[Animats]

"Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why?"

His chart [1] indicates where the 1975 date came from. He distinguishes between 1960s "counterculture" and later "subcultures". That's somewhat artificial. The 1920s also had subcultures - the Jazz Age, flappers, etc. Prior to the 1920s, there wasn't enough mass disposable income for such frippery. The 1930s (depression) and 1940s (WWII) sucked so bad that there was no counterculture, subculture, or, indeed, much culture.

The more interesting question is "why did it stop"? Music stopped being an agent of rebellion around the time punk died. Now, it's just "content". When it became easy to distribute music, everybody started doing it. At peak, there were several million bands on Myspace. Subcultures became more fragmented and tinier. Once one could find kindred souls with similar narrow interests on line, the need to change to fit in was much reduced.

What the author calls "fluidity" is the endgame of that - subcultures have no lasting power in a world of tweets and Instagram.

Were any of these a creative force? Outside of music, the main legacy of the hippie movement is that everyone wears jeans. The values didn't stick. Much of the 1960s counterculture was just self-indulgence dressed up with pop philosophy. That's why hippies transitioned so smoothly to yuppies. The legacy of punk is industrial interior design, for which the endgame turned out to be open plan offices with exposed brick walls and ceilings with visible pipes and conduit.

[1] http://meaningness.com/modes-chart

[TheOtherHobbes]

>Outside of music, the main legacy of the hippie movement is that everyone wears jeans.

Well - that and the environmental movement, including sustainable utilities. And some parts of feminism. And recycling. And organic food. And possibly Apple and even Google, if you don't think about it too hard.

>The legacy of punk is industrial interior design

I'm having a hard time getting from spitting in the mosh pit to Herman Miller cubicle dividers. Open plan offices have been around since at least Victorian times. The exposed piping aesthetic is more the fault of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster than Johnny Rotten.

>The more interesting question is "why did it stop"?

It didn't. What do you think HN and the current startup frenzy are?

Are VCs geeks, fans, MOPS or sociopaths?

[slapresta]

> Are VCs geeks, fans, MOPS or sociopaths?

You really need to ask?

[current_call]

Are VCs geeks, fans, MOPS or sociopaths?

Sociopaths.

[7952]

There is a tendency in recent times for the internet to satisfy basic needs directly, where once they had to be addressed indirectly. So people watch a stream of someone playing a game instead of actually playing the game themselves.

I wonder if the basic need for a counter-culture (whatever that is) can be satisfied directly without needing to wrap it up in music or fashion. You just need to read Reddit to have your dose of behaviour that is counter to societal norms. In fact it is a purer expression of an underlying need because it dispenses with most of the inconvenience of an actual "movement".

[walshemj]

There where subcultures in those periods Swing Kids in Germany and France the whole zoot suit subculture in the USA.

Also look at peaky blinders and the post ww1 brummagem boys subcultures.

[leoc]

It's a fun chart but I wouldn't take it very seriously. Roughly the second half of his "Successful Systems" era is actually probably the heyday of both "associational culture" and artistic sects in the European-controlled world: the age of Freemasonry, teetotalism, Fauvism and pigeon-racing.