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- Hacker News
- The world has become very expensive and everything is way more competitive than it was in the past.
To me, it feels like there is little room to make mistakes. If you get detailed it's hard to get back on track. That I think is the primary reason people are taking less risks (or being deviant).
by ironman1478 - I feel like a lot of this is breaking up of culture into a million shards. People are being weird in much smaller domains so if you look at the old bigger chunks of culture it seems like it's solidifying. Just because TV is largely boring doesn't mean online video isn't weird. You just might not like it so you don't pay attention to it.by MattGrommes
- Great post from Adam Mastroianni as usual, lots to chew on -- but to treat deviance and risk as equivalent seems a bit of a leap. The graphs line up, but just about any wide-reaching measure was put on its current trajectory sometime in the 70s-80s (see [0]).
The hypothesis that lower 'background risk' leads to lower voluntary risks (drugs, unprotected sex, etc.) makes sense. But as far as arts go, I think the cultural homogeneity we see is more of a direct effect of globalization than anything else. In other words, the default state of highly interconnected societies is one of convergence; the variety of the 20th century can be attributed to growth in communication and exposure to new concepts. Now that media technology has somewhat stabilized, we see a return to the cultural stability that has defined humanity for most of its existence.
by ksymph - Good read, good points, but man I’d caution readers that the author’s perspective seems to very much come from a “normie” viewpoint.
For those of us in the “deviant” circles (like pretending to be a dinosaur on the internet), the reality is that a lot of deviancy became heavily normalized and accepted, not disappeared. The internet helped millions of deviants realize they can live authentic lives without worrying about the opinions of others, because the secret sauce is most people don’t give a damn about your deviancy. The little old Christian ladies berating a cashier for blue hair and tattoos are the minority, not the norm, and it means things once shunned as deviant are now embraced as acceptable, even natural.
I also think this is, in part, cyclical. Deviancy is itself a kind of luxury, in that you can afford to take part in it either because you have nothing to lose from doing so, or at the very least it won’t impact your gains in a negative manner. It explains why deviancy rises in times of comfort (post-WW2 America) and declines in times of crisis or stress (today).
The deviants are out there, we’re just not the deviants society came to expect from decades of prior stereotyping and therefore not readily found. As cultural experts churn from the old guard to the new, you’ll see the plethora of art, culture, and deviancy already present finally be surfaced for analysis by the masses.
At least, that’s my perspective, from the fringes of the weird.
by stego-tech - > Deviancy is itself a kind of luxury, in that you can afford to take part in it either because you have nothing to lose from doing so, or at the very least it won’t impact your gains in a negative manner. It explains why deviancy rises in times of comfort (post-WW2 America) and declines in times of crisis or stress (today).
The article argues for the opposite, that more safety brings more risk-averse behaviour (you can take more risks, but you are less willing to), with good merit imo. But perhaps you are talking about different things.
by freehorse - I have this fondness for the old-school web of blogs and so on. And I thought perhaps that this decline of deviance was the reason for the perceived dip in blogs. But now I think it's actually different. All of us from then were the early adopters of this stuff. We were never going to be a lot. It's just that previously there were a thousand (metaphorically) of us with nine hundred of us like what we were, and now there are a billion with nine hundred of us like what we were, and the rest are what they were but now they're here.
I have this belief: if you don't know where the artist went, it's probably because you were a groupie rather than an artist and they eventually tired of you. After all, right now in San Francisco there are people like those in the circle of Aella (of Sankey chart fame) who had a "birthday gangbang" where each man had some limited time with her and then had to go to a fluffer. One of those fluffers married one of the men she met there.
This is beyond strange to me, but not in a disparaging way. It's just out of my zone of familiarity in a way where I feel I would not know what being in these people's presence is like. So I think the strange people are just finding the other strange people and enjoying their time together rather than what they would previously do: entice some normies to strangeness.
I also think many of these things have various causes. Apartment buildings have the same shape everywhere because they are all designed by committee and have the same schools of thought dictating "breaking up the massing" and all that. But even in that world, in the NIMBY capital of the world, there is a building like Mira SF which is pretty damned cool!
by arjie - I initially thought not to post this because I think this is potentially flamebait adjacent for someone and I dont want to rock the boat.
But in the interests of attempting to not be so conformist and give us something interesting to discuss about this interesting article, I will try this anyways, and if you have a problem with me saying this then feel free to flag and move on, I don't care enough to get into a flame war about this, but I believe I'm not trying to troll or get a rise out of people.
Perhaps this is the feminization of society? As women have asserted themselves in the workforce and due to young women being the creators of mass culture for their generation, perhaps this is a partial driver for why everyone is so much less independent.
I dont know, this thought is not done and I'm already expecting incoming fire from someone somewhere, but perhaps this could help drive this.
Then again, it's more likely that this fits one of my conformation bias pet issues.
by Multicomp - The fact that you felt the need for that long preface (rightly so, I might add) demonstrates the real root problem. If everything we’re doing is right and true, why can’t we even talk about it directly? The truth doesn’t really mind being talked about, because after you’re finished talking it’s still the truth.
(Which isn’t to say I agree with your take, I haven’t given it much thought. But anything to do with feminism potentially having negative effects is verboten).
by pfannkuchen - Genuinely wondering why in the world this is your first intellectual instinct.by dluan
- Women fought for independence and feminists are the ones most despised by a lot in larger culture, lol.
Meanwhile, conservative male spaces tend to be all about being in group and forcing everyone to be like them. And about forcing women back to dependence.
by watwut - I don't know if you made a subconscious allusion, but Helen Andrews recently wrote an article with a similar premise: The great feminization https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/by ssivark
- I'm not sure I get what you're trying to say. I think it probably _is_ fair to say that women now produce more culture than men, in aggregate, but I'm not sure that that is evidence for your thing. Like, I'm not seeing cause and effect here.
(Granted, I don't totally buy into their claims that society is more conformist than it used to be in the first place; it's clear that _crime_ has fallen, but there's no particular reason that that should be joined at the hip to non-conformism and their evidence for cultural stagnation is far weaker than their evidence on crime).
by rsynnott - I think the observed feminisation isn't a causal factor, but instead shares a causal factor - that every space must now accept everyone. This causes a few problems.
0. One of the ideas that has tagged along with inclusion has been changing from an input focus ("e.g. No girls allowed in treehouse!") to an output focus (Fewer girls than boys are in the treehouse). In the input focused model, you want to change the rule to stop excluding girls. In the output focused model you also need to change the treehouse to be more attractive to girls. From this, any 'deviant' interests that happen to be gendered (or racial, cultural, etc) get suppressed in the name of creating inclusive outcomes.
1. Most humans have a natural urge to conform to those around us, some just experience it stronger or weaker than others. When 'deviants' are included in a non-deviant space, their deviant tendencies face a subtle yet strong conformity pressure that wouldn't be felt if they were excluded entirely.
2. 'Deviants' being accepted more widely means they don't need to create or find their own spaces. Hence there are fewer spaces where the deviation is locally normal, which would allow the conformist pressure to enhance and refine the deviation.
by nevdka - I'll reply here in good faith: I just don't see how you connect those dots, or why this has anything to do with gender.
> women have asserted themselves in the workforce
Agree.
> young women being the creators of mass culture for their generation
Citation(s) needed. I've never heard an argument for this or even seen someone suggest it before.
> partial driver for why everyone is so much less independent
Even if we take your previous statements as true, what does that have to do with peoples' independence?
To me (and my own confirmation bias pet issue), it seems much more likely that having recordings and visible online identities the way we do now with smartphones, ever present cameras, and social media causes people to think a lot more about how they're perceived by others.
And, the flip side, spending so much time seeing other people via tv, online videos, social media, etc constantly reinforces what "normal" behavior looks like.
People are also so absorbed in modern media that they just do way less interesting stuff overall imo.
by johnthedebs - It used to be cool to be deviant and not to be accepted by society at large. Ravers, skaters, punk rockers, cross-dressers, all subcultures that did not care if they were accepted by the normies. Transgression of social norms was considered the cool thing to do.
Now everyone wants social norms to be changed so they feel included no matter what crazy ass thing they are into.
Feels lame to me but I am old so what do I know.
by opwieurposiu - I was frustrated through the first...25%? of the article that basically the author was conflating all sorts of obviously negative things: drugs, alcohol, smoking, gun violence etc. with "deviance".
And then: no mention of furries, open sexuality, pastafarianism or the like? I think the author simply doesn't recognize "new" deviance. Each generation defines their own standards and non-standards.
The kids are alright.
by gcanyon - Furries are more than 20 years old and Pastafarianism was invented in 2005.by scythe
- I, gen-x '79, was taught by Gen-z the reason we don't drink at the bars is cause someone'll make a video of us being weird and ruin us. Be weird at home. With the door locked. Fit in when the camera could be hiding and stay employed. Adequately satisfactory, A+.
I'm too old not to be weird. I get a lot of blank stares. I'm the only person I need the approval of. (For now. I worry the cameras find me more and more)
by digitalsushi - Yeah, I really think this is a big part of it: more control and harsher social punishment for less.
Unfortunately it is not only a bad thing.
by kruffalon - Yeah, I still like doing "weird" things wrt music and experiencing art, but I am not posting about it anywhere or paying much for it. Most of the really interesting things I've been to in the last 5 years or so have been very local, small, and not really monetized.by Wojtkie
- Others are saying the end of leaded gasoline, I’ll add that around 2008 when the trend accelerates schools started becoming more locked down and consequences for being a kid can now follow you into adulthood much easier due to social media.
I think we’re seeing a natural result of kids being scared of that one bad night being immortalized or that one fight turning into an arrest.
You’re just not allowed to be a kid really.
by ianbutler - I would suggest that another trend which contributes to this "one bad fight" is the growing personal disposable income in the US, which allows parents to be highly litigious, demanding things like arrests of kids their kids get in fights with:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
Anecdotally, teachers have been talking about fear of getting sued by parents for a long time now. I suspect this is a big driving force behind the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality and not at all liberalism. Teachers have been kowtowing to moneyed tiger/helicopter parents in ever more egregious ways.
My own pet theory anyways.
by RajT88 - The lead in gasoline hypothesis is certainly plausible, however, I blame the larger picture of car dependency as well as the Thatcher/Reagan revolution, when 'stranger danger' was the big fear.
The article does go into this aspect, with a map of Sheffield in the footnotes showing how far eight year old kids were able to travel over the different generations. There was a time when the child could go across to the other side of the city to go fishing, whereas now, a child is essentially imprisoned and not expected to be going very far.
The Thatcher/Reagan revolution created exceptional oppositional culture in the UK, with 'rave' being the thing. The last 'free range' children grew up to be the original ravers and they had considerable organisational ability, needed to put on parties and other events. Furthermore, the music of the rave scene was banned by the BBC and the government ('repetitive beats').
In time, most of the rave generation grew up, got day jobs, had kids and all of that fun stuff. They got old and moved on, however, there was nobody to fill their shoes. Instead of illegal rave events and lots of house parties, organised festivals and city nightclubs took over. The cost aspect meant going with a small handful of friends rather than just the closest two hundred friends.
A good party should be heard from a considerable distance away (sorry neighbours) and I am surprised at how few parties there are these days. I travel by bicycle on residential roads, often late at night. Rarely do I find myself stumbling across people having house parties. This doesn't mean that parties aren't happening, but, equally, it doesn't mean I am old and out of touch.
by Theodores - > I think we’re seeing a natural result of kids being scared of that one bad night being immortalized or that one fight turning into an arrest.
> You’re just not allowed to be a kid really.
I learned yesterday about the skull breaker challenge, where you and two friends line up and jump at the same time to see who jumps highest, except the outside two people conspire to kick the legs out of the middle one. Is that being a kid? If anything, the proliferation of social media is enabling the normalization of deviance in the form of these meme challenges. People are going around spraying bug spray on the produce at the grocery and posting it on TikTok.
by hrimfaxi - +1 for the Lead Hypothesis. Apart from negative health effects, lead exposure leads to more impulsive behavior and reduced inhibition - which kind of covers nearly everything here.
Have to say, I am glad that the world is safer and less wild, but I do miss the creative energy and "real world" social engagement of 1980s-1990s
by AvAn12 - Interesting; for what it's worth, as a black person who grew up in a relatively privileged environment, the "one bad fight" rule was subconsciously our entire existence in a way that it wasn't for many people around us.by jrm4
- I disagree that people are less weird and deviant today. I believe they’re less weird offline, because weirdness is easier, safer, and less embarrassing to express online.
I also disagree that online has become less weird. It’s less weird proportionally, because the internet used to consist of mostly weird people, then normal people joined. Big companies are less weird because they used to cater to weird people (those online), now they cater to normal people. But there are still plenty of weird people, websites, and companies.
Culture is still constantly changing, and what is “weird” if not “different”? Ideas that used to be unpopular and niche have become mainstream, ex. 4chan, gmod (Skibidi Toilet), and Twitch streamers. I’m sure ideas that are unpopular and niche today will be mainstream tomorrow. I predict that within the next 10 years, mainstream companies will change their brands again to embrace a new fad; albeit all similarly, but niche groups will also change differently and re-organize.
(And if online becomes less anonymous and more restrictive, people will become weirder under their real ID or in real life.)
- The internet used to have all kinds of crazy sites, anyone remember rotten.com?
It was a lot more uncensored and anarchistic. It wasn't dedicated to consumerism and sold out to corporations.
We had personal websites, blogs and such. No, it has definitely changed for the worse in terms of personal freedom. Enshittification is real.
by Synaesthesia - Weirdness isn’t really deviance. Punk was deviance, anti-system. Modern internet weirdness is mostly just having weird consumer tastes and sociopolitical opinions.by keiferski
- A big part of this IMO is that “money won”, for lack of a better phrase. There is no real concept of selling out anymore. Being shamelessly focused on wealth accumulation seems to be socially acceptable in a way it wasn’t fifty years ago.
Someone will probably say this is because current generations have less financial security, and I’m sure that’s a factor. But I think it’s a cultural shift that is much older and tracks better to the decline of traditional sources of values (community, cultural groups, religion, etc.) and their replacement by the easily understandable dollar. So it becomes harder and harder for a cultural definition of success to not mean financially successful. And being financially successful is difficult if you have deviant, counter cultural ideas (and aren’t interested in monetizing them.)
by keiferski