[thinkingemote]

Half and half. I think its true that old style counter cultures and the avant garde no longer exist but also that the "deplorables" is not counter culture. The global kind (versus but encompassing the USA specific manifestation) is a kind of reaction against progressivism based on tradition. The word "reactionary" might be used more by people hopefully without the 19th century let-them-eat-cake connotations! It's alternative.

Generally there may be some confusion of categories. There is a difference between alternative, sub and counter cultures. There are lots of sub cultures still around, and lots of groups doing their own alternative thing. I think previous counter cultures had sub cultural manifestations. Punk is a classic example with the "punk ethic". The sub culture got recuperated and commodified, and the ethic mostly but not completely died.

I'd say cyberpunk lives on in the critical take of hackers towards AI and technological capitalism for example but even if its not a subculture now and even if there's no real counter culture it still influences many counter cultural ideas. The spirit or ideas of cyberpunk hasn't been fully adopted by mainstream at the same time the aesthetic subculture was.

[b800h]

Interesting response, thanks. The definition of counterculture that I see most frequently is: "A culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores."

By that yardstick, I'd say the alt-right or whatever you want to call it is a reactionary counterculture rather than a progressive counterculture, largely as a result of progressive countercultural values from the 1950s-90s having been incorporated into mainstram culture.

A few months ago I asked ChatGPT to use the principal of the Hegelian dialectic to tell me what the synthesis arising from the current progressive culture and the alternative reactionary one would be. Naturally it was useless.

[EDIT: I just reframed the question for it today and the answer was actually reasonable, if a little uninspired, obvs]