🆕 “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution” (riffing on ’s Gervais Principle) meaningness.com/metablog/geeks
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wow that was fantastic. Q: remind me again, why did this dynamic end in 2000? Seems alive and well to me...
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Yeah, it’s a non-obvious argument, 15,000 words or so, so hard to fit in a tweet. In draft form now.
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One thing is that tacit awareness of the dynamics I described here is common, so no one can invest in subcultures as much.
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Another thing is that a single subculture can’t provide enough meaning. So increasingly people were in several,
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and that drove the cultural system toward atomization rather than distinct subcultures.
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makes a lot of sense. But there are still subcultures around (e.g. LessWrong). Is your point that they're fewer/weaker now?
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Weaker; and they aren’t the driving force of cultural evolution in the same way they were. This is clearest in musical genres,
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There’s new musical genres, but they no longer can build a complete culture around themselves, don’t compel fanaticism, and
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's main case study of a scene is quebec punk rock scene. And yeah, music is now a feature, not a product


