This idea that in today’s world, counterculture must embrace invisibility—that it must rest on a bedrock of withdrawal—appeared in every conversation that I had for this article. Biz Sherbert, culture writer and cohost of the podcast Nymphet Alumni, offers a moral angle. “If mass culture runs on conflict,” she says, “then the only real... See more

We are pantomiming our ideas and convictions rather than living them.