>The new cultural and economic emphasis on qualities of uniqueness, virility, easier living through computing, and novelty, create a machine of events that can bring any subculture to its knees before the mainstream in a month or less. Unique ideas get run through the wringer and retired to the recycle bin in the name of progress; creating a vacuum that only new cultures and memes can fill
Adam Curtis (BBC Documentary maker. Watch all of his stuff now, read his entire blog, then watch his stuff again, he's wonderful.) Wrote a nice piece on something along these lines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/855b6a7f-72a3-31c9-a037-43ae1c49293c
>"Bernbach's enthusiasm for the idea of 'difference' became the magic cultural formula by which the life of consumerism could be extended indefinitely, running forever on the discontent that it itself had produced"
One has to wonder if the internet (and with it, theoretically near-instantaneous communication of what's cool and what isn't) has taken this little cycle of consumerism and sped it up to the point where it risks tearing itself apart from centrifugal forces. Stuxnet for culture.
But perhaps the key part - the part that stuck with me - is this line:
>But one could argue that it is precisely that continual search for difference that has led us into the static world of today. If consumerism continually scours the margins of society for rebellious or contrary notions and then immediately turns them into stuff to sell - it ironically becomes very difficult for new ideas to change society. Instead they tend to end up reinforcing it.
I'm very drawn to Curtis' tendency to draw some analogy to the Soviet stagnation (more apparent in his other posts and particularly in his film "Bitter Lake") - the loss of faith in their rigid system, cultural decline, idealists heading to Afghanistan only to come back more jaded than ever. Unlike the Soviets, though, no alternative seems clear to us. But at this point we broaden out from internet culture and into the intertwining of politics and culture, so i'll silence myself here.