> From the late ‘70s, with New Wave music, until now, all counterculture has been stuck in ironic mode. Even the seemingly earnest hashtag activists had mugs that said “I Drink White Tears.”
As I've said elsewhere on Substack, this was the principal driver of subcultural gatekeeping in the '80s and '90s. The subcultures that most practiced gatekeeping were also the ones most dedicated to sincerity, and viewed people who did not take the art and its surrounding scene seriously and earnestly as an existential threat, to be kept out at all costs. One could not ironically be an underground metalhead or goth or hip-hop nerd; you either committed to your subculture and sacrificed some of your social capital in the ironic world of mainstream culture as a token of your commitment, or you were deemed an entryist seeking to loot the subculture for the benefit of the mainstream, and rejected. Even if those people potentially had something important to contribute, too bad; the stakes were too high to let unreliable people come in and potentially destroy the subculture from within. I think the post-Gamergate collapse of subcultural art proved the gatekeepers right.
cybernarcotic haze ... Numb people feel vibes, not emotions
"All bets are off!"
> From the late ‘70s, with New Wave music, until now, all counterculture has been stuck in ironic mode. Even the seemingly earnest hashtag activists had mugs that said “I Drink White Tears.”
As I've said elsewhere on Substack, this was the principal driver of subcultural gatekeeping in the '80s and '90s. The subcultures that most practiced gatekeeping were also the ones most dedicated to sincerity, and viewed people who did not take the art and its surrounding scene seriously and earnestly as an existential threat, to be kept out at all costs. One could not ironically be an underground metalhead or goth or hip-hop nerd; you either committed to your subculture and sacrificed some of your social capital in the ironic world of mainstream culture as a token of your commitment, or you were deemed an entryist seeking to loot the subculture for the benefit of the mainstream, and rejected. Even if those people potentially had something important to contribute, too bad; the stakes were too high to let unreliable people come in and potentially destroy the subculture from within. I think the post-Gamergate collapse of subcultural art proved the gatekeepers right.
Some more evidence on the music side: Cameron Winter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnGjtGhpOk
I like him. I hope he gets even more heat.