I think being counter culture nowadays means creating instead of consuming.
We all know America (and the world) is a culture of consumers. On a large scale, we take the natural resources of the planet and convert them into products that consumers (us) buy. There’s a reason when we talk about the economy, we citizens are called “consumers” because we are literally consuming the resources of the planet that we’ve turned into products.
But consuming not only happens when you buy something. You scroll TikTok, you consume. You scroll IG, you consume. Twitter, Reddit, SnapChat, the internet as a whole. It’s short bits of entertainment meant to be easily consumable that you digest for half a second, forget about, and then move on.
This theme of everyone living their lives by purely consuming and not creating is something we’ve seen in movies like Wall-E and Idiocracy. (And in both those films the citizens had to learn to create again to regain their humanity.)
The system itself, is designed for consuming. So counter culture then, must be creating.
Being counter culture, to me, means creating art. (And not with the intention to become famous or make money.) Making art purely for the sake of making art. You don’t just sit around and think of yourself and what other people will think of you, you get up and create something. You take risks, you experiment. You don’t just spend your days consuming.
Just something to think about.
Till next time,
-Oliver Endahl