Kind of bizarre how Fight Club was so influential a couple decades ago, but doesn’t seem to have much cultural impact today. This exact theme is one of the most memorable quotes from the movie.
Too counter-cultural and anti-money for today’s young people, I think. Everyone’s trying to make it, not drop out of society.
Fight Club came out almost 30 years ago. Most young people have probably never heard of it.
Also there's no such thing as "counterculture" in a world where culture isn't manufactured and controlled by some central authority. When there was only physical media and a few tv stations, "culture" was a fixed point one could obviously align with or against. Today in the post-internet non cultural milieu, anti-capitalist and anti-work ideals are everywhere but they just don't stand out the way the hippies did back in the day.
That’s a part of it but I don’t think it’s really that external. I think people in general, themselves, are just less interested in the counter cultural ethos. It doesn’t feel to me like anti-consumerist cultural movements are being founded and then co-opted by commerce. Rather they aren’t being founded at all, and if they are, it’s just some lazy online thing with no actual real-world presence.
> I think people in general, themselves, are just less interested in the counter cultural ethos.
Gen Z is less patriotic than any other generation, so the counter-culture of their generation is really just... culture. Everyone kind of just agrees that patriotism is a joke, politics are a joke, taking any of this seriously or contributing to it more than necessary is a joke. Gen Z protests as much as any previous generation. The fact that it's not taken seriously in traditional politics is just another signal for them to opt out.
The issue is not that there's no counter-culture, it's that we've designed a system of governance that can withstand it without budging (or at least pretends like it can). Long term, the system will starve. Good luck finding anyone competent to join the military, engage passionately with their jobs, or contribute to civil service. It's not gonna happen. The american dream is now to be on the winning side of a scam.
It might take some time for something else to arise from the ashes of all this, but the first step is already occurring.
Too counter-cultural and anti-money for today’s young people, I think. Everyone’s trying to make it, not drop out of society.