What Happened to Youth Culture?

[Ahimsa]

by Eugene Rabkin

"This year amidst the usual barrage of “news” about collaborations, must-cop listicles, and the importance of Dad sneakers, a few articles in the press aimed at fashion and streetwear actually tried to address something worthwhile, namely, what’s happening to today’s youth, specifically in the cultural space, and even more specifically as it relates to style. One was from Chris Wallace in the Business of Fashion, lamenting our shallow age of image-is-everything, lambasting millenials for using politically empowering potential of social media to build their personal “brands” and fake lives instead, and taking aim at contemporary youth culture icons, rightfully portraying them as shills for big business whose first order of the day is not cultural production but selling of their image as tastemakers.

Even more relevant were two others, courtesy of Jian DeLeon at Highsnobiety and one by Jason Dyke at Hypebeast, questioning the cultural value of contemporary streetwear world after the disaster of ComplexCon, the consumer-facing sneaker fair, where selling and reselling was front and center. Chris Wallace is a Gen-Xer who has contributed to the Paris Review and is an editor at the Interview, and the Business of Fashion does try to promote quality Op-Ed content (disclaimer: I sometimes contribute to it), and so this article seemed par for the course. The Highsnobiety and Hypebeast articles were more surprising, considering that the majority of what they publish is stuff of the variety mentioned in the opening sentence here (disclaimer: I sometimes contribute to Highsnobiety).

In the piece titled “Where Does Street Culture Go After ComplexCon,” DeLeon decried the unadulterated rampant consumerism that permeated the fair. Gone were any pretensions that kids went there to find community and bond over things they found culturally worthwhile. Taking aim at Complex, where he used to work, and at Highsnobiety itself, DeLeon wrote, “…we are just as complicit as our peers in turning a genuine love for product into a marketing demographic all too eager to cop whatever next hot release we cover.” He went on, “We live in an era where everything that can be commodified probably has been.”

There is nothing new in what DeLeon was saying, except admirable self-awareness. Ditto the Hypebeast article, which also pointed out that they are part of the problem, though in the article the most relevant comment came not from the author but from a brand strategist named Paul Ruffles who wondered out loud as to why the streetwear world still deludes itself that buying sneakers is somehow done because it’s culturally important. “We’ve built up this self-perpetuating, aggressive and quite shallow ‘culture,’” he said, as if underscoring the fact that we live in a sad landscape where the former values of youth culture have been completely co-opted by corporations and dished back out to the masses in the service of profit maximization, and betrayed by the cultural icons and the cool kids themselves who now shill for big business."

Read the full article on SZ-MAG

[Faust]

Really would like to get a discussion going around this. Appreciate all contributions.

[Nomadic Planet]

UFFF I've been working on this for the past year and a half, and I have so much to say!!!.... hard to organize the ideas because it's such a complex subject matter, with so many dimensions.

First of all I wanna thank you for your articles, which are always very good food for thought.

Second of all, I wanna state that I don't share your views, although I understand them. I had a similar point of view until a year and a half more or less, when I started digging into the transformations our world is going through, the transformations of youth, social networks, the huge change of status that fashion has gone through, from a "niche" industry for insiders and taste makers, to a global massive mainstreamisation, hype, etc.

I understand, third of all, that you reaction is somehow inevitable given your generation / age (full disclosure: I'm 37), and your position, as an insider of the fashion industry, a guardian of the temple of good taste and true authenticity.

Now, getting into my reply, I am going to play a role of contradiction to your article, not because I share the values/ views / aesthetics that are being signaled ("streetwear/ current pop culture/ hype" etc). but because I think this position that you are in will not lead to any constructive view on the world that is emerging right in front of our eyes at the speed of high speed internet (forget about speed of light!), that you are just going to miss the point, because you are judging a new era that is unfolding with the parameters of an old era that is just fading away.

Please don't take it personally, I know you're intentions are not to be judgemental, but, how do I put this politely.... they are a bit.
For the sake of the discussion, I want to make the hypothesis that there is no cultural void, that not all is meaningless transactional capitalism, and we HAVE to give credit, for the sake of neutrality of the analysis, and in order to avoid any bias, that there is something going on there that we don't fully understand, don't fully perceive. We HAVE to give credit to the Yeezys, Offwhites, Vêtements, Complexcon, Hypebeasts, etc. to try to understand how come this is such a massive global phenomena.

This is not about youth culture (I agree with your conclusion in a way "let’s admit that the original values of youth culture are dead and the term “youth culture” is in dire need of redefinition") it's bout understanding the global reconfiguration of our societies via an acceleration of capitalism thanks to mobile internet and the anthropological changes it creates on how we build and display our individual identity. Youth is just the most vocal and visible part of society about this change.

the answer I found to explain the ZEITGEIST of our times, (thanks to Gilles Lipovetsky "l'eshtétisation du monde") is that we are entering a new era of capitalism where the core and margins are becoming fused into the same thing.

We have had a structuring opposition centre-margin of western societies throughout the XIX (the impressionists were denied access to the salons, and created they anti salons for ex.) and the XX century, an opposition that has revolved around "bourgeois - anti bourgeois" ; this is the cat and mouse game you are describing in your article. Capitalism progressively understood it was less of a threat to integrate rebellions than to fight against it, hence Che Guevara became a inoffensive symbol of cool, as well as hippies, punks, grunge, etc... As you well noted in your article, one of the last subcultures of the XX , hiphop, was not really into rebellion, it was more like "we the outcasts from the symbolical dominant culture (white, male, heterosexual), want access to the same shit!! so we are going to find a way to hack into the system. We want to get rich and fuck bitches too! same as the white male powerful people from Wallstreet).
On the other hand, something really important was happening in parallel: GENTRIFICATION.
the advent of the BOBO culture in the 2000's, which led to the HIPSTERS. Those people, which we probably are part of, you and me, are people with progressive values, seduced by the antibourgeois narrative and aesthetics, who progressively found ourselves in positions of power. We had to reconcile our progressists values with the fact that we could make money and we could enjoy it.
So the bobos and hipsters invented a new culture of consumption that praised as much as it could the fact it was not mainstream, it was artisanal, it was craft, etc. Hence the boom of craft beers, craft alcohols, speakeasy bars, and all the bobo-hipster values, organic food, yoga, veganism, etc etc etc.

The thing is, in this new era of capitalism, all those alternative values have become mainstream, thanks to the internet. (the big shift starts in 2007 with the arrival of the iPhone, and the globalisation of Facebook, then instragarm, etc). The new capitalism is a world where creativity and artistic expression as seen as a democratic passion, something that everybody has, something that everybody can legitimately aspire to. The figure of the artist, the eccentric poet of the XIX century (Baudelaire), the outcast of society that has abandoned social integration for the sake of art, this figure has disappeared. Art is for everyone, creativity is for everyone and is to be found everywhere. Our phones can be beautiful, my internet device at home is designed by Phillip Starck, and we have also gained the right to decorate our bodies. Tattoos are socially legitimate now, no one is scandalized if they see my tattoos at work anymore.
All the ideas of alternativism are now meaningless, because the anti-bourgeois posture has become meaningless. This echoes also the era of hyper individualism, where we all have the right to express our eccentricity and singularity without being rejected from society (bye bye the vertical society of Foucault surveiller et punir). In this world we are all alternative, it doesn't mean anything to be antiestablishment, anti-bourgeois,etc. Counter cultures are totally integrated into the system, that is a fact.

and we, as a generation, played a role in that. in the 90-2000s we were the new bourgeois of our time. I understand your point in terms of values and authenticity, but go tell a young regular middle class guy that doesn't have any certain perspectives on his future life today that "there was a level of authenticity and connection to the values of youth culture in the work of Vivienne Westwood, Ann Demeulemeester, Jun Takahashi, and Takahiro Miyashita, even though they were also at the helm of successful businesses" without him laughing at you. In that situation I find it hard to believe because all of those bands are luxury brands and cost a shit ton of money. You can't tell the youth from today these luxury niche brands were the embodiment of antibourgoisie. It will be a joke to them. They just have become the new codes of the bourgeoisie.

If you stay in that perspective of perception, it's just going to be your word against theirs, because all you are saying is "my authenticity was more authentic than yours, my values are more genuine and worthwhile than yours", and in that position you are outnumbered, and it's difficult not to appear as a snobbish elitist, no offense there!! Im in the same situation, I'm a white heterosexual male, that had the chance to study in a good school, get a decent job, cultivate myself and travel, and able to indulge myself into the pleasures of Rick, Boris, Julius, etc.

So then, how to understand todays values system and the new symbolical structure that is emerging?

first of all we have to acknowledge the failure of the liberal project from the 90-2000. Cultural left politics with right wing economic policies shaped the western world during the Clinton-Obama era, as well as in France, where Im from. This project can be -culturally speaking- summed up by the "United colors of Benetton" approach. In the 2000's, it's the position of all bourgeois kids listening to Manu Chao. We tried to depict a happy multicultural world where everyone could find it's place but we didn't pay enough attention to the reality. United colors of Benetton worked because it had all ethnicities and races dressed as white men. This ideal of universalism has died because we, as a society we're not up to it enough.

The world we are entering is a world with no utopias. The communists projects have failed historically, and we're all just left with the idea that Capitalism is the least worst of all systems. In this system, the margins, the poor, the little people, are today in a vindictive position towards the elite. Hence you got Trump in the US.
Cultural harmony has become a myth, and we live a violent era of cultural clash. it's not about happy fusions, as it was in the 90's-2000's (think of for example all the "world music" that was popular at the time, we all saw the Putumayo CD's sold at starbucks at least once in our life). Its about violent clashes, because the world is violent, there is domination. DIE ANTWOORD is a good example of cultural fusion as a violent clash creating something unique. Universalism is now denounced as a manipulation from the white elite against all other groups of society. You have today this debate in the US with Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter. Universalism has become a narrative that has been pushed further to the right (!). I know, crazy right?

[Nomadic Planet]

PART TWO OF MY ANSWER:

the world is fragmented into a multiplicity of micro experiences, micro tribes, a multiplicity of aesthetics, because there isn't a single culturally dominant pole strong enough to impose its symbolical order anymore.

Off white / Vêtements etc are the new anti bourgeoisie, and I would bet anything they are more than happy to generate the kind of reactions they have on people like you, the guardians of the temple of legitimate culture and good taste. It was the same with the hippies, we were the same with the grunge. my parents didn't get the grunge Metal rebellion I went through in the 90s even though they smoked pot and were hippies while young. there is a cycle repeating itself.

But there is also novelty. The thing that is different, is the world is now dual, is half reality half representation, half on-line, half off-line. authenticity as a value is dead, There is no authenticity anymore ( and I question if there ever was as its just a social construct that tries to "naturalize" something artificial) because everyone can be accused of not being authentic and anyone can legitimatly claim they are just expressing themselves (i.e. the metal tees with justin bieber, or Metallica playing with Lady gaga). Criticizing someone or a brand for having sold out has become meaningless, because in todays world, we all aspire to success and money, because that's how capitalism works. We didn't provide a society with enough stability for the next generations to have confidence in the future. Todays main value is not authenticity, it's HUSTLING. hustler culture is key to understand todays world. Being an entrepreneur, making money out of anything is a legitimate goal for everyone.

When you see complexcon or sneaker hype, sure you can cirtizice that as a system, but you can't really criticize each individual for being there and cause them of being shallow empty ignorant hype victims. Sure as a system there are questions to be asked (and we are all part of the consumerist system too we love to splurge into our dark luxury shit and buy tons of garnements we dont need or almost dont use), but I'm sure many of those individuals participating in that event have way more inner complexity and values than meets the eye.

For years counter culture has been a thing of rebellious rich white kids ; I really think we have to ask ourselves what is left of that counter culture, just a bunch of bourgeois white dudes at rock concerts. Rock is a music for white people.
There's a new wave of counter culture questioning a lot of interesting issues around gender, identity, etc., but we have to accept they are embedded in this new system of , HBA, Off-whites, Yeezys, Vetements, etc. interesting enough plenty of non white icons there. Kim Kardashian might be as shallow as you want here to be, she still is one hell of a businesswoman and a power figure that has to be understood before being criticized.

counterculture will never be the same as it was in the world we knew, in the XXth century. That time is gone, bye bye.
Those things felt more "authentic" because they took slow organic social processes to emerge. That world doesn't exist anymore. the margins of society are everywhere, on-line, and they work at a different speed.

all this is still too new and I think we are on a learning curve. I myself deal with my addiction to the internet and social networks as I see it unfolding in front of my eyes. Yes I think the world now moves too fast, but we need to understand it without judging it nor thinking it was better before, that our culture was more authentic that theirs, etc.

Just gonna leave these two links here:
- the mythical cards scene form American Psycho (stage 1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY

- a parody of the same scene, depicting the world we have entered now. (stage 2, the 2000's bobo-hipster)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpHU6TkqWjs

The off-whites, yeezes, supreme, etc are the stage 3 of cultural evolution.

Sorry for my verbal diarrhea, I hope it makes sense. Hard to structure and organize so many ideas.

[Nomadic Planet]

Also, please don't take it personally, I understand you are writing your opinion from a specific position, which is from the producers of culture side, you value talent, and originality, and are worried about the emergence of a new world where you don't see that anymore. I have to confess I partially share that view, in the sense I don't like the aesthetics of this new "streetwear-luxury" territory, and I mostly dress in black and layers, I hope for the rest of my life.

However, I try to stand from a sociological (I hope the most neutral possible) position, or at least I try to, where I don't care to judge talent and quality, but I care about understanding the structures of the emerging world without accepting the nihilism many observers end-up embracing.

I think there's a real challenge there, as internet is turning upside down the way and speed to which we relate to reality, and the world becomes , at least symbolically, more and more governed by a decentralized, atomized structure, vs a rigid vertical one (the bourgeois order); and also that we have created a world where there is little hope for the upcoming generations that just want to try as hard as possible to build their own way to success, success 8whatever that means) being the increasingly unique way to be protected against the uncertainties of the world. Money is a value in itself, we have all created this system, even when we where buying luxury for the sake of being anti-bourgeois.

[Faust]

Thank you so much for this, Nomadic Planet! There is a lot to unpack, and I agree with some of your points for sure. Let me do some thinking.

[Faust]

Now, getting into my reply, I am going to play a role of contradiction to your article, not because I share the values/ views / aesthetics that are being signaled ("streetwear/ current pop culture/ hype" etc). but because I think this position that you are in will not lead to any constructive view on the world that is emerging right in front of our eyes at the speed of high speed internet (forget about speed of light!), that you are just going to miss the point, because you are judging a new era that is unfolding with the parameters of an old era that is just fading away.

Agreed with this, and it is true that this seems like a new era. Or maybe "seems" is a key word, and there isn't much new here at all, except the way technology spreads information and preferences. Maybe the human problems - the ones I tackle are meaning and authenticity - remain the same.

Please don't take it personally, I know you're intentions are not to be judgemental, but, how do I put this politely.... they are a bit.
For the sake of the discussion, I want to make the hypothesis that there is no cultural void, that not all is meaningless transactional capitalism, and we HAVE to give credit, for the sake of neutrality of the analysis, and in order to avoid any bias, that there is something going on there that we don't fully understand, don't fully perceive. We HAVE to give credit to the Yeezys, Offwhites, Vêtements, Complexcon, Hypebeasts, etc. to try to understand how come this is such a massive global phenomena.

This is not about youth culture (I agree with your conclusion in a way "let’s admit that the original values of youth culture are dead and the term “youth culture” is in dire need of redefinition") it's bout understanding the global reconfiguration of our societies via an acceleration of capitalism thanks to mobile internet and the anthropological changes it creates on how we build and display our individual identity. Youth is just the most vocal and visible part of society about this change.

Agreed that these are a part of contemporary culture. Hence my conclusion. As to your last paragraph quoted here - I would not have written the article if the corporate sneakerheads would shut the fuck up about selling sneakers in the name of youth culture to infuse their transactional lives with meaning.

The answer I found to explain the ZEITGEIST of our times, (thanks to Gilles Lipovetsky "l'eshtétisation du monde") is that we are entering a new era of capitalism where the core and margins are becoming fused into the same thing.

We have had a structuring opposition centre-margin of western societies throughout the XIX (the impressionists were denied access to the salons, and created they anti salons for ex.) and the XX century, an opposition that has revolved around "bourgeois - anti bourgeois" ; this is the cat and mouse game you are describing in your article. Capitalism progressively understood it was less of a threat to integrate rebellions than to fight against it, hence Che Guevara became a inoffensive symbol of cool, as well as hippies, punks, grunge, etc... As you well noted in your article, one of the last subcultures of the XX , hiphop, was not really into rebellion, it was more like "we the outcasts from the symbolical dominant culture (white, male, heterosexual), want access to the same shit!! so we are going to find a way to hack into the system. We want to get rich and fuck bitches too! same as the white male powerful people from Wallstreet).

Yes, I agree for the most part here. I do think hip-hop's materialist angle is part of the rebellion (and there was political rebellion, too - see, most obviously, "Fuck the Police" by NWA), but also, yes, the knowledge that increasing once material standards and belonging to the middle class first is a matter of dignity, and then going to the extreme you describe.

[/quote]

On the other hand, something really important was happening in parallel: GENTRIFICATION.
the advent of the BOBO culture in the 2000's, which led to the HIPSTERS. Those people, which we probably are part of, you and me, are people with progressive values, seduced by the antibourgeois narrative and aesthetics, who progressively found ourselves in positions of power. We had to reconcile our progressists values with the fact that we could make money and we could enjoy it.
So the bobos and hipsters invented a new culture of consumption that praised as much as it could the fact it was not mainstream, it was artisanal, it was craft, etc. Hence the boom of craft beers, craft alcohols, speakeasy bars, and all the bobo-hipster values, organic food, yoga, veganism, etc etc etc.

Sadly, yes. And the things is, I completely understand that there can be a case built (and has been built - see Thomas Frank: The Conquest of Cool) that the whole youth culture I describe was bullshit anyway, just another form of consumerism. However, I know what I know for myself and for many others - we are not building cultural edifices in order to excuse our consumerism - we feel certain emotions, have certain stances (human, societal, political), have certain values that connect the soul to the aesthetics - and these inevitably spill out into purchasing decisions.

I often think that the millenial hipsters (and I agree that ostensibly many of us, including myself can be described as having hipster characteristics - I do enjoy a nice cup of coffee) - are may be wiser in a way that their stance is not rebellion but simply opting out and building of an alternative society alongside the mainstream one - which plays by the same rules of capitalism, and yet differs in aesthetic terms and certain values (small v. big, ethical v. unethical, local v. global, etc.). Wiser in a way that they probably know they don't need to fight a losing battle like the kids in the 60s did.

The thing is, in this new era of capitalism, all those alternative values have become mainstream, thanks to the internet. (the big shift starts in 2007 with the arrival of the iPhone, and the globalisation of Facebook, then instragarm, etc). The new capitalism is a world where creativity and artistic expression as seen as a democratic passion, something that everybody has, something that everybody can legitimately aspire to. The figure of the artist, the eccentric poet of the XIX century (Baudelaire), the outcast of society that has abandoned social integration for the sake of art, this figure has disappeared. Art is for everyone, creativity is for everyone and is to be found everywhere. Our phones can be beautiful, my internet device at home is designed by Phillip Starck, and we have also gained the right to decorate our bodies. Tattoos are socially legitimate now, no one is scandalized if they see my tattoos at work anymore.

All the ideas of alternativism are now meaningless, because the anti-bourgeois posture has become meaningless. This echoes also the era of hyper individualism, where we all have the right to express our eccentricity and singularity without being rejected from society (bye bye the vertical society of Foucault surveiller et punir). In this world we are all alternative, it doesn't mean anything to be antiestablishment, anti-bourgeois,etc. Counter cultures are totally integrated into the system, that is a fact.

Yes and no. I think you can have this conversation at a cafe in Williamsburg, but not in evangelical Indiana or the Mormon Utah. The societal pressure to conform there remains immense. Therefore, these concerns are still very real in many parts of the world, even the developed world.

[Faust]

And we, as a generation, played a role in that. in the 90-2000s we were the new bourgeois of our time. I understand your point in terms of values and authenticity, but go tell a young regular middle class guy that doesn't have any certain perspectives on his future life today that "there was a level of authenticity and connection to the values of youth culture in the work of Vivienne Westwood, Ann Demeulemeester, Jun Takahashi, and Takahiro Miyashita, even though they were also at the helm of successful businesses" without him laughing at you. In that situation I find it hard to believe because all of those bands are luxury brands and cost a shit ton of money. You can't tell the youth from today these luxury niche brands were the embodiment of antibourgoisie. It will be a joke to them. They just have become the new codes of the bourgeoisie.

Yes, I am very cognizant of this, and it can be a hard position to defend. And yet, having had lengthy conversations with three out of those four designers, it's impossible for me to say that they are inauthentic when they imbue their clothes with cultural references. Also, they are real designers, which is another point. It's an intricate discussion, that also touches on many other things, but my point was not the price point, but intention. I was not saying that those designers are anti-bourgeois. I don't want to compare Ann Demeulemeester to Carhatt, but Ann Demeulemeester to Off-White. Maybe that would paint a more clear picture.

So then, how to understand todays values system and the new symbolical structure that is emerging?

First of all we have to acknowledge the failure of the liberal project from the 90-2000. Cultural left politics with right wing economic policies shaped the western world during the Clinton-Obama era, as well as in France, where Im from. This project can be -culturally speaking- summed up by the "United colors of Benetton" approach. In the 2000's, it's the position of all bourgeois kids listening to Manu Chao. We tried to depict a happy multicultural world where everyone could find it's place but we didn't pay enough attention to the reality. United colors of Benetton worked because it had all ethnicities and races dressed as white men. This ideal of universalism has died because we, as a society we're not up to it enough.

Acknowledged and agreed :(

The world we are entering is a world with no utopias. The communists projects have failed historically, and we're all just left with the idea that Capitalism is the least worst of all systems. In this system, the margins, the poor, the little people, are today in a vindictive position towards the elite. Hence you got Trump in the US.

Cultural harmony has become a myth, and we live a violent era of cultural clash. it's not about happy fusions, as it was in the 90's-2000's (think of for example all the "world music" that was popular at the time, we all saw the Putumayo CD's sold at starbucks at least once in our life). Its about violent clashes, because the world is violent, there is domination. DIE ANTWOORD is a good example of cultural fusion as a violent clash creating something unique. Universalism is now denounced as a manipulation from the white elite against all other groups of society. You have today this debate in the US with Black Lives Matter vs All Lives Matter. Universalism has become a narrative that has been pushed further to the right (!). I know, crazy right?

Maybe we do, or maybe we don't. There are still utopias left, of religious kind. Also, with your theory of clashes how then to explain that overwhelming cultural homogeneity? The mass stars today are REALLY mass, on unprecedented levels due to the spread of information on the Internet.

LOL at the Putumayo CDs - YES! And, yes, identity politics have created serious clashes because every "ism" is an automatic division into us v. them. Gay pride, feminism are undoubtedly good things but inherently divisive.

[Faust]

PART TWO OF MY ANSWER:

the world is fragmented into a multiplicity of micro experiences, micro tribes, a multiplicity of aesthetics, because there isn't a single culturally dominant pole strong enough to impose its symbolical order anymore.

Off white / Vêtements etc are the new anti bourgeoisie, and I would bet anything they are more than happy to generate the kind of reactions they have on people like you, the guardians of the temple of legitimate culture and good taste. It was the same with the hippies, we were the same with the grunge. my parents didn't get the grunge Metal rebellion I went through in the 90s even though they smoked pot and were hippies while young. there is a cycle repeating itself.

Funny, Rick Owens told me the same thing! Anyway, I would say maybe yes, if I didn't know that the Gvasalia brothers are in it purely for the money (can't speak for Off-White on a personal level, can only observe). But I really don't see how this is the case, except aesthetically it is actually pretty daring to put ugly shit on the Paris catwalk. And yet, look at their audience - it is pure hype kids who work at Dover Street Market, Chinese rich kids, and Insta-fashionistas. Pure bourgeoise or bourgeoise-in-training if you ask me.

But there is also novelty. The thing that is different, is the world is now dual, is half reality half representation, half on-line, half off-line. authenticity as a value is dead, There is no authenticity anymore ( and I question if there ever was as its just a social construct that tries to "naturalize" something artificial) because everyone can be accused of not being authentic and anyone can legitimatly claim they are just expressing themselves (i.e. the metal tees with justin bieber, or Metallica playing with Lady gaga).

If authenticity is dead for the new youth, then I feel sad for it. Where do they deride value and meaning then? What makes them feel human? Irony? Social media popularity? It is all so daft and horrible. No wonder anxiety and ADHD are now at record high. Perhaps the kids don't even know where to look for meaning. The soul is there. It's always been there. Getting to the soul was always a human task, aided by culture.

Criticizing someone or a brand for having sold out has become meaningless, because in todays world, we all aspire to success and money, because that's how capitalism works. We didn't provide a society with enough stability for the next generations to have confidence in the future. Todays main value is not authenticity, it's HUSTLING. hustler culture is key to understand todays world. Being an entrepreneur, making money out of anything is a legitimate goal for everyone.

Yes, and I touch upon that in the article. And that is the part that seems unfair to criticize. I mean, if I'm a kid and I can make music and make money or parlay my fits into money, or join a creative agency, it sure fucking beats four soul-sucking years of business school and being an accountant.

For years counter culture has been a thing of rebellious rich white kids ; I really think we have to ask ourselves what is left of that counter culture, just a bunch of bourgeois white dudes at rock concerts. Rock is a music for white people.
There's a new wave of counter culture questioning a lot of interesting issues around gender, identity, etc., but we have to accept they are embedded in this new system of , HBA, Off-whites, Yeezys, Vetements, etc. interesting enough plenty of non white icons there. Kim Kardashian might be as shallow as you want here to be, she still is one hell of a businesswoman and a power figure that has to be understood before being criticized.

Certainly not. I was very poor when I came to the US and remained so for years. What drove me to "counterculture" was my witnessing daily of the injustices and hypocrisy of the American society and the imperialism of its politics. Those things were and ARE very real. Now, you can say that the ideological underpinnings were developed by the white, well-off intelligentsia - but that's historically been like that. The poor are concerned with feeding their children. They know things are wrong but don't have the energy to develop strategy. But they do have the energy to follow.

And, yes, I wanted to wear a perfecto to wear my stance on my sleeve. Believe it or not for me it WAS daring, because I had to step over my own insecurities first, even if society as you say was seemingly accepting. And there were a ton of kids like me. Whiteness is a bit more complicated in a country of immigrants. I am white, but believe me I've had my share of being dicked around by cops. They knew I was not American, they saw the difference in my features, they heard the accent. Trust me, growing up where I grew up was no picnic. It was the same lower middle-class hatred of immigrants we continue to see now.

counterculture will never be the same as it was in the world we knew, in the XXth century. That time is gone, bye bye.
Those things felt more "authentic" because they took slow organic social processes to emerge. That world doesn't exist anymore. the margins of society are everywhere, on-line, and they work at a different speed.

all this is still too new and I think we are on a learning curve. I myself deal with my addiction to the internet and social networks as I see it unfolding in front of my eyes. Yes I think the world now moves too fast, but we need to understand it without judging it nor thinking it was better before, that our culture was more authentic that theirs, etc.

I cannot disagree with this. Time will show.

Again, thank you for your contribution!

[stagename]

I'm a bit late to the party, I thought I'd share a few thoughts, I've been having this discussion with a few friends over the holidays (thanks Faust, you've sparked great debates), and played on both sides. I thought I'd address a few things first before settling in. Hip Hop was a counter-cultural movement that addressed systemic flaws, as Faust mentioned. If it was co-opted in the early 90s, that was a good 15 years after its inception. Second, hipster-ism was too a movement of its time that was mythologized and resold to the masses. From my reading of it, the return of the craft culture is a reaction to the lack of economic power of a generation who culturally complexified “cheap” middle-class cultural products (beer, meat, barbering, tattoos, coffee) in order to be able to practice distinction without having to spend much. This again was co-opted in the mid-to-late 2000s and transformed into the consumer movement we know now.

I feel an issue with both your positions, quite respectfully, is where you are looking for authenticity. I’m afraid looking for authentic counter-cultures within the dominant space of society is bound to fail, i.e. you can’t expect counter-cultural youth movements to emerge from the Instagrammable middle-class.
Historically (and I won't teach you anything here), counter-cultures have emerged from working classes, whether you’re talking about mods, rappers/taggers/breakers/djs, or hipsters (albeit the latter quite more educated than its counter-parts). Most counter-cultural movements have emphasized the struggles of its participants and built on oppositional cultural signs to establish their identities and aesthetics. The most mediatized counter-culture that comes to mind in this regard would be juggalos. I’d place the death of counter-cultural movements in North America, if there is one, on the one hand on the erosion of the middle-class, and on the other hand of the liquification of the consumption of middle and upper-middle classes which has turn them towards ephemerality and experiences which might be less conducive to ‘rebellion’ (albeit burning man had a short but good run). This has translated to “Instagram is life” because, well, how can you symbolically monetize an experience otherwise?

I’d concur with NP that the movement of cultural meanings has accelerated, but that only means that co-optation happens faster, which might translate in what Faust has rightly observed, that most of what reaches the airwaves has a commercial ring to it. But echoing T. Frank, I wouldn’t exactly qualify Nirvana, Jay-Z, Rage, or Joplin as counter-cultural either. And we went through fragmentation in the 1960s, that didn’t signal the death of counter-cultures. I could argue that as mediation devices, hashtags have united people more than they were, at least globally, and albeit around consumption symbols.

I’m not close enough to the ground and pretty displaced in terms of class to know what has emerged in terms of counter-cultural movements since the late 2000s. Both of you might have a point in that the digitalization of social life combined with the legitimization of the commerce logic has led to an incapacity of counter-cultures to assemble and reach a critical mass. On the other hand, we have seen movements from Arab spring to #metoo that showed how social media can (at least potentially) contribute to challenging the status quo. Maybe in the future attempts at revolutions will be more decentralized, less structured around identity and class, and more around institutional frustrations and injustices, and social causes. And lastly, to paraphrase one of my favorite authors, an issue with highly educated and socially privileged people is that they are so embedded in their socialization that they are unable to muster the reflexivity required to see that some practices and phenomena that seemed to have been naturalized in their social circles hasn’t been for lower social classes. It’s a trap we all fall in, and given that it takes a while for counter-cultures to reach the societal surface, something might be bubbling beneath the surface.

[Jeroenr]

Couldn't it also be a young and old thing?
The older people, not understanding the youth anymore? My parents didnt understand me. And im at an age now where i dont understand the youth, to a certain level, not anymore.
Im pretty sure they see themselves as a counter culture, as we see them as not.

[Faust]

Couldn't it also be a young and old thing?
The older people, not understanding the youth anymore? My parents didnt understand me. And im at an age now where i dont understand the youth, to a certain level, not anymore.
Im pretty sure they see themselves as a counter culture, as we see them as not.

It could be a part of it, but if it indeed is, only a part. I think I addressed that here

https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/op-ed-the-rise-of-the-fashion-hipster

[Faust]

Thank you, stagename. Re: authenticity (both to reply to you and NP) - and maybe again I am simply applying my values to others, but I feel that authenticity is one of those central/essential human values that just won't go anywhere. And we can discount it all we want and try to push it into a corner because authenticity is not commercially viable, but I think like the soul will always yearn for it. Maybe I am being too idealistic, but I don't think so.

[mikemikemike]

For myself, speed of the change in appetite or the metabolism that has surfaced in the last decade... is why i question (i believe) the same authenticity that faust mentions. consumption patterns but more so the willingness to discard what falls out of favor as the newest/hip? direction. it is hard for me to believe that i am not understanding the youth but more so that perhaps there is little there to see. the speed at which it moves perhaps, it is too great for them to take something away or set any roots in the same ways previous generations had. making it seem more like a checklist to mark or a stamp to collect. im not sure if that makes sense as it is difficult for me (my apologies) to extrapolate exactly what my stance is on the matter.