The Honest Broker, Substack for Ted Gioia
I’ve occasionally mentioned, in interviews and other settings, that we are living in a society without a counterculture. People ask me what I mean by this.
That’s a a reasonable question, but the new normal defies simple explanation. At some point, I hope to write in-depth on this subject. But today I will simply offer a quick definition, and then share 14 tweets.
These capture the flavor of what I’m trying to express better than any long-winded analysis. More
In other words-Woke turns everything to sh*t. Youngsters (teens 20’s) are supposed to drive the counter culture but they are brainwashed into adopting the counter culture of the Boomers.
Boomers might be “the Olds”-but where did climate change and hating America and all of that take hold? 60’s and 70’s.
Anyway. Sameness is the ideal now. The Borg hive mind.
The counter culture is not dead. Because of technology, I believe it exists on a different plane than it used to. Furthermore, I believe it now consists of an amalgamation of “normalcies and abnormalcies”. It’s there, but for sake of preservation, it is no longer overtly in your face.
Perhaps to some degree – but what this skips is that we get our news from podcasts and Substack and Twitter, perhaps in addition to the big news companies, which are only alive because they are kept afloat by their billionaire owners. And self-publishing means even more eclectic options for everything from reading to music.
Of course it’s completely true about the movies. Although some of the remakes this year are supposed to actually be good (I only go to the theater when my sister visits – so I saw Top Gun), all of the big ones are remakes. I remember sitting through previews at the Nuart (referenced in item 1) many years ago and thinking that even if these indie movies were bad, at least they were original. Plus Rocky Horror every Saturday at midnight!
Long live the revolution.
And this begs the question: Do we even have a culture to which one can be counter?
On top of political correct cowardice, the bands from the 70’s – 90’s have sold their catalogs. Now they’re showing up in ads. Even Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Dave Biatti talks about the music industry on his youtube channel. He’s been talking about how there are only about 3 music producers. They don’t want to spend the money bringing up new artists. So they use a formula and find someone to fit the uniform. Everyone is autotuned in popular music now so talent doesn’t matter.
The lack of imagination is forced and sad and fits right into a new world order type of world. Dear leaders approve.
*Rick Biatto
Does anyone who is not a boomer even know who Mr. Natural is?