The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
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The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
the system will only make the system stronger, the next generation is instead opting for radical hyperstition: constructing alternative futures that abandon
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
Now “selling out” is tying your online identity to your IRL life and real name. In part, this is because one of the biggest impediments to countercultural activity is the fact that the internet doesn’t suppress expression—it forces you to express and then holds you accountable for whatever you say for years. On the platform, silence isn’t an option... See more
documentjournal.com • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
For one, anonymity, or at least pseudonymity, is increasingly important if not fundamental to being active online in counter-hegemonic ways.
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
What logic could possibly be upended by punks, goths, gabbers, or neo-pagans when the internet, a massively lucrative space of capitalization, profits off the personal expression and political conflict of its users?
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
maybe here, we do have an aesthetic counter to the wallflower non-style of Big Tech: a raging messy semiotic meltdown of radicalizing (if absurdist) meme culture where the only ideological no-go zone is the liberal center. Key here is that most of this activity is happening under the guise of avatars, pseudonyms, and collectively run social media a
... See moreCaroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
“To be truly countercultural in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
Additionally, dark forest spaces are both minimally and straightforwardly commercial. There is typically a small charge for entry, but once you are in, you are free to act and speak without the platform nudging your behavior or extracting further value
Caroline Busta • The Internet Didn’t Kill Counterculture—you Just Won’t Find It on Instagram
In context, these artists (like the psychedelic hippies of yore) were being literally countercultural—using culture against itself to violate the hegemonic push toward, in Allin’s and Rice’s case, neoliberal “responsibilization.”