Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Although that example, and that general scenario, is perhaps more aptly referred to as normcore than normie. It’s as if normcore is a post-alt movement toward normal.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
An example of this last point is the film The Rage in Placid Lake wherein the protagonist is raised in a hippy family, and rebels by becoming corporate. Within that parochial family context, the hippy is the norm, and the son opts for an alternative/counterculture, which happens to be the norm in the wider societal context.
Isn't this in large part how straight-edge arose in the 80s?

I'm now imagining a Dissensian version of this, where the parents are into some things that are sort of conventionally unconventional - say, Deleuze and Guattari, kabbalah - and the son instead gets heavily into Thomas Aquinas and steam trains.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Isn't this in large part how straight-edge arose in the 80s?

I'm now imagining a Dissensian version of this, where the parents are into some things that are sort of conventionally unconventional - say, Deleuze and Guattari, kabbalah - and the son instead gets heavily into Thomas Aquinas and steam trains.
Yeah straight-edge seems like a good example: a position that is defined as a departure from counterculture.
 

wild greens

Well-known member
Very american concept
Whats the uk equivalent
Goes the gym & can hum coma cat by tensnake?
Its a good riff to be fair
Lots of protein
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
my first thought on reading this thread was 'i've never heard anyone say this except on the internet'

when i post immediately after boxedjoy, the side of the screen reads 'BS'
 
Last edited:

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Isn't this in large part how straight-edge arose in the 80s?
Kind of, yeah

It was definitely a reaction not so much to actual hippies as to the mainstreaming of elements of hippie culture - i.e. by the late 70s everyone had long hair and was doing drugs, including the kind of dudes whose older brothers would've been beating up longhairs 10 years earlier. But it was also about things like 21+ shows at rock clubs - the original hardcore kids in D.C. were teenagers and their music like almost all of the first wave of hardcore, ca. 81-84 basically, was very much driven by teenage idiot energy (a large part of what makes it not just great but timeless - teenage idiot energy is common to every generation). Initially it was 100% countercultural tho, rather than a return to normality. To be a shaved head punk kid in the early 80s was often to get harassed and beat up by jocks etc (and response to that is where a significant of the violence in early hxc in D.C. and esp Boston and Socal originates).

Later once Sxe really develops into its own largely separate subculture within hardcore it takes on more of that normcore vibe. The late 80s youth crew/posi side - Youth of Today, Chain of Strength, etc - visual style was famously super preppy. The much darker end of hardline - bands like Raid who were (extremely) militantly anti-abortion, or the infamous Vegan Reich - took it to this place of rebelling against American society for being in fact, too permissive, in a bizarre inversion of the traditional spirit of punk - hardline was essentially religious fundamentalism dressed up in hardcore trappings - reminds of something like radical fundamentalist students during the Iranian Revolution. That's more what you're talking about, a rebelling against rebellion, tho not familial.

Important to note that Sxe was always a minority of punk culture and hardline was a small minority of that minority, and vocally/strenuously opposed even within straight edge - there was a lot of back + forth in the 90s. I was in a totally different area of punk, and a bit too young, to experience it 1st hand, but was vaguely aware of it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
theres a subtle difference between normal and normie though. @suspended is normal but I wouldnt say a normie.
Can you explain what that difference is though for the older ones amongst us... er, obviously I know exactly what you mean here but I doubt I would explain it as well as you and I think that you should lay it out simply in terms that, say, Leo could grasp easily.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Kind of, yeah
The TLDR/clarification I guess is that straight edge was a reaction but not against counterculture. In so much as the counterculture had become mainstream so to react against it was to create a new counterculture.

There is definitely a good bit of anti-hippie sentiment spread thru both 77 punk and 1st wave hardcore, but it's more about trappings than core ideals. As G.I.S.M. famously said, "Punks Is Hippies".
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Can you explain what that difference is though for the older ones amongst us... er, obviously I know exactly what you mean here but I doubt I would explain it as well as you and I think that you should lay it out simply in terms that, say, Leo could grasp easily.
Nominally normal ain't no normie.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Normal vs normie is pretty straightforward

Normal == "normal" job, lifestyle, tastes, interests. There's a lot that could be said about what constitutes "normal" and how that intersects with race, heteronormativity, neurodivergence, etc, but normal is basically a shorthand for something like mainstream

Normie == the above but in addition largely ignorant of things outside normality. Normal plus ignorance.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
So in the U.S. the closer you are to being a straight white person the easier it is to be normal. Not that you have to be, just that the likelihood and availability of "normality" diminish the further you get from that paradigm.

Other cultures may have a different model of normality but the fact that it's more available the closer you are to it is probably universally true.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Since this is a forum of mostly straight mostly white mostly dudes, normality or not is probably more choice than imposition for most if not all of us

Something cultural capital yadda yadda
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah individual experiential bias, ramified by network effect, is what turns a personal sense of normality into a status quo - and everyone around is subject to it, on the reactive.
 
Top