
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution - antisuji
http://meaningness.com/metablog/geeks-mops-sociopaths
======
Animats
_" Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to
2000, when they stopped working. Why?"_

His chart [1] indicates where the 1975 date came from. He distinguishes
between 1960s "counterculture" and later "subcultures". That's somewhat
artificial. The 1920s also had subcultures - the Jazz Age, flappers, etc.
Prior to the 1920s, there wasn't enough mass disposable income for such
frippery. The 1930s (depression) and 1940s (WWII) sucked so bad that there was
no counterculture, subculture, or, indeed, much culture.

The more interesting question is "why did it stop"? Music stopped being an
agent of rebellion around the time punk died. Now, it's just "content". When
it became easy to distribute music, everybody started doing it. At peak, there
were several million bands on Myspace. Subcultures became more fragmented and
tinier. Once one could find kindred souls with similar narrow interests on
line, the need to change to fit in was much reduced.

What the author calls "fluidity" is the endgame of that - subcultures have no
lasting power in a world of tweets and Instagram.

Were any of these a creative force? Outside of music, the main legacy of the
hippie movement is that everyone wears jeans. The values didn't stick. Much of
the 1960s counterculture was just self-indulgence dressed up with pop
philosophy. That's why hippies transitioned so smoothly to yuppies. The legacy
of punk is industrial interior design, for which the endgame turned out to be
open plan offices with exposed brick walls and ceilings with visible pipes and
conduit.

[1] [http://meaningness.com/modes-chart](http://meaningness.com/modes-chart)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>Outside of music, the main legacy of the hippie movement is that everyone
wears jeans.

Well - that and the environmental movement, including sustainable utilities.
And some parts of feminism. And recycling. And organic food. And possibly
Apple and even Google, if you don't think about it too hard.

>The legacy of punk is industrial interior design

I'm having a hard time getting from spitting in the mosh pit to Herman Miller
cubicle dividers. Open plan offices have been around since at least Victorian
times. The exposed piping aesthetic is more the fault of Richard Rogers and
Norman Foster than Johnny Rotten.

>The more interesting question is "why did it stop"?

It didn't. What do you think HN and the current startup frenzy are?

Are VCs geeks, fans, MOPS or sociopaths?

~~~
slapresta
> Are VCs geeks, fans, MOPS or sociopaths?

You really need to ask?

------
meesterdude
This article was frustrating for me; I didn't find much disagreeable, but
actual take aways were lacking.

> Specific strategies for sociopathy are outside the scope of this metablog
> post—and the scope of this book.

How are they out of scope if that's what you're advocating?

A bit _TOO_ meta for me; with little actionable takeaway. But not a bad topic
to chase down, i just wish there was more meat to it. Maybe I misunderstand
it's context.

UPDATE: flipped through the rest of the site... where's the meat? It's all
meta analysis and talk but really I am not seeing any useful take aways. Has
anyone else found something actionable? I feel like the author would be a good
chap to talk to and would have a lot of good things to say, but there's no
clarity or purpose in his writings.

~~~
paulpauper
the writing has to be somewhat vague in order to get people talking about it,
and the author succeeded as evidenced by it being here .

~~~
meesterdude
No, I think the author was on to something. They were close to hitting gold,
but they stopped short. They presented a lot of what doesn't work, but little
of what does.

And certainly being sociopathic, or "slightly evil" are hardly actionable
things, and are short sighted solutions.

------
api
This is brilliant. I wish I had time to write more. A few points.

The time tested old school way to avoid this problem is to limit openness and
impose internal structure. The long lasting subcultures of old, namely the
ancient mystery schools and the fraternal orders that flourished from the
Renaissance until roughly the post-WWII era, were initiatory orders with
oaths, degrees, and governing bodies. Sometimes they were secret as well, or
at least secretive. Most historians seem to say that this was to avoid
political persecution, and that's undoubtedly true, but it was also perhaps a
way to avoid the dumbing down and dissipation described here.

I'd adjust the author's dates. It's not 1975 until 2000. It's more accurately
roughly 1950 until 2000. The subculture was the engine of cultural creation in
the postwar era. It gave us rock, psychedelia, hippies, punks, disco, hip hop,
hacker culture, goths, and ravers, and all the immense cultural, musical,
technical, and artistic expressions that went with.

My personal sense is that rave was the last postwar subculture. I was there
and watched it go through precisely what this author describes. There does not
seem to have been another.

I don't think it's just a loss of faith. I personally blame the Internet a
bit, especially social media. It's no longer possible for a subculture to stay
underground long enough to build up any energy. The entire life cycle now
occurs before the first song is over.

Who knows... Maybe we need another occult revival. I'll wear a funny hat and
take a blood oath of secrecy if I get to hear really interesting new music
that doesn't suck. Sign me up.

Finally, this quote stuck with me.

"A slogan of Rao’s may point the way: Be slightly evil. Or: geeks need to
learn and use some of the sociopaths’ tricks. Then geeks can capture more of
the value they create (and get better at ejecting true sociopaths)."

That's part of what I like about HN. To the extent that it focuses on helping
hackers learn how to "operate" in the business world, it seems like it's
helping teach some number of creators how to be just a little bit evil.

~~~
meesterdude
> The time tested old school way to avoid this problem is to limit openness
> and impose internal structure. The long lasting subcultures of old, namely
> the ancient mystery schools and the fraternal orders that flourished from
> the Renaissance until roughly the post-WWII era, were initiatory orders with
> oaths, degrees, and governing bodies.

A thoughtful and interesting observation. I wonder how much truth there is to
it. It also makes me wonder if "flat structure" companies face any kind of
similar problems.

~~~
api
I have heard that. Open organizations with no inner or outer boundaries tend
to become pathocracies -- ruled by psychopaths and other pathological abusive
personality types. Hierarchy can facilitate abuse, but it can also be a tool
for limiting and mitigating abuse. In its formal absence, abusers are free to
assert it using deception and intimidation.

------
quanticle
The conclusion of the piece seems to be a restatement of this:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/).

~~~
antisuji
There's a fair amount of overlap between David Chapman's views and the LW
memeplex, though see his response[0] to what he calls "Pop Bayesianism" from a
couple years ago. I remember getting a lot out of that essay, maybe even
changing my mind a bit.

[0]: [http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-
think](http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think)

------
smitherfield
Now, I'm as much of a fan of elaborate, essay-length metaphors as the next
guy, but I have to say that I do find it a bit tiresome when the author
declines to inform the reader what exactly the metaphor is in reference to.

~~~
mirimir
The author explains that in [http://meaningness.com/meaningness-
history](http://meaningness.com/meaningness-history) which is poorly flagged.
Examples: hippy, death metal, Twitter, etc.

Edit: [http://meaningness.com/modes-chart](http://meaningness.com/modes-chart)
is also worth pondering.

~~~
smitherfield
Thanks!

I'm still not such a huge fan of the post given the lack of concrete examples.
The whole "the author's opinions about what people do" genre can often be a
bunch of non-falsifiable platitudes and generalizations that ultimately don't
end up meaning much. Think about one of those dime-a-dozen blog posts about
how those who succeed in business project confidence, listen to the client's
needs, and have a great pitch that hooks people within seconds.

Okay, well enough. But that doesn't actually even mean anything. Instead of
just having some boilerplate word salad, how about some examples? Provide
actual examples of strategies real people actually used to project confidence
in real life, real ways people listened to the clients needs, and real-life
great pitches that hooked people in seconds. That way the blog post becomes
interesting and useful to me, the reader. And without them "the author's
opinions about what people do" is basically the sibling of the horoscope.

~~~
mirimir
It is a rather abstract and nebulous article. Put more positively, it
encourages introspection and contemplation. In any case, "geeks who are
slightly evil" seems appropriate here :)

~~~
paulpauper
It's vague to encourage discussion , contemplation

------
chippy
The process outlined in the article echoes the theory that capitalism always
will take over and repurpose any opposition to it, and it echoes some of the
ideas from the Situationists Society of the Spectacle.

The "Society of the Spectacle" is an awful term, but it basically means a
consumerist society. A consumerist society is one where having the appearance
of something is more important than the actual something.

The process is one from: being to having to appearing. For example being very
wealthy (an upper class landed gentry family) to having wealth (middle class
earning money) to appearing to have wealth (people wearing the same clothes as
rich people, bling).

I'm thinking the same process is in effect with subcultures. The creators are
the ones who are cool (being cool) - the fanatics are the ones who have cool
(they have good taste, have the things the creators produce) and the masses
afterwards buy the appearance of cool (the image of what is cool is able to be
bought, authenticity is less important).

Another example: hippys being all hippy and being all free and socialist,
later on other hippies having the music and then later on everyone else buying
jeans to look like a hippy.

This leads me to thinking of today, and The Hipster. Is being a hipster about
buying things, or appearing to have things? Is it mass marketable? (beards,
haircuts, clothes) Is it a sub culture? Does it have any defining principles?

------
undertow

      "Eventually - around 2000 - everyone understood 
       this, and gave up hoping some subculture could 
       somehow escape this dynamic."
    

The whole article is really about music, and carries continuous undertones
relating to the mechanics of music scenes.

So why 2000 as the magic year music died? The Internet.

That's the whole answer. The internet killed music. Not just because of peer-
to-peer file sharing, but so many other aspects of pre-internet music
economies simply didn't make sense anymore, from composition, to production,
to distribution, to consumption, all aspects of recorded music were turned
inside out and flipped upside down.

Sure, _performing_ music hadn't really changed all that much, but the
controlled release of physical copies of music simply didn't work anymore, and
so The New Thing wasn't permitted to steep in its own Newness, and fester and
grow moldy and get weird anymore.

The transformation of distribution technologies from 1990 to 2000 was like
taking a healthy adult St. Bernard, and replacing all of its internal organs
with the organs of 50 kittens, and expecting it to come out healthier than
before. Except the St. Bernard's brain doesn't know how to breathe with 100
kitten lungs, or pump 50 kitten hearts, or swallow food into 50 kitten
stomachs and digest vital nutrients.

From a technology perspective, with music, where we are now, is like where
music was in 1950. We're still figuring out the new capabilities of what can
be done with this technology, the same way people back then were still
figuring out amplifiers and feedback and taped distortion. In that respect
1990 is still 40 years away, culturally speaking. Longer still if more
disruptive technology keeps getting introduced, and upsetting established
skills.

There are no more geeks to create scenes, because geeks haven't had enough
time to learn the vast depths of modern technology, to master it, and spawn
new scenes.

------
paulpauper
_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

~~~
slapresta
> 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.

~~~
michaelochurch
_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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
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.

~~~
kyllo
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
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.

~~~
devalier
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.

------
hliyan
The author of the book (of which this is a part) seems to have put a fair
amount work into it:
[http://meaningness.com/#contents](http://meaningness.com/#contents)

If the rest of the content is even half as good as this, it's well worth the
read.

------
eveningcoffee
I think that this story about Couchsurfing, featured almost at the same time
here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632928)
is very related.

All the elements of the movement evolution are there.

------
fsiefken
Can we have these insights applied to the problem of keeping quality high in
an online discussion group? I made rules but the sociopaths and MOPs keep
finding ways around them.

~~~
newuser88273
Maybe you know about usenet. Of course, usenet is dead. However, one of the
last groups to die was comp.lang.lisp, which is an instructive example in this
context.

I submit that what, or rather who, kept comp.lang.lisp alive for so long
beyond most of the rest of usenet was a guy named Eric Naggum. He may not have
identified the sociopath aspect, but did have the entitled MOPs in his
crosshairs and kept them out with (sometimes utterly brilliant, btw) flamage.

Sadly, comp.lang.lisp also points to something not mentioned in the linked
post: Entitled MOPs and sociopaths will not just silently accept their
exclusion.

When excluded, they attack, possibly indirectly through other venues. To this
day, in an astonishing number of online discussions of Lisp culture, you're
apt to find attacks on comp.lang.lisp in general, or Erik Naggum in
particular, for the high crime of having once excluded (for example) an
entitled MOP who wanted his homework done by comp.lang.lisp.

------
escape_goat
I have a few problems with this essay. The fundamental one is that it is
purely an invention. The author regards specific social/cultural clustering
patterns for a specific historical period as "subcultures"; this is part of a
grand chart of world-historic social and cultural change.

Nothing that comes before that or after that is properly examined in terms of
whether it might be a 'neotribal system of meaning' (from author's 2nd ibid
link: the crux of his definition of a subculture is neotribalism and rejection
of universalist [sic] systems of meaning).

No substantiation seems to be given for his assertion that subcultures
"reached the limit of fragmentation and died" beyond the observation that the
subcultures with which he was familiar from the preceding decades seem to have
died about then.

It's curious, because in North America, rock music ceased to be subcultural at
some time in the 1980s -- if it even had a clear subculture --- but metal
continues to have strong subcultural connotations. Death Metal has not ceased
to be a active genre of music, as far as I know.

So I am not sure what he means by subcultures "dying" even for those specific
subcultures. He has a pseudo-physical model that suggest that this would
basically be the point where the subculture ceased to generate a quantifiable
essence called "cool" and became "uncool." But this is purely a metaphor.

Combined with his implicitly denigrating use of language -- "muggles," "mops"
\--- to describe those who aren't really part of the real "scene," what this
suggests to me is that his analysis is entirely based on his own value
judgements and tastes, and that what he is really bemoaning is the death of
the scenes in which he felt included, energized, and involved.

This isn't an author who has done any research or rigorous work whatsoever.
His portrayal of the social dynamics of music/coolness subcultures
participated in by people in their 20s is interesting, and would certainly
ring true to anyone who has ever tried to put on a show or keep a scene alive.
But the end of those music scenes with which he was familiar was not a world-
historic death of subcultures.

There have been massive changes in technology over the past century, and
especially the past twenty years, that have greatly impacted the production of
music. There was a time before the 4-track recorder. There was a time before
the audio card. There was a time before the internet. All of these things have
had a massive impact on not only the _production_ of music, but also on our
_awareness_ of music. Information now comes in a glut, and perhaps this has
somehow ended the era of the local youth music scene, and the youth music
subculture. It would be worth discussing with some youths.

But subcultures still exist. Subcultures are not merely neo-tribal
identity/socialization networks for young adults.

The truth is that subcultures are inward-looking, and they are not going to
come find him and tell him they exist. They're not going to come ask him if
they're cool enough for him to be interested.

------
brandan
i feel like 4chan has a good immune response to this disease.

~~~
slapresta
Sociopaths stand away from it because it's too toxic to provide anything of
value: rather, they build at its fringes (e.g. 9gag)

------
jokoon
Trends bore me.

