Item — HN Reader

Subcultures are dead. I plan to write a full obituary soon. Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000, when they stopped working. Why?

Dead? I think not. What about the whole NRX Silicon Valley techno-libertarian sub-culture, which came into preeminence in 2008? How about selfie culture? Or STEM culture, or how STEM seems to have become the new 'cool' or celebrity status, especially with the show The Big Bang Theory being so popular? There will always be fads, sub-cultures, movements.

Also add: the Red Pill movement , PUA, MGTOW, manosphere, men's rights as new movements/subcultures

5 comments

STEM (by which I'm guessing you simply mean computers) is suffering the exact entry by MOPs and sociopaths that the article describes. In addition to the hardcore geeks we used to have, we now have a lot of lightweight techies who aren't deeply interested, and a lot of non-techies calling themselves techies because it seems cool (e.g., "growth hackers").

We used to have Paul Graham and Alexis Ohanian, now we have Sam Altman and Ellen Pao - pretty definitively sociopaths by the definition of the article.

NRX (which explicitly rejects libertarianism, BTW) is a good example of putting up barriers to entry. My political views are significantly influenced by them (their critiques of democracy are spot on), but I'd be pretty explicitly denounced if I were to sufficiently publicly call myself one.

NRX Silicon Valley techno-libertarian sub-culture

Neoreactionaries are anti-libertarian by definition.

selfie culture

Not a subculture any more than the hula hoop was a subculture.

how STEM seems to have become the new 'cool' or celebrity status, especially with the show The Big Bang Theory being so popular

Not really STEM in particular, but rather various media (novels, comic books, films, TV shows, etc.) related to science fiction, fantasy and stereotypically "geeky" things.

Many of those fads or movements are not sub cultures because they are part of the larger culture. But more so, many subcultures are dead because they became part of the larger culture. The other examples - "NRX Silicon Valley techno-libertarian sub-culture" probably is a subculture. It certainly sounds like they have founding principles and differentiates itself from wider society. The same would go for Red Pill etc examples, as they would be more along the line of anti mainstream political movements. I'm not sure they have coolness though!

From wikipedia: "a subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the larger culture to which it belongs, though often maintaining some of its founding principles."

Those who do selfies are not identifying themselves as part of their own group, and separate from the larger culture. Even the early adopters of the selfie never thought of themselves as a subculture, just cool within the larger one. STEM and celebrity worship also could be seen as part of the larger mainstream. Just because something is fashionable or cool does not make it a sub culture.

> the Red Pill movement , PUA, MGTOW, manosphere, men's rights as new movements/subcultures

I would have a hard time qualifying re-brandings of misogyny as subcultures. Misogyny is traditional, normative and reactionary; subcultures are non-normative by definition.

I would have a hard time qualifying re-brandings of misogyny as subcultures.

They're subcultures. Just because they're "normative and reactionary" doesn't make them less so. Sadly, they're cases of opposition to mainstream misogyny with extreme misogyny. (Not to say that all of MRA is misogyny. Gender injustice is such a complex topic that it's inaccurate to believe that it would fall entirely on one "side", or even that there are sides. That said, much that's under the MRA tent is pretty horrifying.)

The high school and college casual sex scene (and, perhaps, the young-professional one) is one where, as an emergent property, bad men ("chads") who objectify women get most of the sexual yield. This is an expression of the mainstream, traditional misogyny that lives in our society. Misogynist patterns (man as conqueror, woman as defeated "slut") have been absorbed by men and women both. In long-term romantic relationships, most of the misogyny has disappeared, but it's still quite prevalent on "the sexual marketplace".

What PUAs and "Red Pill" neo-misogynists miss is that they're extrapolating behaviors observed in small subcultures to all women, which is unfair and wrong (both in the sense of being morally wrong, and in the sense of being incorrect). Take the PUA playbook, which is build on running exploits that work against damaged women. Men who pick that stuff up, learn that it actually works at its intended goal of high-frequency sexuality, and start deploying it on a regular basis... are going to conclude (falsely) that most women are damaged, sexually confused, and attracted to superficially charming but toxic "bad boy" types. Then when they get bored of the high-frequency sexuality (most long-term PUAs are clinical sex addicts) and try to have long-term relationships, they're going to fail at it (because PUA skills don't work on any woman you'd want to have a long-term relationship with) and blame that on women too.

To make it more bizarre, the neo-misogynists blame the bad female behaviors resulting from traditional/mainstream misogyny on "feminism". To them, mainstream misogyny's superficial coddling and infantilization of women (and the female misbehavior-- flakiness, bad taste in men, disloyalty-- that results from it) is somehow lumped in with this "feminism" thing that they don't really understand but reflexively hate.

Why do you believe that sending signals of masculinity, social status and high value (the core elements of PUA) don't work in long term relationships? And why do you believe they only work on "damaged" women?

I think your nerd-shaming is unkind and you should check your privilege. I was born with privilege - genes that would make me super tall, give me a symmetric face, intelligence and a "devil may care" attitude. As long as I don't do stupid things (get fat, act dependent), I'll have more women than I know what to do with. Not everyone has those gifts, and it's really not cool to shame people simply for attempting to gain the privileges others were born with.

Similarly, to compare to a more mainstream example, I don't shame a black man who browses /r/malefashionadvice, dresses nicer than me and tries to mask his lower middle class accent - he's not trying to be a douche, he just needs to work harder to gain the same level of "respectability" that I get simply for being a white guy.

Because they're false signals. These are low status males faking high status, and you just can't fake your way through a long term relationship.

Status is, almost by definition, the epitome of something where "fake it til you make it" works. Once you are regarded by others as having high status, you then have high status.

If a man is spitting game, looks good, is banging an attractive woman and confident that if she moves on he can move on to the next one, it's pretty tough to describe him as anything other than high status.

The learnability of a signal doesn't make it false. A lot of people just find it threatening that becoming attractive to them is simply a learnable technique, rather than a signal of what a special individual they are.

Teachings about "game" can be very effective at taking someone who is underachieving with the ladies based on their natural status level, and turning them into a slight overachiever. Much of "game" is simply counter-programming to prevailing myths. I got a lot of my romantic advice growing up from female friends. It turns out the advice was really, really bad advice, and it ended up sabotaging my efforts. Most advice from females is based on how they wish men they are already attracted to would act. It is not advice about how to build attraction.

But, there are also a number of schlubby, boring, low-status guys who read PUA material, play the "cocky comedy" and numbers game at a bar, and who end up bitter and rejected. They may even get a reputation as being that "creepy pick-up artist type." You can only fake being high-status so much.

The better "game" books will tell you how to raise your status. Models by Mark Manson does this. They will talk about lifting weights, how to dress well, building a social group where you get invited to house parties, finding a status hierarchy where you can be a winner, cultivating interests that allow you to be a good conversationalist, etc, etc.

Status is, almost by definition, the epitome of something where "fake it til you make it" works. Once you are regarded by others as having high status, you then have high status.

Yes and no. Any status avenue that is too easy, gets overpopulated and becomes low status. It is not like it is easy to be regarded as having high status by other people. You have to find some edge and work at it, or else get very lucky. It's hard for me to think of someone who wasn't naturally good looking or athletic, who got their high-status through faking it rather than by working at it.

You make a really nice argument here. I would just like to clarify why I don't consider misogynist movements subcultures: it is, essentially, for the same reason I wouldn't consider pop music or the Java community as "subcultures".

If, using the article's terms, the sociopaths have already exploited its potential for financial benefit to its maximum extent, and if this expression of culture is the dominant, normative expression of culture for its cultural domain, then it is not a subculture, even when you put a new, fancy name on top.

Why was your website hosting account suspended, Paul?