[namaria]

Some counter culture movements from the US had some mainstream impact. If having mainstream impact is your criterion for the existence or relevance of counter culture, you're defining it from the point of view of the establishment. It just reinforces my belief that someone defining counter culture by the mainstream cultural narrative built post hoc around some aspects of it wouldn't be aware of the current streams in the counter cultural depths.

There's a full generation of adults who grew up taking the Internet for granted is my point. There are many orders of magnitude of information flowing there than you can even imagine. Yet you claim to _know_ counter culture isn't a thing anymore because you don't see any mainstream cultural narratives describing any aspects of it. Do you see the problem in this logic?

"Rock" is a post hoc narrative packaging something that came organically from counter cultural movements. Same goes for "blues" or "hip hop". These labels and the packaging of counter cultural (i.e. subversive of the values of the establishment) manifestations for mainstream consumption, are where counter culture goes to die. That's why I said they're just a re-packaging of something that came before and appeared organically.

Once it has a widely known name and a section in the nearest media outlet, it's by definition part of the mainstream.

So if you look around and you can't see any grand narratives about new cultural artifacts from "the youths/the minorities", how impactful they are and where you can buy an album, and conclude there's no more counter culture. I guess you're just telling on yourself at this point.

[coldtea]

>There's a full generation of adults who grew up taking the Internet for granted is my point. There are many orders of magnitude of information flowing there than you can even imagine. Yet you claim to _know_ counter culture isn't a thing anymore because you don't see any mainstream cultural narratives describing any aspects of it. Do you see the problem in this logic?

In this logic, yes, meaning your argument :)

Counter-culture doesn't mean obscure and indiscoverable. So "there's so much internet, there's bound to be some counter-culture in there you've missed" is not an answer.

Even if it was, it would be irrelevant. What made counter-culture relevant (as opposed to "what a very small bunch a people do for their own amusement"), was the interplay at the edges of established culture, and the influence it exerted over it. Until the next one came, and so on.

So, "once it has a widely known name and a section in the nearest media outlet, it's by definition part of the mainstream" is precisely what's not been seen happening (with insignificant exceptions).

In any case, it's not like this hasn't been covered a lot. See Mark Fisher's writings for an example.