his talent how he wanted than any other system would have.

I am not an expert on Nirvana but I would guess his suicide was more about his personal struggles than some grandiose statement about politics and capitalism.

watwut4• 2 years ago

Afaik he had psychiatric issues that made suicide more likely ... and drug dependence that also made it more likely. He did not even needed to be talented one to rise from the masses, people like him commit suicides more then general population simply out of own suffering. He had bipolar disorder, depression and ADHD.

makomk• 2 years ago

Pretty much every article lamenting the seeming inevitability of capitalism and the lack of coherent alternatives is going to misdiagnose the problem and have no concrete solutions, because the fundamental problem is that the problems people care about are not simply consequences of capitalism and cannot be eliminated just by getting rid of it.

For example, no amount of monkeying with the economic system will make it possible to fight global warming simply by cutting off fossil fuel supplies and destroying fossil fuel company profits without huge impacts on the demand side that affect ordinary people - that'd require consuming fuel that was never produced. This effect on ordinary voters would make it horrendously unattractive to politicans even if they didn't have to care what corporations thought at all. Similarly, here in the UK there's huge public anger over sewage in our rivers and seas but no amount of nationalisation can change the fact that rebuilding the sewage system not to do that would take huge amounts of resources from other things that people care about and cause lots of unpopular disruption from the work required.

Because the things that people care about and want fixed aren't actually caused by capitalism, the most politically effective anti-capitalist ideas are populist lies that promise false solutions to those problems which cannot actually work. This also means that any leader or would-be leader with any sense isn't willing to go along with those ideas because they're creating a whip for their own back when they fail to live up to that. Any concrete, achievable anti-capitalism also has to fall so short of the populist version to be entirely unattractive.

yxhuvud• 2 years ago

Did that guy just categorize EBM as pop/soft? That is .. quite a stretch.

gpetukhov• 2 years ago

Probably confused with EDM.

drewcoo2• 2 years ago

No.

And so the goth clubs move the post-punk and coldwave tunes into a side room while the DJs spin EBM and futurepop on the main floor.

He's saying Nitzer Ebb and Front 242 were more packaged and refined than something like Suicide or Throbbing Gristle. And that seems spot on to me.

iamthepieman• 2 years ago

Seems like punk as it would be today wouldn't be particularly visible. If alternative or countercultural ethos is based on an antithesis to something else then it's always subject to whatever that something else is. But if it's based on some deeper desire, truth or idea of which the "counter" part is only a symptom then it might just seem like it no longer exist because mainstream culture has moved beyond the original target of the counterculture.

As a pithy illustration: If I'm trying to hit a tree with a ball and that tree just happens to be in between some goalposts and someone comes along and moves the goalpost, I can still hit my target even if I don't "make a goal". To a casual observer it might look like I'm playing the game and I am. But the game in my head is not the game in yours.

edit: I didn't have this in mind when starting this comment but maybe that's the deeper desire behind punk and other countercultural movements; the desire to play your own game. And maybe capitalism is the end of history in the sense that it has adapted to make it easy for people to play their own game and keeps pushing the edges of what would have been counter previously. Want to drop off the grid and make everything you use and consume with your own hands? There's a hundred youtube channels about that. If you want to conquer Rome, you're still gonna travel there on roads the Romans built.

hooverd• 2 years ago

This guy has gotta read less theory.

zingababba• 2 years ago

Yeeeep. Also, he's spot on with his self-assessment of not having a pulse on today's youth.

I've been spending time around young tattoo apprentices recently. What I've found is that there is an aesthetic revivalist movement underway just with new hyper forms of expression that often are /extremely/ jarring to normals. Spend a day listening to musical genres like phonk/hyperpop. Everything the new kids are doing is heavily tinted with accelerationism. Honestly who gives a shit about punk anyway, things come and go. Go read some more theory and cry some more about it I guess.

tekla• 2 years ago

Punk isn't dead, they just don't post it on Instagram

ericmcer2• 2 years ago

Really good article. Of course Capitalism will package and sell anti-capitalism if that is what makes money. It will try to mirror societies desires, which I don't think is a terrible thing. What should be feared is efforts to manufacture and control what people desire.

PaulDavisThe1st8• 2 years ago

What should be feared is efforts to manufacture and control what people desire.

You think capitalism doesn't do this (too) ?

mchinen• 2 years ago

There is a sort of nihilism that emerges when you look deeper at counterculture and it's conformity. Neo recognizing with horror the other neos is a great example. (In that case it only worked out for him because of hollywood's love of love - because he loved trinity so much he was really different from the rest.)

I've often wondered how the leaders of the hippie, punk, and more modern movements would compare to classical and romantic leaders of counterculture, like Thoreau or Voltaire, or even music like Chopin or Palestrina. We do have writers today like David Graeber that do seem against the grain. I suppose a major difference is that infuential people back then didn't seem as concerned with being famous and viral (which makes them more punk than punk), and there were less people that tried to follow them. On the other hand, when you look closer, maybe the difference can be explained by how media and money flows today.

At the extremes, it can seem like the only 'genuine' counterculture is self-sacrificing civil disobedience (e.g. self-immolation, not blocking traffic) or truly destructive (terrorism), because these are not scalable within mainstream culture. There should be a middle ground, but somehow I'm having trouble recognizing it. Perhaps this is because having a sustainable counterculture requires tacitly playing within the rules of the mainstream culture.

orhmeh09• 2 years ago

Sadly, we do not have David Graeber anymore.

AlecSchueler2• 2 years ago

I suppose a major difference is that infuential people back then didn't seem as concerned with being famous and viral

They started caring a lot about this as soon as they had the printing press, take a look at the career of Erasmus for example.

DontchaKnowit3• 2 years ago

In my opinion, todays true counterculture is conservative religious communities.

There is nother more counter to the cultural moment then being a traditionally moral, upright citizen who doesnt do drugs, doesnt lie, cheat, steal, has their libido under control, is reliable, whose existence is profitable to the rest of the world (not neccessarily economically, just mean someone who contributes more than they take : financially, emotionally, etc)

Thats about as counterculture as you can get.

pavel_lishin3• 2 years ago

I think it's a bold claim to make, that conservative religious communities are comprised of humans who don't lie, cheat, steal, and have their libido under control.

I'm sure some exist, just by dint of probability, but plenty more are made of regular stock humans like you or me, or worse.

ethbr17• 2 years ago

That feels unnecessarily savior-lauding and like blending a grab bag of unrelated traits into an idealized person.

There's plenty of darkness within the strictures of conservative religious communities -- mostly resultant from the evil that corrupt people perpetrate when given (by God) power in hierarchical structures.

virgildotcodes• 2 years ago

Nothing more counter-cultural than a caricature of traditional culture?

bigbillheck• 2 years ago

People have been saying that for years and it's just as absurd now as it's ever been.

RangerScience• 2 years ago

traditionally moral

Having traditional morals isn't the same as being moral.

Source: Hm... 6, maybe more, different friends who grew up in different versions of these communities, each of whom describes them as "dangerous cults".

silverquiet3• 2 years ago

Which conservative religious community(ies) are you alluding to? That could probably be considered a snarky question, but I really don't know which religions have withstood the prying eyes of modernity; they all seem to have been exposed as about as rotten an institution as their secular counterparts.

Perhaps the Amish or something like that? And of course, they have their practices that we would consider unsavory anyway.

watwut4• 2 years ago

There is nother more counter to the cultural moment then being a traditionally moral, upright citizen who doesnt do drugs, doesnt lie, cheat, steal, has their libido under control, is reliable, whose existence is profitable to the rest of the world (not neccessarily economically, just mean someone who contributes more than they take : financially, emotionally, etc)

The drug use is going down, alcoholism is going down, violent crime is going down, there was mini-panique just yesterday on HN over young people having less sex ...

not_your_mentat• 2 years ago

That's a lovely ideal. As a former lifelong Mormon living in Utah, I can attest first hand that the average doesn't resemble the ideal. It's a nice ideal though and it's good to have ideals, as long as you're consistent with them.

dfxm126• 2 years ago

On the contrary, when you look at who holds power in the US, it is conservative religious people. From actual lawmakers to the media. They get to set the culture.

red-iron-pine• 2 years ago

In my opinion, todays true counterculture is conservative religious communities.

Jihad vs. McWorld is essentially about this point.

ethbr17• 2 years ago

The central tension is between popularity and counterculture.

By definition, you cannot have popular counterculture, as it just becomes "the culture."

However, most of the capital assets of culture promotion are also tied to popularity (e.g. mass-market media publishing, advertising). Denied access, counterculture exists in the woods, but most people don't know.

Which is why you see truer counterculture move closer to popular culture when those assets are (usually temporarily) democratized during technological shifts (e.g. the 1960s and 1990s).

But hey, maybe I just miss zines...

OkayPhysicist• 2 years ago

That's an interesting theory, but what means of cultural promotion were newly democratized in the 60s?

DeathArrow• 2 years ago

Counterculture of today is the culture of yesterday,when no one called you a nazi bigot for doing things that were normal in the day.

atlas_hugged• 2 years ago

There’s nothing counterculture to conservatism my good man. Hell, it’s in the name.

The left moves society forward, the right holds society back. I don’t like everything the young kids are doing but I know I will eventually be wrong, so I try to understand them and learn to embrace the change they bring. The young left will always, eventually, move society forward. Whether we like it or not. What you’re witnessing is people beginning to understand the paradox of tolerance. Complete tolerance towards all views will always fail because the intolerant will exploit the tolerant. Now that people understand that things are always, or even often, that simple. In order to maintain tolerance, you must also practice intolerance of intolerance. I see the whole “calling people a Nazi bigot” for saying things like “go woke or go broke” or things in that vein, is a part of that realization.

I’ve always of the mind of “free speech absolutism” as Elon calls it. Then I read about how Germany handled things post ww2 and concluded that they could no longer allow fully free speech if they were going to stop another Hitler from rising to power. They had to be intolerant to intolerance. It’s a dangerous precedent that requires great care to avoid a more dangerous outcome.

In general, being an angry hateful bigot of any kind has progressively been moved to the fringe of the right, instead of being smack dab in the middle of the mainstream.

Interracial marriage.

Slavery.

Voting rights for minorities and women.

Jim Crow.

Civil Rights.

Protection of Voting rights

Self ownership / Reproductive rights

Acceptance of LGBT+/GSRM communities.

Acceptance of minorities.

Same sex marriage.

Healthcare for all.

The right has met all of these with protest and violence. They eventually always lose, but not before killing a bunch of people on the left in the process.

You’re on the wrong side of history. I’ve been there. Figure out why you’re so resistant to change/progress. Figure out why you’re so angry all the time. Figure out why you’re so filled with hate.

If you’re surrounded by hateful people, figure out how to leave those people behind. Don’t announce your intentions. Don’t evangelize your views. Just start your path to change. The people in your orbit will either move towards you or move away from you. Expect this. Most will move away, but some will see your example and follow it.

That’s the approach a friend of mine took when he decided he didn’t want to be a violent alcoholic anymore. He just decided to change. He didn’t ask me to change with him. He just did it. He never left my side so I never left his. Eventually, I followed in his example. Eventually, so did a couple of his other friends.

His approach helped me become a much happier person.

I hope it helps you.

anthk4• 2 years ago

You mean, like lyinching and segregating Black people and not having the same rights until the damn US landed into the Moon? FFS, nazi-like laws were expected in the Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain or Mussolini's Italy, not under a self-called democracy right into the Beatles era.

yunwal2• 2 years ago

My take is that “counterculture” is the wrong thing to look for when talking about changing the system. What’s actually going to do that is an entire generation that basically has decided to not try at their jobs and careers.

Previous generations had a substantial number of people who thought that either their jobs could be their passions, or at the very least that doing well at their jobs could lead to a better life. I think Gen-z and below have internalized that trying at your job doesn’t lead to better outcomes, and that’s the real thing that will lead to change.

s1artibartfast7• 2 years ago

I think that is a very interesting perspective, but think it will not lead to real or positive change.

In my opinion (dont take this personally), I think it is a victim mentality, that if someone self sabotages enough, someone else will fix things or improve their situation.

I think a closer model of reality is that most people are disposable. I dont think that people becoming more disposable less important increases leverage.

A lot of historic change has come from organized striking, but only when the strikers have coherent demands and productivity to leverage.

tsylba• 2 years ago

80's Punks were the Tricksters of ancient mythology (eg. Coyote in amerindians culture), it always been the role of those at the margins of Society dealing with uncomfortable other realities, bringing liminal space into our collective consciousness. Punks are not dead, they (or more precisely their archetypal essence) have just shape shifted into another form we fail to recognize as we age while their prior shell have been consumed by mass media and commodification.

Chances are the future generation Punks are either that itch we can't quite name or out of our generational perception altogether.

obscurette• 2 years ago

If you want a nerdy sci-fi take on it, then "The City and the Stars" by Arthur C. Clarke is the one to read.

s1artibartfast7• 2 years ago

At the extremes, it can seem like the only 'genuine' counterculture is self-sacrificing civil disobedience (e.g. self-immolation, not blocking traffic) or truly destructive (terrorism), because these are not scalable within mainstream culture. There should be a middle ground...

The middle ground is productive disengagement. It is deciding to abandon the system and build real alternatives outside of it. You see this with hippy communes, some punk scenes, and homesteaders, ect.

It isnt as common because it takes a lot more work and hardship than simply "laying flat", and doesnt provide much social currency in the mainstream culture. There are also barriers in the mainstream that provide headwinds, but I think these are less of a challenge.

For example, it isnt impossible for people to check out and build an eco-friendly socialist commune in the wilderness. However, it is a lot of work and few are willing to sacrifice the comforts of mainstream life, as unhappy as they may be with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

gedy• 2 years ago

I can only comment from my sort of involvement in 80s SoCal punks - most folks were not "political punks" and rejected all authority whether left or right (listen to California Uber Alles), and the clothing and music aesthetics were totally unconventional and abrasive.

Even then there was some internal-ish pressure to align the punks with leftist ideology, but most could really care less and wanted to drop out of society, not "fix it", etc.

Things started changing once the styles and sound started influencing mainstream, and it was no longer seen so outlandish. And it's hard to live outside culture esp if drugs are involved. (Though respect to the Straight Edge movement[0])

If there was a "new" punk-like movement today, it'd need to be "exclusive" in that normies would not want to show up to your gigs or parties, due to aesthetics or beliefs. I think you'd need that feeling of making a choice to drop out of society, so you'd need something really different, almost like Amish punks, ha.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge

tomtomistaken• 2 years ago

Funny. I was at a concert at a punk place last weekend and I thought: Punk is now mainstream and alive as ever! Punk statements and practices are now everywhere!

herbst• 2 years ago

I recently had this realization too. Punk never really went away, I am a 90s kid and there was a lot of punk culture in my place. However for me personally punk seems more alive now than the last 15 years and it's great

Especially UK and Germany seems to have a growing punk scene right now in popular music and the 'streets'.

0xbadcafebee• 2 years ago

It's easy to link everything to capitalism when you live in the age of capitalism. Cultural phenomena, trends and upheavals happen throughout human history in a variety of ways. The industrial revolution has certainly fueled a new machine for the acceleration and multiplication of culture, but this economic model isn't intrinsically intertwined with culture. Culture is just a product that is sold by capitalism. In communism, culture is also sold, but only one or two varieties are available. The same was true before this, in the West, when christianity was the cultural machine, producing different sects. Before that (and at the same time, in other parts of the world) culture was more ethnic, national and regional. And Folk culture is a constant.

reactordev• 2 years ago

Punk isn’t dead, we just retired!

corimaith• 2 years ago

One could argue though that being conservative (in a literal sense), is the reactionary "punk" to the ideas of modernism and innovation of previous eras.

An interesting phenemenon is the emergence of the extremely popular game based works across different mediums; LitRPGs for Western Fantasy, Isekai/Narou for Japanese culture, and the "Hunter" manwha for Korea. These works tend to have a infamous reputation for being overly similar to each other, and eschewing much in originality and worldbuilding in favour of pure action and power fantasies. In my discussions with those who consumed it, unique settings, character development, etc were all burdens, and instead by using a easily familiar and simple system of a game-rpg they could instead push to the "meat" of action scenes. The same can be also said about the comparison between the leanness of new "shounen" like Jujutsu Kaisen compared to meandering filler of the Big Three (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece).

As someone who grew up with the previous era, that kind of thinking is almost antithetical to the reasons why I was drawn into fiction; The whole point of an RPG was to realise a fantasy world, the mechanics were just abstractions to make up technical limitations. Beyond that in other mediums, the idea was to get even crazier and fleshed out settings, to have more realistic characters, all to build that vision of a fantasy world that yet felt sincere. Pushing boundaries was the name of the game. And so it's that funnily enough, many older works like The Five Star Stories could almost be construed as innovative if you were to compare them to modern works today.

This is all just about a specific niche culture, so other cultures may be different. But looking at decline in originals and the rise of remakes and endless sequels paints a similar risk-averse outlook for the wider zeitgeist. Well I guess it's a pendulum of reacting ideas; Modernism is the establishment, so Conservative is the anti-establishment. But the current era itself is already running out of steam, so the pendulum may just turn back.

AndyNemmity4• 2 years ago

I think that's just differences in opinion in large part.

I grew up in the previous era, and clicking through dialog, and ignoring the story was a part of every single RPG I played.

My kind of thinking, the fiction was antithetical to the reasons I was drawn into RPGs.

The exact opposite of you, at the exact same time. But you are arguing the time is what is different.

parineum2• 2 years ago

I'm not familiar with the age of the author but the article very much makes me think they are old enough to have seen the counterculture of their youth become mainstream and die while the next wave of counterculture was "inauthentic and corporate" followed by being too out of touch with the youth to notice the counterculture coming up behind it (and mistaking the mainstream for the counterculture, ie, taylor swift, kanye west and beyonce) but not quite old enough to realize that the "last true counterculture" of their youth was actually just as real and authentic as what followed.

I had the same feelings when I was younger but, having seen the pattern a couple more times than once, I think most people come to the same realization that this is just the way it is and why parents are usually nonchalant and a bit dismissive of their children's "rebellious counterculture".

I think they author misattributes the mainstream takeover of counterculture to "capitalism finally got them" when, it seem obvious to me, that what's really happened is that the counterculture just got older and are now the ones shaping the mainstream.

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

I'm not familiar with the age of the author

They say they were in their teens in the late 90's.

claytongulick• 2 years ago

why parents are usually nonchalant and a bit dismissive of their children's "rebellious counterculture".

Indeed [1]. It seems to be a condition of youth, to a degree.

[1] https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...

drewcoo2• 2 years ago

Not all counterculture becomes the new culture. It is carefully curated by gatekeepers. It just so happens that the gatekeepers are backed by money (that capitalism thing). Making it through the gate is known as "selling out" because of sour grapes and filthy lucre.

Why am I trying to explain this to someone whose handle is "parineum?"

wiz21c• 2 years ago

Oh a few years ago, after the fall of the Wall, many people said we had reached the "end of history": capitalism has won and occident will rule the world and bring peace to the world. (I think Fukuyama, cited in the article, said something like that)

Interestingly, Putin is still there, Islamism, China too... One could always argue they're a form of capitalism but I'm sure history is full of "our system is the only one" claim.

So no, no and no.

nemo44x• 2 years ago

The book "Gravity's Rainbow" had this as a theme throughout. That Capitalism will co-op anything that it finds useful. That there's no way to subvert it as it will pick up on, embrace, and exploit it for profit. Amazon selling books on how to dismantle global capitalism, etc. Pynchon's only solution was to completely fly under the radar as much as you possibly can. It makes sense he doesn't do interviews, or distribute anything other than the words in his books.

Mark Fisher is an interesting philosopher. For those that don't know he was a part of the ""Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit" [1] at Warwick University led by Nick Land. These guys were crazy but from their insanity some extremely interesting observations and ideas came out of it. In particular, "Accelerationism"[2] which has become very popular in the AI world, e/acc, etc. Fisher was more of the left wing side of it and Land from the right wing. In fact, Land is a reactionary today and their ideas are quite interesting as opposed to the mainstream left/liberal Capitalist ideals of today's mainstream.

Nick Land is an interesting fellow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Un...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

I don't piss on anyone, regardless of their age, for looking out at the world and wishing for something different, something better.

Even approaching 60 years old I am still doing the same kind of searching. It's not a fashion for me, I don't wear it on my sleeve. But perhaps even because I am older, I am increasingly unhappy with the bed that was already made for me when I was born.

So often I find myself wondering (sometimes aloud), "How did the world get to the way it is now? If you were to design, plan a society you would never have made it as complicated as this."

It's as though we begrudgingly go along with it because what else can you do? I think when you're young you try to fight it, and therein lies the punk spirit. But you eventually muster out of the revolution and, tired of tilting against windmills, you instead try to make it work for you.

Regardless, I still don't like it and still try to envision what changes would make the world a better place.

opyate• 2 years ago

How did the world get to the way it is now?

How is the world now, in your view?

api2• 2 years ago

There are plenty of alternatives to capitalism discussed all over the place. I see them every day. What there aren't are alternatives that are both better and achievable in the real world.

Fascism, traditionalism, neo-monarchism, authoritarian forms of socialism, and theocracy are all very real and have both adherents at home and entire societies abroad that attempt to live by their rules. Unfortunately all of them yield a society that is worse in many important respects than Western liberal capitalism. They are stifling, repressive, or lead to poverty. The domestic adherents of these ideas tend to be either angry nihilists and edgelords who hate their own lives and just want any kind of change, or fanatics (e.g. religious zealots) who are obsessed with controlling and restricting the personal choices of others.

There are also lots of pure fantasies that are pushed as alternatives to capitalism: neo-primitivism, hand-wavey futurist utopias, new age woo, etc. While these may or may not be better, the point is moot because they are not achievable. There is no path from here to there, or in many cases there isn't even a "there." There's just a vague idea that if we all abandon what we have now and love each other or something magic will happen and we'll get utopia. History shows us that without a real serious workable plan we're more likely to get a slum run by warlords or a new boss that's worse than the old boss.

If someone thinks of a serious alternative to Western liberal capitalism that is both better and achievable (there is a path from here to there, and an actual "there"), I think they'll get plenty of attention. There is no invisible conspiracy that will somehow stop people from thinking of this or discussing it. It's just that nobody's done it yet.

poszlem2• 2 years ago

I believe we are on the verge of witnessing an unprecedented challenge to Western capitalism, emanating from China. It's becoming increasingly clear that the West is facing difficulties. The capitalist model, particularly in its current form, is failing to deliver. There's also a notable lack of enthusiasm for it in the global south.

The Chinese model appears to promise greater, superior, and swifter results, with the price tag for the average individual not being particularly steep—it's merely a bit more of your privacy (which has already been bartered and commercialized in the West) and a few liberties ("people are tired of liberty" was probably the most true quote by mussolini).

And boy, can China deliver.

api2• 2 years ago

Maybe, but this very much remains to be seen.

There's an equally plausible narrative that China is coasting on the momentum of its liberalization, and that Xi Xinpeng's clampdown is slowly but surely strangling it. That combined with China's impending demographic cliff (self-inflicted via authoritarian one child policies) could lead China to start fading fairly soon.

We'll see.

In any case I don't think the Chinese model is that different from Western capitalism. At the street level it's fairly similar including hustle culture, long hours, and plenty of cultural commodification. Seems more like a variation on the theme than an alternative.

The most obvious area where they "deliver" is competent public works, which is something we seem to have forgotten how to do.

jterrys• 2 years ago

What is the "Chinese model"? Export cheap manufacturing and labor? Exploit, copy, and imitate superior products until you can flood the market with your cheap knockoffs? Profit as you're headed for the bottom of the barrel?

China is the Antichrist in as much as it needs a Christ for it to exist. Without Western capitalism it is nothing, because it doesn't consume nearly as much as it produces. The profits from its production are the result of its wealth. In fact, it is profitable in spite of its government policies.

ryukoposting2• 2 years ago

This is a wonderfully-written piece, and it articulates the paradoxical nature of countercultures better than I've ever been able to. Punk Rock is dead, long live Punk Rock.

I think there are real artistic countercultures out there, but they exist on the margins of art and society (as they must, innately). They're hard to discover, and even when they are discovered, they're inaccessible, bizarre, and disquieting (as they must be, innately).

I'm reminded of my record collection, and one record in particular: an autographed copy of The Great Annihilator, by Swans[1]. Besides the music itself, the peculiar thing about this record is the way it's autographed. Michael Gira signed it on the back, tucked away in the bottom corner. I've always wondered why he did it this way. Maybe it's a way of saying "here's my signature you materialistic loser, have fun trying to display this overpriced souvenir." Maybe it's a way of saying "appreciate the art as it was meant to be appreciated, don't use it as a display piece." Maybe I'm reading into it too much, and it means nothing at all.

[1]: They're a bit better known than they once were, but for anyone who doesn't know about them, go listen to some Swans. It's abrasive and uncomfortable, and you'll probably hate it. But it doesn't exist for the purpose of being abrasive and uncomfortable, and that's key. It's an artist's unfiltered creative vision. Incidentally, Cobain was a big Swans fan.

AndyNemmity4• 2 years ago

I was listening to the Swans in the 90s, and I never felt they were abrasive, or uncomfortable.

I don't have much to add, I just felt it was interesting hearing them described through someone else's lens very differently than I would.

When I listen to them I hear beauty, and my childhood.

JansjoFromIkea• 2 years ago

I'd say some of the post-reunion (?) Swans material is a lot more consistently abrasive/uncomfortable.

Most the 90s stuff to me sounds more like... gothy post-punky vibes?

ryukoposting2• 2 years ago

The Swans of my youth is the reunion Swans, so my perspective is probably warped by that. Swans' catalog has a pretty wide gamut of abrasiveness, for sure.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

Punk's not dead, it's just that songs like Dead Kennedy's "Lynch the Landlord" and "Holiday in Cambodia" or MDC's "John Wayne was a Nazi" and "Ronald McDonald, Corporate Deathburger" and so on are now deemed to be violently inflammatory and would be subjected to shadowbanning and suppression on every social media and streaming platform, and no consolidated MusicBorg contracts would be likely either. Musical performers today all know that engaging in political activism that's not aligned with elite interests will lead to career destruction. The same thing happened with rap - you won't see Public Enemy-style groups being promoted today.

Punk was not noted for musical talent, but that didn't distract too much because of the energy of the performers. There's a Foo Fighter's cover of "Holiday in Cambodia" from about a decade ago that's worth listening to, it does sound better when the musicians can keep time.

0ckpuppet• 2 years ago

Punk is dead. Once I witnessed old punk rockers backing government lockdowns, backing the authorities, and shilling for politicians and political parties, I realized rebellion is now a commodity.

PaulDavisThe1st8• 2 years ago

Yeah, because what punk was really about was always contrarianism in the face of authority.

No, wait. That has absolutely nothing to do with what punk was about, other than some mainstream media story about punk, designed to terrify everybody else.

Punk rockers in 1978 were shilling for politicians in London. They were cynical and honest and clear-eyed about it, but they were still shilling.

ps. on HN I try never to vote comments down, I just try to reply instead. But I had to make an exception here.

angelsbrood• 2 years ago

Fisher didn't land anywhere near here in his appraisal of the emergent (online/millennial) left and your inability to think past 2011's "anti-capitalism" means you're squarely, exclusively the target of whatever "critique" this is supposed to be. You guys are mortifying.

rglover3• 2 years ago

Punk (in the conception of anyone born before the internet) is dead because bohemian degeneracy is mainstream. If we go by the standard of "being against the mainstream," today's punks would be people following the advice of the topless antagonist in John Prine's Spanish Pipedream [1]:

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus
On your own

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwq0YoOy4g

silverquiet3• 2 years ago

Interestingly, the article mentioned Voltaire as a countercultural figure (which I had never considered). But if you were to read "Candide", it would largely agree; the moral is basically to eschew philosophy and cultivate your garden, which could be construed as a metaphor for whatever your garden may be, but in the story is actually a homestead type situation. If you replaced Jesus with "the deity" or something like that, it would also fit.

PaulDavisThe1st8• 2 years ago

Why do you think "being against the mainstream" is the standard of what punk is?

rglover3• 2 years ago

Because that's what it is: a commodified version of "f*ck you mom and dad" rebellion with DIY window dressings. I grew up in punk culture (my house in college was a DIY punk club [1]) and at the core, that's all it is [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJ60dAHyc4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YefQjTeaUDI

kevinsync• 2 years ago

I'm convinced that Juggalos are one of the only real countercultures in American society today.

SleepilyLimping• 2 years ago

My benchmark is how much social capital one stands to lose by admitting to be a member. If you're still admitting to be a Juggalo despite knowing what's associated with it, and how the mainstream is going to treat you, you're fine with those people being "your people" without anyone else.

s1artibartfast7• 2 years ago

Exactly. If mainstream accepts you, you aren't counterculture. Real counter-culture isn't "cool" .

Im sure there are other countercultures besides Juggalos; US Wahabis, religious polygamists, ect.

bee_rider2• 2 years ago

It is funny to note that “Punk is Dead” came out in 1977, but all the action in the article WRT punk is happening in the 90’s and beyond. The author acknowledges this in a way, though:

the only visible instantiation of a subcultural franchise putting on against-the-grain airs similar to those of the punks and goths of the 1990s (who had all been thoroughly domesticated by that point)[…]

Anyway, I’m not sure who the “blue hair & pronouns” (as the author puts it) crowd is. If it is actually queer and trans people, I don’t think their motivation was ever to be counter-culture really: they are just intrinsically attracted to or identifying with the opposite gender, and would like to be mistreated less frequently for it. It isn’t a punk movement, it is one trying to get social acceptance.

If it is straight or cis people who are sort of associating with that culture, I suppose there might be some counter-culture aspect to it. But there’s also a strong element of just, like, authentic human empathy and allyship. I think that’s more important.

friend_and_foe2• 2 years ago

Is it possible your affinity to the blue hair and pronouns subculture prevents you from seriously considering the author's analysis of it?

To a gay man or transvestite (as they often called themselves, nothing derogatory meant by it) of yore, surely that movement represented freedom from repression. Today, when bigotry towards homosexuals is socially taboo, what does it mean to the allies, warriors and fluid genders? To the stereotypical tumblrites creating new gender symbols and ever increasingly colorful flags in Photoshop? To me it looks exactly like what the author says: mainstream, corporate captured product marketing, in group signalling, an aesthetic subculture feigning angst and struggle.

watwut4• 2 years ago

Bigotry against homosexuals is not taboo where I live.

JohnBooty2• 2 years ago

    To me it looks exactly like what the author says: mainstream, 
    corporate captured product marketing, in group signalling, an 
    aesthetic subculture...

i'm well into middle age now, and i have always thought this about "subculture/counterculture" groups in general -- how are you even rebelling when you all look the same? you're conforming, just to the norms of a smaller group.

however, you're missing (at least!) a few major pillars of what's happening with the LGBT+ community.

1. for those who have (and still do) have to spend much of their lives hiding their true identities, just getting to express themselves openly and with pride is a joy. something that's hard to imagine if you've never had to hide.

2. being gay/trans/etc is a pretty material and fundamental part of one's identity. it's orders of magnitude different from "liking grunge music in 1993" or whatever.

3. it is not necessarily acceptable, or even safe, to be LGBT+ in many places or around many people. in that sense these shared and "stereotypical" aesthetics serve actual functional purposes - they allow LGBT folks to identify others who are not likely to negatively judge or persecute them.

    ...feigning angst and struggle

they're feigning? who are you to decide that?

coldtea3• 2 years ago

It is funny to note that “Punk is Dead” came out in 1977, but all the action in the article WRT punk is happening in the 90’s and beyond

Well, the 90s "punk" revival was just diggist up the corpse of 1976 punk and taking to the bank. Even dead, if that's possible.

And in line, as you note, with the author's own comments about re-purposing and re-hashing culture in a tamer and more commercial way.

Anyway, I’m not sure who the “blue hair & pronouns” (as the author puts it) crowd is. If it is actually queer and trans people, I don’t think their motivation was ever to be counter-culture really: they are just intrinsically attracted to or identifying with the opposite gender, and would like to be mistreated less frequently for it.

It is the millions of "I'm not like the other girls" boys and girls knee-deep in whatever this era's mass produced youth culture (and "counter-culture") is. They kind of peopl who in 1990 would be into Vanilla Ice and in 1992 into Gangsta Rap. Actual LGBTQ people are a tiny percentage of those groups (though many more just claim to be non-binary or some such, they way hipsters claimed to love vinyl and fair trade).

tonfreed• 2 years ago

By blue hair and pronouns crowd, they're referring to the "gay as an aesthetic" types. You don't need to be gay to be queer anymore, it's simply a performative fashion trend to be sold to teenagers at the mall. That's the entire point of the essay.

RiverCrochet• 2 years ago

Capitalist Realism’s early chapters touch on what we we talking about last time: the “alternative” youth subcultures at the turn of the century who romantically imagined they were rejecting a bland and soulless Mainstream by eschewing Top 40 musicians in favor of buying and listening to records by NOFX, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, et al.

Music is just not a cultural carrier like it used to be.

Young people aren't buying music. I don't think music is a cool thing teenagers discover and make it part of themselves anymore in the same way they did in previous generations - there's just too much of it, it's chopped up into too many social bubbles, and no one except established regimes targeting older people can make money off of it. A 13 or 14 year old might obsess over some TikTok artist or band for a minute but it's not going to last a lifetime because the next thing everyone's talking about will replace it quickly.

I think we will soon see an era where young people don't care about music. It's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't really know if having rich popular, punk, whatever bands that try to coast on their fame for decades is worthwhile to society anyway.

AndyNemmity4• 2 years ago

As a person with children, this doesn't seem true.

It might be true in the future, but there is still just as much obsessing over artists, and bands, that feels like it will last a lifetime.

Basically, I don't disagree with your premise, but my narrow evidence says it isn't true.

poszlem2• 2 years ago

My main issue with articles like this is they're packed with so much bookish, social and literary theory that they exaggerate their capacity to accurately describe reality.

To put it simply and honestly, we're so caught up in our own culture bubble that we can't see different subcultures for what they are (as has been the case ALWAYS). Instead, we write them off as deviations and psychological anomalies. If you want to get a real sense of these groups, you should observe which groups are overlooked by mainstream media, which ones are derogated for their beliefs, and considered undesirable.

For example, I really think that because of a bunch of reasons, like the threat of a world war and rapid social transformations, we will witness a significant shift towards military-oriented, ultra-masculine groups in the years ahead.

These groups will embrace a nihilistic outlook (the same "no future" slogan we see so often), they will be labeled as incels and fascists (and they largely will be that), yet they will represent truly alternative subcultures to what the mainstream culture presents.

This is btw. not a praise of such groups, it's merely my attempt at pointing out the authors obvious blind spots.

skybrian• 2 years ago

Seems like this analysis is mostly based on entertainment and decades-old history, and as such, it’s going to be fairly out of touch with whatever is going on now. I’m out of touch too, but at least I know it.

Going on about vague abstractions like Capitalism (whatever that is) isn’t going to help since these are mental constructs, not evidence.

A culture based on curiosity and amateur reporting, telling stories about things that actually happened, would probably understand itself better. Many of us are the opposite, keeping anything real private (for understandable reasons) and sharing fantasy stuff, which overwhelms what’s real.

2devnull• 2 years ago

Pretty much anything post Sex Pistols is a fashion show. I always sort of felt bad for those kids and the metal nerds. Those I was close to were clearly terrified of the freedom and responsibility of adulthood, and often had tenuous relationships with their fathers, as a rule! My advice: Don’t use music as a form of social identity. Music as music is better than music as fashion.

anthk4• 2 years ago

Hippies where just loaded people cosplaying as beggars.

PaulDavisThe1st8• 2 years ago

One of the problems with TFA's allusions to hippies for me is that it feels as if it is arguing that the hippies were the first of their kind.

In reality, groups with the general back-to-the-land drop-out mentality are a persistent feature of western culture, occuring every 40-80 years for several hundred years. They rarely change the entire face of the culture they emerge in, but they typically shift it a bit, at least for a while.

And as Peter Coyote once observed, while the hippies lost just about every political battle they purported to care about (war, racism, sexism, industrial agriculture, cars, pollution etc.), they won most of the cultural battles.

toyg7• 2 years ago

they won most of the cultural battles.

That's because the upper echelons correctly understood that culture is largely window-dressing, as long as the fundamental economic ballasts remain the same. They will let us dye our hair blue, what matters is that we keep working in their factories/shops/call-centres/banks/etc, making money for them; and if we bootstrap something else, it will inevitably be absorbed back into the system once a little greed creeps in.

What they cared about was killing collectivism, which was the real threat to the economic order, and they largely achieved that.

ozzcer• 2 years ago

British counter culture is still alive and well. The free party scene never went away. While dance music entered an unprecedented era of commercialisation under the likes of Carl Cox and Fatboy Slim, the underground kept rolling along. Still today one can ( and many still do), find themselves off the beaten track in the South Downs, Welsh country side, or Cornish hills. Even in London, in unused warehouses & train yards,stacks are brought in and people flock. The only real change in the free party scene is how lines are distributed. Burner social media accounts are much more common than your classic call this number operation. We're still fighting '94 public order act, there's just a lot more obstacles nowadays.

thomastjeffery2• 2 years ago

Media is the wrong barometer. Its foundation is copyright, which is antithetical to everything punk.

shaunxcode• 2 years ago

hardcore punk is still alive and well. It's just actually underground. Most newer bands are back to tapes and zines, maybe a bandcamp.

histories• 2 years ago

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 18, 1992: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/03/18

toyg7• 2 years ago

C&H is basically the '90s in a nutshell.

Coincidentally, Watterson himself was very punk: he started drawing for his own sake, got famous, refused to accept the capitalist growth imperative, and dropped out. He never sported a mohawk or pierced his tongue, but was more punk than several generations of punk-rock wannabes.

Punk is dead and so are we

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