Counterculture requires gatekeeping, because most people can't take it, ESPECIALLY anyone who uses Instragram
The best times I've had were having parties where we would work on cool exhibits with barely contained pyrotechnics, Tesla coils that would kill you if you touched it, and an expectation that YOU DO NOT PUT IT ON THE INTERNET and if you get hurt, YOU DID NOT GET HURT HERE.
Everyone wants a nice and curated experience of "counterculture" until they get into a scenario where they are the only person not cool with losing a finger or two from doing something fucking awesome
I don't go to cool parties like you do because I do not want to lose digits, but you hit the nail on the head; that which is transgressive gets bundled up safely and sold. It would not surprise me if that lead to the equivalent of tourists who do not understand why they are being scolded for approaching meese in a state park.
Besides literal physical danger another aspect I’ve been thinking about is the counterculture of activities that simply aren’t optimized for the production of media native to the internet.
Meditation or maybe partner dancing for example. There’s definitely plenty of internet content on both, but it feels to me like there’s certain things I can do that don’t as easily translate to an instagram story, and the reason I do them is because I benefit with some internally directed experience. A sort of connection with myself or another person. This feels like the exact opposite of doing something for the purpose of the resulting content and/or social approval.
To some, "move fast, break things" is counter-cultural, even if the term comes from an erstwhile hoodie-clad CEO that rapidly mutated into the biggest suit in corporate history.
"Counterculture requires gatekeeping, because most people can't take it, ESPECIALLY anyone who uses Instragram"
I think the word to describe counter culture is "exclusionary," and I suspect if a large crowd of "Instagram" people showed up at a "counterculture" gathering the counterculture-ists would be equally unable to "take it."
Join a local art collective or makerspace/hackerspace. Be open to not crying on the internet because you got hurt or someone said mean things, that comes with the package.
Eventually you may start connecting with people who know things
Re-read the GP's statement. The parties are not at makerspaces. You just would expect to meet people at makerspaces who know where the local "weird parties" are, because they're the people making the shoddy contraptions for these parties.
If you are risking fingers, cutting off body parts or taking dumb risks just stop. It's not worth it. It's not cool or interesting. These are the things you regret later.
You did not get hurt here works until someone does get hurt and the hammer comes down on you.
I've hurt myself badly many times and have never regretted it, because it was fun and incredibly intellectually satisfying. I know no-one at these places that regret it, everyone accepts that that they are all working to a common goal of being awesome
No one at the events can admit to regretting it because they will be kicked out of the social group. The need for acceptance is greater than intellectual curiosity otherwise these riskful action would happen privately. That only happens for the few mental ill leaders. The rest are looking for excitement, social acceptance (from ingroup or stories later spread to new groups).
I think you're forgetting about the fact that people grow old and stop doing this, and therefore no longer have any social pressure on them to not speak ill of the idea? These parties have (presumably) been going on for a long time.
If people wanted to speak out against them, then there'd be 50-year-olds writing angry screeds to "warn the youth of today" about "the mistakes they made in their own youth, and deeply regretted, but couldn't speak out at the time." But we don't see that.
You may be surprised to learn some people survive being "dead" for a short while. I know at least two and neither regretted it, it was just a cool story.
This is an attitude today which is almost universal in Anglo countries, yet those very same countries would never have developed as much as they have had it been present in the past. Safetyism is killing Western Civilisation.
I think you're missing the point of the comment. Saying "don't do these things" isn't helpful because people are going to do them regardless. OP is saying it should not be on the mainstream internet, ie, the open "gatekeeping required" statement.
That post does make it sounds very cool to do all these things though, so I'd say it's good to have a balancing post that says that risking body parts for a thrill is uncool.
There is a vast array of body-part-risking hobbies with a spectrum of associated risk.
While I’m not one to encourage obvious stupidity, bodily risk is at the center of so many things that humans value, that I think there’s a framing problem by saying this is just uncool.
More interesting is to explore why people are drawn to these things to begin with, and to examine why we dismiss some categories of risk as unnecessary or stupid while other socially acceptable risks are part of our daily lives.
When I was a kid, I was drawn to model rocketry. I’m surprised my fingers are all still intact, but some close calls quickly reoriented my precautionary measures (I started being a lot more careful).
The book “Flow” explores why some people do the things they do, and it seems that engaging in risky endeavors like rock climbing can be rewarding because of the feeling of flow and control one experiences.
“Try crazy stuff but be as safe as you can be, and avoid impacting others” seems better than “uncool”, IMO.
I would tend to agree. It's borderline offensive to me that some snap back with "how stupid" because their threshold for acceptable risk is different and pushing up against it doesn't thrill them.
But I nevertheless have hangups with the original scenario as described. It seems constructed to dial up social pressure and exploit it to provoke careless behavior and avoid accountability. Countercultural in a sense (arguably straddling antisocial) but that's not the same as good, and it's nothing like those sports that usually have a culture (hmm) of planning, safety, and consent.
Well, maybe not motorcycling and skateboarding so much as the others, but you get the gist.
And yet, there's still something appealing about the idea... can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps I've already blown it off.
Like some dude said, that's just, like, my opinion. I'm not forcing it on anyone, but I do want a fair chance of trying to convince others of it.
I understand that mastery and control can come from dangerous activities, but I can still voice my disapproval of these activities, since you can get the same feeling through safer ways.
Interesting position which I dont personally think is true. I dont think it can be proven either way, but my counterpoint is below
1) Variability: Different people have different attraction/affinity and passions for activities or lifestyles.
2) Non-fungability: Not all feelings/experiences have equivalent replacements and not all personalities can be modified find equivalent satisfaction in something else.
3) Risk: Given that not all feelings are replacable with similar life satisfaction, individuals can and should balance risk against the life they want. Some feelings and values are worth dying for. (e.g if base jumping makes you so happy you would rather risk dying than live without it, DO IT). This should be celebrated, not condemmed.
There are worse fates than death, and I think a safe and unfulfilled life is one of them.
Of course everyone's opinion and "general advice" on this depends on if they think the current cultural norm is erroring on the side safetyism or risk-taking behavior. Based on my experience, I am far more concerned about my friends, family, and children stifiling their self actualization by taking too few risk opposed to too many.
People's advice will also obviously depend on where they their personal attractions are. For me, many of the things that make me satisfied with my life involved some risky behavior. Someone who's life satisfaction is derived from knitting might feel otherwise, but thats not me.
I’m not arguing against caution, and I tend to be a cautious person in my 30s, but this can be taken too far in both directions.
My point was more that framing this as a thing to judge (implicit in uncool) isn’t ideal and probably less likely to change minds than an exploration of the reasons people enjoy things, with clear examination of the risk/reward, which isn’t going to be an absolute number to apply equally to all personalities and life situations.
Many rock climbers are tortured people and will tell you that doing what they do is the reason they’re alive. Having had brushes with dark frames of mind personally, I can understand the willingness to embrace whatever it is that will provide consistent/reliable relief.
The binary position (disapproval) misses the broader context. And perhaps there is a less risky alternative to be found, but it seems more likely to be found if explored from that broader perspective.
Overall, if I myself were to give a single counterargument, I'd actually agree with you.
My initial message through was that multiple counterarguments by multiple people need to be made in order to really balance out the perceived coolness of those that risk harm in extreme activities, and I was arguing to not simply shut down the poster that said:
>If you are risking fingers, cutting off body parts or taking dumb risks just stop. It's not worth it. It's not cool or interesting. These are the things you regret later.
To me, it's pretty obvious "cool" can only be defined descriptively, not prescriptively — i.e. "cool" is whatever makes idiot teenagers intuitively, instinctually impressed with you. By definition, you can't tell idiot teenagers what to think — in that, once you successfully do that, they're not idiot teenagers any more, and so are no longer the arbiters of "what's cool."
I don't believe that everyone does these things to be cool. You can't really say what drives people to do what they do, there are endless reasons. Trying to make something "uncool" isn't going to cut it.
The best times I've had were having parties where we would work on cool exhibits with barely contained pyrotechnics, Tesla coils that would kill you if you touched it, and an expectation that YOU DO NOT PUT IT ON THE INTERNET and if you get hurt, YOU DID NOT GET HURT HERE.
Everyone wants a nice and curated experience of "counterculture" until they get into a scenario where they are the only person not cool with losing a finger or two from doing something fucking awesome