Industrial—I Mean, Internet Society and its Future: Contrarianism, Countercultures, and Gen Z

It's really just some convoluted ramblings with my music taste shoehorned in, and some personal anecdotes. And, uh, artists?

Knowledge is akin to a spider web that continually relates itself to itself; the posts/notes of the people featured here was immensely helpful in spurring me to think more on this set of topics (but I liked the music before using Substack!). Thank you to

Apollo's Lyre

,

The Starfire Codes

,

Ian Nolan

, and

R.B. Lamb

(for compelling me to think about Kuhn, even if your comment didn’t make it).

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I genuinely enjoy reading through interviews of musicians. I know that many think of music as some background noise, something to serve as a backdrop, but to me, music is a snapshot of someone’s mind at the time. From Alice in Chains to the Smashing Pumpkins, the way in which people engage with their melancholy (and the infinite sadness!) is inspiring to me. The interviews are another way in which I can know them as people, and I recall reading a Tori Amos interview from 1991—I can’t find it anymore, but I think there’s a repository somewhere.

What have the '60s children become? I don’t care that they all smoked pot in 1968 or did mushrooms! You see, it doesn't matter what you did when you were 22! Where do you stand today? They have become—many of them—that which they were fighting against when I knew them as teenagers. And we'll become the same thing!

In other words, those who comprised the counterculture of the 60s eventually formed the mainstream culture of the 90s. Amos’ words struck me, because they were true, but in a slightly different manner than she intended. Many of the 90s dissidents eventually towed the line towards mainstream political interests: trust Big Pharma, trust the political establishment (“vote blue no matter who!”), etc¹.

Eddie Vedder, after writing a poignant song about war like Yellow Ledbetter, actively supported Hillary Clinton and Biden anyways (to think that W.M.A was written during Bill’s presidency). Billie Joe Armstrong did the same thing, after he skewered Bush’s post-9/11 response in what was arguably Green Day’s magnum opus, American Idiot. Tom Morello dismissed Bernie Sanders as a “dreamer”, and accepted Clinton as a “necessary evil”.

It’s safe to say that people comprising the counterculture of the 90s/00s eventually partake in today’s mainstream culture. Who’s engaging with the politicians on Twitter? It’s the Gen X (give or take a few years), followed by the millennials, and my generation. The reason for this seems to be boring enough—the drive for rebellion tends to settle into a drive for stability for most people—until we look at our generation. A politician like Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez is almost entirely relying on Gen Z’s attention—but why do we give it to her? Where are our dissidents?

Not some political faction, wherein people just ally themselves to a cause and run with it. Someone condemning indiscriminate attacks on civilians because of the dissonance with their conscience is admirable. Someone picking a flag to cheer on (like a sports team) because of popular sentiment and the desire for social validation isn’t.

A Personal Anecdote on Contrarianism

In my senior year, I’d seek to defend Israel because one of my teachers (let’s call her Ms. Wanda) would often proselytize in class about how we needed to rebel against Western hegemony and colonialism. Toxic masculinity was somewhat responsible for international conflicts, and we needed to discard the capitalist mindset. She was generally an affable and compassionate teacher, but also had a penchant for imbuing some activism in her lessons.

Ms. Wanda would assign us books that weren’t classics, in an effort to “decolonise the curriculum”—usually, these books had something to do with racial topics or gender, and we’d have to read into the identity politics. A lot of them were fixated on being transgressive (as is most feminist literature), but really just ended up being disturbing to read—half of this stuff was, in her words, “inspired by Sade”. Did this really need to be assigned reading?

Almost everything in that class was ideologically motivated, and I had a knee-jerk reaction to think otherwise. I would generally hesitantly stick to anodyne contributions in class, but I’d secretly seethe with indignation.

She was a teacher, a well-liked one. She was capitalising on the respect afforded to her authority—as well as her popularity amongst students—to influence our thinking. An unusual amount of personal anecdotes conveyed her vulnerability in a manner that anchored us to guilt, lest we disagree with her conclusions.

Ideological contrarianism is a maladaptive coping mechanism of mine—whenever I’m told what to believe, some knee-jerk reaction compels me to believe otherwise. Many of my peers gleefully agreed with Ms. Wanda, because they had already gotten their approved thoughts from Tiktok or Twitter. I gleefully disagreed with what she said.

At the time, I didn’t actually know much about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I’d hear one thing in class, and would seek to believe the opposite thing, as an act of defiance. I wasn’t thinking for myself—I was just thinking against someone else. As time went on and the death toll continued to rise, as I saw the same pro-Israel points repeated, I realised that I was still carrying ideological baggage—in order to relinquish it, I needed to actually gain a nuanced understanding of the issue. Only then could I one day possess a conviction that’s more congruent with my conscience instead of one tethered to a pre-ordained ideology—whether it’d be my English teacher’s social justice leanings, or the opinions of Internet forums (as well as mainstream politicians).

This is why I have a lot of disdain for the embedding of activism within education. The system incentivises obedience and expedience. Not solely through imminent detentions, but more in that it quells the desire to express dissent—when you have five assignments due next week, it’s less taxing to just nod along and take note, rather than to actually think about it. I dealt with this by mentally taking note to disagree with everything, but that’s subpar as well.

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There is a primitive drive for youth to rebel against and upend the status quo (kind of like that “teenage angst” that Kurt Cobain sang about). I say primitive because it can readily be hijacked and wielded to serve ends that are antithetical to its original purpose—the actualisation of a unique identity.

I was seeking validation as well, in my own way—that I wasn’t like my plebeian peers who thought whatever they were told to think. I’d politely nod and say, “thank you, Ms. Wanda,” but I’d revel in knowing that I was subverting her authority. Why would I want to agree with what mainstream institutions were telling me?

It was like being in fifth grade all over again, when the 2016 election was taking place. Our teacher would tell us that Orange Man Bad, so I’d rebel and conclude that Orange Man Good—Soleimani’s assassination was actually good, and so were the air strikes on Syria.

That’s what I mean when I say that dissidents ought not merely comprise some political faction, but should actively encourage critical thinking. Sure, reflexive contrarianism means that I stayed away from sites like Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok—that’s a whole other realm of ideological programming. But PragerU ostensibly going against my fifth/sixth grade’s ideological leanings had me believe that what they were saying was esoteric and forgotten knowledge—even as it was reiterating every right-wing politician’s catechisms.

I wasn’t the only one who experienced this phenomenon. Most people my age believe that they too are fighting against the establishment. Celebrities are hyping up Kamala Harris because she’s apparently the shock to the system. Her chromosomes and skin colour will intrinsically make her a better leader, right?² This leaves those on the other side of the aisle to fall over themselves to decry her as a socialist who’ll usher in the downfall of Western Civilisation³, and we’ve all heard about the alt-right pipeline ad nauseam.

The original attachment was a tweet by a politician (Mike Miller?) asking whether there was a greater scandal than the Democratic Party’s nomination of “the socialist Kamala Harris”, which got me thinking.

Both mainstream Republican and Democrat politicians benefit from playing into the narrative of there existing some meaningful ideological difference between themselves. The label ‘socialist’ is a scarlet letter that allows right-identifying politicians to direct the populace’s ire and choices. The left-identifying politicians do this as well, with their own labels.

A moment of reflection would enable people to ask questions that would require a politician to clarify what exactly they stand for—a problem for those who don’t stand for anything. Emotional buttons are the most effective tools to manipulate people’s choices—if everyone argues over some (ultimately insignificant) minutiae, there is no one left to ask questions of actual merit.

I do like the original message, about how Bob and Sally are friends because they’re both adults who can get along. I still find this funny.

Back to the ‘90s—Or, How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Social Parasites

Yet, apparently, this wasn’t always the case—well, to this extent. Listen to Rage Against the Machine—that was during the Clinton administration. They were against the foundational cornerstones of the system—lobbying, naive globalisation and war. Disagree with them all you will, but at least they were sincere to their ideals at that time.

Meanwhile, what has my generation had? Charli XCX saying “Kamala IS Brat”. Last time, Taylor Swift wholeheartedly supported the Biden/Harris administration, and even Amy Lee of Evanescence figuratively crying at Kamala Harris’ speech. Most of us will applaud it with the fervor reserved for a cult leader, and it’s an image that eclipses the live version of Antichrist Superstar by Marilyn Manson:

That’s when I realized—Marilyn Manson could resonate with the youth of the 90s because the mainstream establishment was a Christian culture policing artists’ expression. The ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers were a badge of honour, a sign of rebellion against a stifling atmosphere. Don’t take this as me putting a “those wacky Christians” message on a pedestal—Madonna generated quite a few tabloid articles and controversy, but I doubt that it was ever her intention to guide a counterculture, as opposed to creating a name for herself.

Artists were creating and echoing an ethos of authenticity—where selling out (i.e capitulating to the norm) was the worst crime. A song like “Why Go” by Pearl Jam was made about a friend whose parents who sent their child to a mental institution because she smoked weed once. Alice in Chains dared to “seem so sick to the hypocrite norm”, and call themselves one of the “stoners, junkies and freaks”:

Apollo's Lyre

wrote a compelling article about Gen X, and how the main war became an internal one, manifesting in a blind crusade towards a nebulous mirage of progress—you’d be forgiven for ascribing to the “End of History” interpretation articulated by Francis Fukuyama. At that moment, I could see how, much like Catcher in the Rye was born in the backdrop of 1950s conformity (and out of a post-WWII ennui), Gen X was in a similar boat. As that Tyler Durden quote goes:

“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.”

Fortunately, there existed something for the uncool losers, able to live out their flawed selves (and fight their spiritual war) through the melancholic flannel-wearers—for this to occur, they needed to be willing to be considered that way by their peers, at least to some extent. After accepting that, those sick of the superficiality and consumerism could vicariously skewer those who’d “fret for [their] hairpiece”:

Yet, fully appreciating the profane profundity of TOOL’s Undertow and Ænima albums usually entailed someone to be disillusioned by the mainstream culture. Being counter to the mainstream required some critical thinking and open-mindedness. An album like Tidal by Fiona Apple could resonate with neurotics—for whom vulnerability was more natural than ostentatious self-confidence—who found themselves unheard by the bubblegum pop that we take for granted.

It’s true that people age into a belief structure that grants them some solace and certainty. Religion or political affiliation tends to occupy an ever-increasing niche within someone’s life as they grow older—hence why most millennials will end up listening to NPR or other extremely mainstream news sources alongside their nostalgic 90s rock collection, if not turning to religion entirely—but during their youth, there was an idea that one could pierce through an obsolete establishment. If only they dared to be themselves.

Billy Corgan didn’t have an aesthetically pleasing voice, but that didn’t stop the Smashing Pumpkins from releasing a saccharine-sounding poignant song like Today—actually, speaking of Billy Corgan, this interview from ‘91 probably epitomizes it all:

So many extremes have been pushed. You can’t be any more death than Death or Slayer or any of these grindcore bands, more offensive than the Ghetto Boys, all the extremes have been pushed … I'd really have to kill myself to really get a reaction, you know … the premise with us from the beginning has always been that we’re not disposable, our music is real.

Now, I’m not implying that artists like Alice in Chains, TOOL, and the Smashing Pumpkins were some esoteric and obscure phenomenon. The fact that I discovered Evenflow by Pearl Jam at 15 through Youtube recommendations points to them having accumulated a lot of lasting fame. Hell, even Alanis Morissette would sing about feeling out of her element with her sweater “on backwards and inside out”. But these artists certainly started out as antithetical to the boastful / embellished ethos of the 80s. By the late 90s, bands like Incubus rose to prominence, all while telling people to “Make Yourself”.

The Internet, and Counterculture—Divided Right in Two

Now, let’s skip ahead to the advent of the Internet. This hadn’t become mainstream by the ‘90s, and I suppose it was understandably thought that this culture of authenticity would find itself expressed through the Internet.

This was from a Note about the ‘90s being less prone to the pendulum shift than other generations. I think this could partly be due to its own Catcher in the Rye movement, but The Starfire Codes often has great insights (especially in the scrolls)!

Upon reading Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, I could see the palpable optimism that most millennial/Gen X individuals had towards the internet—after all, it meant that people could start to immerse themselves in a culture of their choosing. In a sense, the overall cultural atmosphere oversaw significant fragmentation.

One could religiously (see what I did there?) attend Sunday school, and then watch those thunderf00t videos that skewered creationism and other dogmatic aspects of religion.

It was possible to read the ramblings of any uncool loser who was now unaffected by social anxiety—which is what allows me to hope that writing my thoughts here is a worthwhile use of my time.

It was possible to associate with people who subscribed to your niche interests. I’m not sure if I’ve made it obvious enough, but my music taste is somewhat anachronistic in the 2020s—but Youtube comment sections are chock-full of people my age who appreciate music from a few decades ago.

It was possible for information to be democratized. Could Wikileaks have been as much of a household name if it was some dissident newspaper? Would Joe Rogan’s conversations with his guests have covered sometimes idiosyncratic and abstruse topics if they were relegated to television? Even Howard Stern was limited by radio companies.

However, much like the story about how cutting a cocoon to aid an emerging butterfly just leads to weakened butterfly wings, people for whom the need to think critically outside their cultural confines (which now no longer exist in a concrete sense) hasn’t become salient. The ability to identify with any subculture means that someone doesn’t have to develop the impetus to spurn established institutions (i.e that ‘90s authenticity and free thought), as the concept of a mainstream culture and counterculture has all but been eroded. No one’s a rat in a cage anymore.

Emos form their bubble, wearing “vintage misery” (courtesy of Fall Out Boy), curating a Pinterest board with dry leaves and raindrops, and posting everything with a black and white filter. Punks and hipsters—subcultures in which uniqueness is prized—often look the same, donning neon hair, piercings, tattoos, etc. This isn’t sinister in and of itself, and subcultures existed well before the internet. Hell, even Type O Negative made fun of them:

Yeah, you wanna go out cause it's raining and blowing
You can't go out 'cause your roots are showing
Dye 'em black
Ooh, dye 'em black

Come to think of it, mainstream culture and counterculture tend to function like a yin-yang.

Of course, the yin-yang is an ubiquitous symbol—the opposing polarities are complementary and interconnected to each other. In particular, I remember reading somewhere about how the symbol represents two koi fish circling one another in a pond. The white (yang) fish has a black (yin) teardrop, and vice versa; as the yang grows, the black (yin) fish decreases. However, the yin teardrop also grows—the precursor for the yin fish also increases.

As a mainstream culture becomes increasingly inescapable in people’s lives, a kernel of discontentment—the propensity to rebel and create something of one’s own—within it also increases, which manifests in a growing counterculture. The term ‘paradigm shift’ was originally coined by Thomas Kuhn, in reference to scientific progress—science alternates between periods of normal science (elaborating on its already established theories) and revolutionary science (contradictory phenomena that forces a new theory to explain itself).

An organic paradigm shift occurs through the rise of a counterculture inextricably connected to the culture it responds to. As a result, this means there needs to be some engagement with the mainstream in order for a counterculture to remain a counterculture, instead of a solipsistic rabbit hole. Most people who discovered the New Atheism (led by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens) movement didn’t become ideologically possessed in any one direction, because it arose out of organic discontentment with a religiously-devout atmosphere that would (amongst other things) link Marilyn Manson to Columbine. There’s all sorts of people who initially took shelter in this counterculture, and there was still a symbiotic engagement with the mainstream culture—Dawkins didn’t post on /pol about how Christianity was “actually communism”; he wrote The God Delusion, and sought to directly engage with the arguments. Sure, you can disagree with him, but the fact that you (and others) are disagreeing with him means that the yin-yang dynamic is functional.

Given how ubiquitous the internet has become in the last few decades, anyone can form their echo-chamber—one that never engages with the mainstream conventions that it supposedly goes against. This is what I mean by fragmentation. With this fragmentation of culture, the “spherical cow” metaphor that originated in theoretical physics becomes more applicable. Theoretical physics utilizes a lot of simplifying assumptions in their models, which hinders their application to practical reality; hence why it’s said to mainly apply to a spherical cow.

Think of the phrases “opposites attract” and “like attracts like”—they’re diametrically opposed, but have both earned their place as common sayings. These conflicting ideas could be reconciled with an “it depends”, because they’re both representations of fragmented experiences—some have found harmony with their opposite, whilst some have found harmony with someone alike to them. Most of these byzantine ideological systems adopted by terminally online people rely on fragments of knowledge that are often incongruent with reality at large, even if they fit at times—but without mainstream engagement, there is no “it depends” to keep most lines of reasoning from bordering on the spurious. We haven’t evolved to an influx of information, so it’s also not quite possible to engage with every fringe view.

It’s most analogous to an iridescent tempered glass mosaic, of which everyone all contributes a piece. Not only can the final work be a lot different than what one’s piece would have them anticipate, the one’s perspective will affect the meaning they can abstract from the same concrete reality. Fragmented pieces that appear disjointed create for the infinitely byzantine realities that people can live in.

Something like this. Credit: Sonja on Artboard

Without the engagement and conflict, without the yin-yang dynamic, exercising the drive for rebellion is almost futile, with individuation being a more complicated process. This creates a demand for a personal Jesus—an entity that serves as a savior to follow, and whose crucifiers can be pointed to as enemies to be wary of—yes, that’s a Depeche Mode reference, but I find the concept so apt:

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
Feeling unknown, and you're all alone
Flesh and bone, by the telephone
Lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer

In a world with eight billion people, there’s always someone who is for/against something. Point towards a group of these someones, and you can convince an audience that this is the establishment—someone for/against always existing for something entails that there’s always some counterculture or cause to fight for. As I’ve mentioned, youth has a rebellious drive that can be hijacked for nefarious ends—it is very tempting to cling onto anything parading itself as a counterculture. Soon enough, you can create strawmen (and strawwomen, don’t forget that) to cultivate a collective agoraphobia, as the world appears more and more against you—and you’re definitely against the world. As Anita Sarkeesian once put it:

“Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic; and you have to point it all out.”

This is the precursor to cultish thinking, and it’s bolstered by a positive feedback loop. Although Gamergate⁴ was back in the ‘10s, I find this quote to be so emblematic of the kind of outlook I’m referring to. If we were to add in a cult leader an influencer exalting themselves as the stable institution to follow amidst the Current Things™ / establishment, there’d be a lot of people willing to “step away from the window”, relinquishing their liberty—and responsibility—to think for themselves. They think they’re rebelling in a meaningful manner—that they’re being a free agent. This is why, although modern culture appears to have become more superficially varied, there’s a unifying capitulation to conformity.

This is how people will say, “Kamala Harris is a martyr battling the racist patriarchy; her opposition is testament to the US not being ready for female presidents of colour!” in line with ‘influencers’ (and our beloved AOC) echoing this sentiment—it’s clever that the wheel’s been reinvented to subvert the youth to treat conformity as the outlet for their rebellious drive. Conversely, this is why in the era of listed pronouns, Andrew Tate and his “red-pill” videos gain traction amongst the cohort that’s gone unheard. A lot of ‘red-pill’ content tends to be along the lines of this:

How the hell do these asinine hierarchies exist? Read on, to learn more!

The Overton window need no longer accommodate dissent, because why bother being a rabble-rouser in real life when there’s always a corner of the internet to find your grievances echoed and pushed further? This creates the parallel market for a lot of ‘extreme’ fringe viewpoints, in the search for a respite from excessive groupthink in mainstream discourse. There’s no need to be able to be counter—reality-warping has ascended the realm of sci-fi superpowers, and has become our opiate. That’s the impetus faced by the Holden Caulfields of our age: to retreat into those corners engaging with their idiosyncrasies. Blame Youtube algorithms for alt-right pipelines all you want, but there’s a reason why places like Parler and Gab become rife with those ideologies.

I think there is an implicit recognition of this difficulty in individuation amongst Gen Z. The insincerity permeating our words and actions, facetious manner in which the gravity of human experience is shrugged off, the assimilation of mental illnesses into daily conversation (“guys isn’t it funny when u need to buy meds ‘cuz ur depression’s flaring up again lmao”) all point to some latent disharmony, masked under some saccharine veneer of post-irony.

In part, this can be attributed to the human experience having become so inauthentic—the digital world helps approximate it like a Maclaurin function, but it’s only that: an approximation of what it means to be human. Emotions, friendships, and even language has experienced a commodification and rendition into having become generic; it may be my first year of college, but the phrases amongst my peers are—for the most part—so automated: “real”, “that’s insane”, and “oh my god”.

So what’s the solution? More importantly, can we put it on a T-shirt?

These guys get it. In all honesty, Nothing More is the best band to have come out of the ‘10s—their self-titled (of which I was writing a review) and succeeding album are great albums in their own right.

Breaking the Pink Ego Box?

Our problems today are somewhat unprecedented. It’s true that television and its manipulation of the mind existed in the past, but I doubt navigating information had been such a labyrinth before. At the end of the day, it was always possible to break the idiot box and let the imprisoned birds fly:

I still love this album (though not as much as One-X). Also, it introduced me to Eckhart Tolle.

For all of my pessimistic umbrage, the internet has had innumerable pleasant things to offer. In real life, I have a whiny voice and I stammer a lot when I talk to people—I also struggle with making eye contact most of the time, because there’s something about the windows to the soul that unnerves me. Perhaps it’s my reflection, an impression manifesting in others’ psyches, the fear that they can see right through me—it anchors me to a timid inability to be forthright and articulate. On a place like Substack, these hindrances evanesce away. I can read the static and unchanging words, tethering me to a sense of calm agency as I reach for my thoughts in the sanctuary of my mind. No longer fettered by any windows to the soul, I can actually say something of substance. I can send a message in a bottle:

This is my favorite song by The Police by a long shot, and there’s a reason why. Sure, I owe it to the beautiful guitar melody, but the lyrics bring me a lot of solace:

Walked out this morning, I don't believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home

I realize that this phenomenon isn’t limited to myself. There’s someone obsessively reading numerous books on the Roman Empire’s history, in the solitude of a library. There’s someone whose social interaction is mainly through League of Legends, who’s read all the Dune books. There’s someone who wears a Transformers shirt and meticulously reads up on the lore of Warhammer 40,000. There’s someone who reads Aleister Crowley and Alan Watts, and who’ll be able to tell you all about what Carl Jung and Alice Miller were talking about. These are the kinds of people for whom the internet allows a modicum of authenticity, and so the solution is a bit more complex and nuanced than “breaking the pink ego box⁵”.

I’d overhear girls in my junior and senior year⁶ deride the socially inept guys as being incels, which, for those not terminally online, equates to—to put it in polite terms—not really rolling in women (it stands for ‘involuntarily celibate’). It’s one of those terms that gained traction in the culture war of the ‘10s, and used to be relegated to mass murderers with misogynistic inclinations like Elliot Rodger, but has now become the catch-all term used to call any guy an uncool loser. I’m not a guy, so this sort of ridicule was technically not pertinent to me, but I’d always feel for these people—they’ve become acceptable targets. Someone doesn’t even have to be misogynistic or murderous to have this insult thrown at him, because a judgmental cruelty permeates modern discourse. Enjoyed the movie Drive? Enjoyed Joker? Enjoyed Catcher in the Rye? Could relate to a depiction of a disaffected and lonely young man? Go to hell, incel.

My tangent on ‘incels’ is mainly to illustrate that for all of our ostensible emphasis on mental health and love for everyone, there’s such an alacrity in denigrating those who genuinely cannot assimilate into modern society (at least in the ‘90s, Tori Amos wrote an empathetic song about Greg)—the manner in which one is allowed to fail to meet societal expectations has become commodified to a symbol of anodyne conformity. While Charles Bukowski is dismissed as a “cynical weirdo”, there’s a gravitation towards the image reflected by Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Lana Del Rey, and Billie Eilish. Reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, mascara-streaked tears, writing copious amounts of poetry about “the autumn”, listening to a gentle acoustic guitar track—it has all become so rehearsed. Yet, I can’t help but see it as only that—an image that’s marketed to women, akin to a birdcage veil. Vintage misery. Elite by Deftones puts it perfectly:

You're into depression
'Cause it matches your eyes

This is what I mean by ‘unifying capitulation to conformity’. We no longer have any semblance of generational ethos; we have transient images to embody in the hopes of one being suited to our inclinations. I don’t deny that this has existed since forever, but it has become easier to market as an avenue for self-actualisation. Everything subsides into a niche instead of engaging the public at large, which not only subverts an otherwise individuating drive for rebellion, but provides an incentive to adopt conformity in maintaining one’s sense of self (epitomized by the curated niches and echo-chambers we can reign over). Consumerist punks is no longer the oxymoron it used to be.

It’s the Holden Caulfields of the world that are most drawn to the countercultures encouraging them to create and manifest themselves in an authentic manner, as troubled souls unite to understand each other. That’s how I could derive a lot of meaning while reading Lobster King⁷ in my freshman year, even if most of the comments on his Youtube videos are from guys who had lost their job (or at least a sense of purpose). Actually, speaking of high school, although I have little doubt that most of my peers from that period will go far in life, there was always something about them that I couldn’t get past—I take everything to heart, and it seemed that theirs had been weathered and hardened away by some expedient pursuit. My neuroticism would shed away any meaningful opportunities, so it’s no wonder that I find myself so hard-pressed to name a genuine friend from that chapter—every attempt is only a projection of my wish to refute those familiar feelings of alienation and loneliness that wash over me when I think of the last four years⁸.

It’s true that I felt like a loser, but the uncool loser needs something too—not just a corner outside a school hallway, where she’d resort to talking to herself, in order to quell the taunting silence. To writing angsty verses and putting them to some emotional chord progression, in hopes of playing those songs in a band someday (even though my failed attempts at starting a band accounted for a lot of frustration). Always lurking, if not wandering the corridors with the intention of creating an illusion of dynamism in a life otherwise threatened by static listlessness.

What helped me in dealing with it was engaging with the organic melancholy, the enlightening—and edifying—darkness that was so palpable in the kind of music I gravitated to. From my (admittedly overemotional) vantage point, I could see that someone gets it—someone sees through what I see, and perhaps in doing so, they aren’t seeing right through me. That’s the angle through to which anyone can reach the heart and mind. Most cult leaders influencers and ideologues use this angle, and then imbue their meta-narrative promising a certainty in complacency, if only we just accepted them as our personal Jesus. Of course, ideologies are more akin to exoskeletons, given their role in navigating one’s informational surroundings—and the failure to molt them every once in a while pointing towards insufficient intellectual growth.

We no longer have a concrete counterculture, which, personally speaking, equates to the dearth of a collective who truly gets it, sees through what we see, and doesn’t see right through us, and doesn’t promise anything else—encouraging sincere authenticity as one grows into their own skin, as one individuates. However, we still have creative expression, which allows someone to, as Chris Cornell puts it, “reach down, and bring the crowd up”—to reach into their experience, for their thoughts in the sanctuary of their mind, and brings a crowd of troubled souls to unite—even though for the most part, artists are relegated to niches instead of fueling the yin-yang dynamic that had guided people for so long.

We just need more “seers” and artists, not creators of images to see ourselves in. That’s the final—uncertain and idealistic—note I’ll end this article on, but I’d love to further pursue this discussion.

1. On that note, Trump’s not an anti-establishment politician either. The Democratic National Convention intended to prop him up (and discredit other Republican candidates) in order to make him a Pied Piper of some sorts. The idea was that this could alienate mainstream voters into voting for Clinton. The primaries were also rigged against Sanders for this reason. I seek to be more idealistic than ideological (hence why both Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul resonated with me at one point), but I’m surprised that Kamala Harris has any credibility after being eviscerated by Tulsi Gabbard.

2. It’s one thing to suggest that an upbringing in a different culture might yield some unorthodox insights (due to differing values), but using race as a proxy for this is somewhat reductionist, especially given the role played by class.

3. Personally, I think appeals like “we must save the West” are mostly based on riling people up. It’s somewhat anti-individualistic, and usually, there’s some Biblical wish to return to pre-Enlightenment times. I think abiding by one’s conscience is the best anyone can do in a short life.

4. If you search it up, then it’ll be described as a targeted harassment campaign, but given what I remember, I think this is half of the story. It was more of a pushback against imposed progressivism in video games (e.g. “Link from Zelda should be a girl”)—and video games are such a broad category that anyone can find what they like, so complaining about individual creators not catering to your taste is somewhat myopic—around this time, the ‘social justice warrior’ sentiment was closing in on a lot of industries. You remember the Ghostbusters sequel?

I say imposed because Undertale had a pretty ‘diverse’ cast of characters, and I don’t recall any gamers complaining about there being female character (i.e. Undyne, Toriel, Alphys) in the game. I don’t recall anyone complaining about women in Terminators, or Princess Leia in Star Wars, or Aliens. It was patronizing and disingenuous for journalistic outlets like Vice, Vox, Salon, and Paragon to paint gamers for being misogynistic for disliking Anita Sarkeesian’s rhetoric.

5. Yes, I edited my post to make a reference to one of the most pertinent Muse songs:

6. Another reason why English class seemed ideologically motivated. Granted, Ms. Wanda wasn’t facilitating these side-conversations, but I’m making a point about the kinds of crowds that were in the class, along with the atmosphere that was created.

7. Jordan Peterson. The first chapter of 12 Rules for Life drew parallels between lobsters and human behavior—and he brings up this parallel quite often. To be honest, I don’t agree with everything Peterson says—his debate with Zizek could’ve gone better, his recent exchanges with Bibi didn’t challenge the latter at all (Peterson once said that in order to think, you have to be willing to offend), which isn’t what I’d expect from an intellectual—but I really just wish he had continued in his expertise of psychology. A nice alternate world would’ve been wherein Peterson started a Substack account instead of Twitter…

8. It’s true that I’ve been fortunate enough to engage in many enlightening discussions with my teachers and some of my peers, but the gnawing feeling of “I have no friends because I’m not worth befriending” is a compelling one—at least, it’s caused me to overuse the crutch of affability in navigating social contexts.

I know this is dripping with self-pity, and I do have enough self-awareness to understand that the assuming others’ perceptions of anyone’s ‘worth’ (a very loaded term) is a self-important course of action, but then again, self-importance is for the unimportant.