It's hard to see how this is the future without experiencing it in some way personally.
Facebook Groups connected me with fans of a particular kind of fringe art about 4 years ago and made leaving Facebook really difficult. This might seem exceedingly anecdotal, and I get that, but you have to realize that, before Facebook, it would have been impossible for any of us to even know this interest existed; much less that there were others also into it. Nothing in the cultural canon quite sufficed, although some trends in music and literature had come close, none of them quite articulated the thing. Finding the thing was a necessary part of a certain stage of my life, and gave me a psychological grounding that something mainstream might never could have. I think admitting so actually devalues the spectacle in question, but I can't deny it. There was a value in the fact that this small group of people spoke this unique language. We became something like a tribe.
Attention economics are strange and only beginning to define our lives. Younger people will depend on fringe engagements to achieve a sense of self-identity that used to be a given. Life experience is going to take a new shape accordingly.
I think early evidence of this is in music scenes, which is haphazardly often the case with forms of sociocultural influence. No conventional wisdom can explain the proliferation of indie music and things like tape labels but these things are massive forces. They just genuinely don't care what you think. They have an audience and it's up to you to be a part.
Mastadon is strangely ahead of the curve and probably doing a poor job of meeting in the middle. I think it would benefit from shoving everyone into Mastadon.social at signup and letting them learn about instances from there. Finding a home is too difficult as it is. But, eventually, it does look like the future.
“Excellent—another sucker had bought into blaming the distribution mechanism rather than the group directing it for the message we pay for it to transmit!”
Before WW2, America was a culture desert. Europeans fleeing the war are the only reason NYC became an international culture hub.
Hip-hop is undoubtedly the most progressive Western art form. (Side note: hip-hop's genius appropriations of commercial symbolisms and it's will to collective empowerment directly underwrite and provide the language of the public engagement of today's millenials. It's influence is as deep as an ocean.) But while hip-hop is the only non-native wholly American cultural movement, it's American origins are a far cry from enlightment; more bound in shame. To say America created hip-hop would be an offense. Saying America stole it would be more accurate.
Blues, Jazz and Ragtime all predate WWII — and all influenced pretty much everything you hear today.
You could even argue that Breakbeat is American given its roots with the Winston’s.
American culture is vastly richer than many countries specifically because it is effectively an All Star team of traditions from everywhere. Thinking “American” is simply hot dogs and Hip Hop is to greatly undersell what has been one of the great cultural achievements in the history of the world. American culture is vastly diverse compared to, for example, France. You have Cajun/Creole in Louisiana, Tejano culture in Texas, cowboy culture in Montana, laid back “surfer” culture in California, Boston/Nee England culture, Chicago with it’s melange of Polish, Italian, African American. Where else in the world could you have sushi for lunch and watch a rodeo in the evening? To be clear, I am not saying American culture is “best,” I am just saying that to reduce American culture to Hip Hop is about like saying French culture is nothing more than Edith Piaf and baguettes. Americans even invented basketball and baseball — and most of the things I mention were in motion long before world war 2.
NYC was a culture hub long before Workd War 2. Read some de Tocqueville and learn a bit about American history before just engaging in a wholesale dismissal of America.
Appropriation and disproportionate credit for white people is a real and serious problem, but it's not the whole story. Most of the actual musicians who were inspired by black music fully acknowledged their inspirations and were often annoyed at how no one seemed to care about the people they looked up to.
The actual artists out on the stage doing the music know exactly what comes from where. Culture spreads like that: someone likes a piece and adds it to their own, fusing two cultures. It's how we have American Chinese food that looks nothing like Chinese Chinese food. (the xenophobic policies that led to it is another matter)
You have a very narrow and stereotyped view of American culture. The whole of it is not a few white-majority cities in the north and one over-funded region in the west.
I have an opinionated view of American culture, and I'm daily surrounded by other musicians, artists. These are the topics we discuss. I am opinionated as a result.
In my previous comment, please note when I say "hip-hop", I am not referring to music, but culture. Nonetheless...
I grew up in the south. My father was literally a clogger. I'm no stranger to folk. But, I am extremely skeptical of a lot of it's history. The mid-century folk-revival era did a real number on our conception of what's really there culture-wise. Behind the curtain, I am honestly afraid it's mostly puritanism, shame, and self-conflict. It's interesting but I think calling it a cultural movement is mostly romanticism. In terms of music, we could delve into details for days, and break down the whole history of hip-hop and jazz, and I do encourage that. There's a lot of good music there. But, I'm afraid it serves essentially the same end in terms of culture; a terribly familiar story. Hip-hop exhibits the whole of the cultural dynamic fairly explicitly, and is internationally renowned. Folk is mostly replicated in parody.
EDIT: Another thing to add... I think most people would be surprised how many contemporary folk musicians (young ones) would actually agree with me. They eventually are challenged with contending with things like: Did folk come from slaves? Or the working class? Or the fraught relations between the two? And is it reconcilable? Where did country music come from?
>> "In my previous comment, please note when I say "hip-hop", I am not referring to music, but culture. Nonetheless..."
We may have fundamentally incompatible perspectives if you see culture and art as separate things. I grew up surrounded by hip-hop (Atlanta), but I know better than to sing along with the n word as a white person. This is because the experience of the music is inseparable from one's experience with its culture.
Culture generally has a parental relationship to art. The art is of the culture but the culture is not of the art. I think we agree on that, but I totally see where you're coming from here because I am suggesting something else with folk.
I am basically saying that the legacy of American folk is just too mysterious to nail down, and too precarious to draw conclusions from. I wonder if this would be the case without the mid-century folk revival, which amounted to a mass-commercialization of the white American south as a suffering working-class. The older field recordings in the Library Of Congress suggest the music was predominantly made by slaves. The old radio recordings from Nashville tell a slightly different story and seem to stitch together something of an art form, likely for the very first time. Then folk-revival was a massively commercial effort that made it all look very pretty. But the culture of it all still remains vague. Touring the south and studying it's history doesn't suggest much of any concern for culture in any higher sense. Literacy was surprisingly high but they mostly read the bible. Music seems to have occupied a space more like entertainment than cultural reflection. A likely theory is that it was very much a culture for slaves, but merely entertainment for white people. Hopefully this clarifies my comprehension. Hip-hop is a full embodiment in comparison; a whole new world of unmitigated expression.
Even worse. Many people say they “don’t have anything to hide” because they too haven’t considered the vast consequences regardless of having something to hide. For starters, when the data is inaccurate, you might have something to hide that even you didn’t know about, and it could be responsible for all sorts of events and opportunities in your life both public and private without you even knowing. Things that give you an different life experience than your friends to an unknown degree. This sort of lack of knowledge, control, deprivation of explanation or closure etc. would be the lived experience of chaos and it’s one of the most frightening parts.
Practically everyone knows about the second world war, but nothing is being done about rising fascism. It has nothing to do with not knowing, it's just stupidity.
There is no rising fascism in America, if people really knew anything about the Wiemar Republic, Republican Spain, or March on Rome they would know that the left always loses when it tried to be humane and gain power. The only time the left gains power is when 'tankies' are the ones leading the resistance.
If you need a good example, look at Germany. They have very strict laws about it and while there are still fascists there (as there are everywhere), they do not run the country.
Edit: On a more practical note, it's always baffled me how normalised it is. People who defend fascists in the US media are still respected and hired. They might be prominent political figures. Somehow calling attention to someone who is fascist is confused by anyone doing something as simple as saying "liberals are evil!", as if the two party system there has anything to do with racial supremacy. As an outsider, you look at it and think "This is the country that helped liberate Europe from the Nazis. How are they not ashamed?". Maybe I think the first step is allowing shame to enter into things when you think about your nation, instead of a quasi-religious patriotism.
As an uninformed observer, one of the biggest issues I see is the US two party system. Do you think government funding would help with that? I've always seen it more as a weakness of the general US electoral FPTP system.
In the USA, this is just how it’s done. I’m not exaggerating; this is business as usual. Penalizing this would be a catastrophe for Americans. I think the sheer volume of the tricks, lies, gimmicks and gotchas cause each one bleed into the next to the point of immersion. The shimmer of the spectacle and hope become one and the same. Because every day is just another swindle at the Big Bazaar Of Life.
A decade ago I would have thought your comment was over the top. Then I moved to Germany. And was surprised to find an utter lack of spammy phone calls, no crowd of ubiquitous scammers vying for my attention, no surprise mystery medical bills, nothing. I was with my German girlfriend in a department store once, she tore a little slip off the stockings she was buying, put her name and email on it, and dropped it into a jug by the cash register. I gave her a "were you born yesterday" look and asked if she hadn't yet learned that these things are all scams. She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. A month later we won an all expenses paid trip to a resort in Turkey, it was on the tacky side but also the height of luxury and relaxation. All the stocking brand wanted from us in return was a few happy selfies to post on their Twitter account.
If more Americans knew that it doesn't have to be this way, maybe things could change.
I have more or less the same story moving to Austria. I get spammy calls but they are actually legit surveys (quality of life, political leanings, newspaper preferences, etc) and only because I gave up my phone number at a party many years ago and haven't bothered to have it removed. I get once of these survey calls about every 3-6 months and if I'm not in the mood I just tell them I don't have time and they never call back. On occasion they ask if they could call back at a later date.
Re: winning things - I won 500 Euro from Visa for entering a contest, where the only requirements were to fill out the online form with my name, age and email address, followed by using my Visa card 3 times in one month any of the following 3 months. I should note that Visa the company here doesn't actually function as a credit card like in the U.S., rather it's directly connected to your bank account, where at the end of the month any balance due is automatically deducted. If your account drops below zero, you just pay some interest at the end of the month. From my basic research (looking at my bank statements for the past 2 years), it's extremely low. In fact looking at my last "25% KEST" charges, I was in minus for 3 months last year, and the charge was 0,02 euro cents. I honestly have no idea how that works, but I assume we have some good consumer protections in place.
>Visa the company here doesn't actually function as a credit card like in the U.S., rather it's directly connected to your bank account
People get these concepts confused a lot.
Visa is a payment processor - that is, a company that facilitates electronic payments.
Different "payment types" (credit, debit, gift card) can use the Visa network.
Visa, the company, does not issue any credit cards or debit cards directly themselves, they only make agreements with other financial institutions who issue cards that use the Visa network to process payments.
So your debit card is issued by your bank and uses the Visa network to transfer funds.
Visa debit cards are also extremely common here in the US as well.
MasterCard is like Visa in it's just a payment processor, it doesn't issue cards itself. American Express and Discover, however, are both payment processors and issuing banks, they issue credit and debit cards themselves. It gets more complicated because other financial institutions issue credit cards that use the American Express payment network.
So because of all this I've had a debt card that switched from Visa to a MasterCard when the bank's agreement with Visa expired and they got a better deal with MasterCard. I also had a credit card that switched from using the American Express network to the Visa network.
I thought a debit card was just for withdrawing cash? We have bank cards (Bankomat Karte) for withdrawing cash - in fact, when you pay and want to use the card, many people just say "karte" (literally: card) to mean a bank (debit?) card and not a credit card.
Our Visa cards can also withdraw using a pin, but I don't know anyone who does (anecdotally speaking - but I do pay attention to shoppers ahead of me in line, seems like a rare occurrence). I personally use it to (very rarely) purchase products for which I don't have enough cash on hand, and because banks generally set the withdraw limit to 400€/day. On top of that, most places (IMO) still don't accept credit cards or will charge 3-5% fee (such as the official Apple dealer McShark). Visa transactions are also hindered in comparison, there tends to be less information available about the purchase and seller names are truncated to ~20 characters. Also the booking is often delayed (online) until the statement is sent per e/mail, unlike bank transactions which appear online within 24 hours.
What you initially described isn’t a “debit card” despite GPs post, but a debit card isn’t what you think either. A debit card can be used like an ATM card (what you call a Bankomat, and isn’t charged a cash advance fee like using a pin with a normal credit card), but it also can be used pinless like a credit card, just the money is immediately held in your bank account. That’s the difference with what you described originally, the immediate rather than end of month part. The closest thing really we have in the US generally used to what you describe is a “charge card”, which some versions of American Express are. You are required to settle up in full at the end of the month usually, though, and carrying a balance isn’t allowed (again, not always, but usually).
> I thought a debit card was just for withdrawing cash?
In many countries you can use the debit card to withdraw cash and make online and EFTPOS transactions. EFTPOS machines can process debit and credit cards. With debit cards the money is deducted from your account immediately or in your case at the end of the month. (but then it should be called credit not debit)
Good Lord, you're right. This sort of marketing could work, if Americans were more vigilant about punishing bad actors.
If someone in Germany tried an American-style scam, the sheer tangibility of the vision I have of angry Germans not effing stopping until the perps are put in jail is palpable.
Sadly, this seems to be a national attitude and those just don't seem to be transmissable.
Now I'm wondering whether Germany is the exception or the rule. I darn sure wouldn't want to trust anyone, say, in Russia. Not sure about Latin America though. Argentina might seem safe, but Mexico? Africa, mostly probably not.
This is certainly true. In fact, I would go so far as to say we (those born or raised in the US) are conditioned from a young age to become dependent on our consumer economy in order to lock us into a system where we have to accept this sort of behavior or go to extremes to reject it becoming an outcast or "wierdo".
This leads to the development of an ineffective coping mechanism where one learns to identify scams they have seen in the past and find a defense for it. This is like leaving a firewall wide open and only closing a specific port after an attack has occurred on that port. More precisely this is a reactive approach to defense.
A comprehensive approach to systematically develop effective safeguards in the US probably won't happen, ever. The people who want these safeguards are too busy with their day-to-day lives to dedicate any considerable amount of time to achieving it, meanwhile the people don't want anything to change have the time, money and influence to fight any attempt at reform. Meanwhile value is being extracted from the consumer which leads to a never-ending cycle.
This is getting a little scary with the shift to rent-seeking behavior. This is true from even the more established, trustworthy businesses (think Microsoft). A monthly subscription is not so bad, but when this becomes the normal way to buy things from the big names it legitimatizes the practice so a scammer can get their hands into your pocket forever.
The idea of democracy as a “rejection of aristocracy” has been well discredited for centuries now.
The topic of discussion here is not “social” but economic mobility. Let’s not mix them up so carelessly. Economic mobility is a measure of ability, or potential, not concrete events. To discuss “downward” economic mobility is to imagine wealth being forced upon these folk.
I wonder at what point will we stop thinking of Bill Gates as Robin Hood in the flesh.
What is the difference between Bill Gates “philanthropy” and a corporate PR campaign? For example, why is “philanthropy” promoting MasterCard across Africa a great way to address inequality? It appears to have had opposite effects in the US. But even if it were effective: philanthropy?
I appreciate the skepticism and perhaps credit belongs more with Melinda than Bill but it is hard to overstated the impact of the Gates Foundation in the world of aid. Seriously, I work in that world and their influence is both good and pervasive. It doesn't excuse previous behavior, but judged independently their impact has been absolutely enormous.
