As a huge fan of Fishbone, who did not make it big, despite being oh so close in the early 90ies... it'd be nice if there were a better balance. They've seemingly struggled over the years and kept going, but you get the sense that the guys don't have a lot of economic security that they might have with a few big hits.
> The only thing that’s unprecedented about these craven cash-ins is how well they seem to be working. Selling out no longer carries a stigma—if anything, fans are excited for tie-ins between their favorite bands and their favorite brands, no matter how shameless.
I feel like this only really makes sense in contrast to specifically the 90s? This wasn't some eternal cultural rule that changed in the 2000s, it's just two pretty recent trends in mainstream culture. You can still find people who are snobby about Drake compared to Kendrick or Taylor Swift compared to Chappelle Roan nowadays anyway. That mindset isn't gone?
Right! Even in the 90s this doesn't make sense. If The New Kids on the Block had sold branded Oreos, they would have flown off the shelves. There have always been mainstream pop culture figures with dedicated fandoms that don't care whether they have "sold out".
But I do think there is a real difference here. I just think it's a media difference. It's true that in the 90s (and I would say longer than that) culture writers would pretty universally scoff at "sellouts" and lionize auteurs. But those gatekeepers have lost all their power to control the message. I think that's the real difference.
I don't know if I buy this. The intro Pearl Jam story is only noteworthy because it's unique. Cobain wasn't one of a million examples of counter-culture; we still talk about him today because it was uniquely his brand (to be incredibly famous while seemingly rejecting the fame).
Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars were on Wheaties. Ronald Regan (the actor!) was a spokesperson for GE.
Right. If anything, the 1990s were the decade of apex celebrity superstardom? You had singers like George Michael on the covers of mainstream magazines and in TV ads, you had all the boy bands (New Kids on the Block, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC)... and speaking of Hyundai, the Rolling Stones got paid millions for the promo song for Windows 95.
The author was a teen back then, and teens to be countercultural, but I don't think they're drawing the right conclusions from that.
You mean, the start of the trend of apex celebrity superstardom. Because also now, Ariana Grande has her cosmetics line, Adele is on so many covers, and money flows from and to all for promotions and everything.
Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, and Ronald Regan are all great examples of people who were considered sellouts at the time. It didn't hinder their mainstream commercial success, but there were a large number of people that definitely did not consider them cool.
Sellouts have always existed at some level, but now it's different, I don't even think a lot of kids know what "sellout" means.
I was alert to popular culture by the time Thriller happened and I don't recall anybody thinking Michael Jackson was a "sellout". Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson did not one but two duets together.
I think it's cyclical. Punk in the early 80s was a reaction to the excesses of 70s superbands (e.g. Johnny Rotten's "I hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt). Then things built up again to "monsters of rock" arena tours, The Spice Girls, and hair bands before getting torn down again by the likes of Nirvana.
(Hell, rock and roll was born as an anti-establishment thing in the 1950s)
Maybe we're just due for another one of the inflection points where being anti-cool will become cool again.
Ok, the Spice Girls were formed 1994, the same year Kurt Cobain died, but Take That and lots of other boy/girl bands and other extremely commercial pop acts were contemporary with Nirvana and the whole grunge phenomenon. So it's not cyclical, it's actually two sides of the same medal. There are to this day still lots of bands that hold their "indie ethos" high, the only thing different in the 1990s was that some of those indie/alternative bands were actually successful enough to be considered (shudder) mainstream...
> There are to this day still lots of bands that hold their "indie ethos" high, the only thing different in the 1990s was that some of those indie/alternative bands were actually successful enough to be considered (shudder) mainstream...
The late 80s to early 2000s was a distribution sweet-spot for groups like that.
Early MTV didn't always line up with what mainstream radio played, but gave more new artists opportunities. This continued up at least through Eminem getting his breakout in that way - I wouldn't say he shunned fame, but until breaking through with a music video there the radio machine wasn't giving him that fame. Tapes, and later CD burners, also massively accelerated word-of-mouth for stuff that wasn't the immediate first choice for top-40 format radio stations because it let more people share more things. Then you had the internet/napster era supercharge that. "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy became a huge hit because a local DJ in Hawaii found it on Napster and started playing it.
Now we've crossed a tipping point where there's more indie stuff available than ever, but also so much personalized listening where it's getting harder again to get Nirvana-level famous outside of the system. But a Chappel Roan still fits the bill pretty well. Did you have lesbian dance-pop with 80s camp on your bingo card for massive mainstream popularity a few years ago?
I think you're overstating the uniqueness of Cobain's "brand" and underestimating the size of the anti-corporate movement in the popular culture of the 1990s. First, it wasnt really Cobain per se—Nirvana were huge for a few years, but Cobain really only became a household name in death. More importantly the rejection of corporate influence and "mainstream" art was the guiding ethos of that whole genre, and eventually of lots of other artists as well . "Smells Like Teen Spirit" may have been the spark, but you could see the influence of that movement for many years, across the punk revival, riot girrls, zine culture, independent film, "culture-jamming" efforts like Naomi Klein's No Logo, etc (to say nothing of the glam, "hair" bands who were instantly put out of work by the advent of grunge).
Not overestimating his uniqueness in being anti-corporate, as much as his uniqueness in being both anti-corporate AND mainstream. And you might be right that his mainstream appeal came later, but I think the point still stands.
This reminds me a lot of the tension the I felt when I was first coming of age as a young adult in the late 00s. At that point, it wasn't grunge, it was hipsters. But I always felt like: How can hipsters be hip and counterculture and a movement that is big deal culturally at the same time? As soon as a "counterculture" becomes a mainstream movement, it's no longer a counterculture...
So which is it? Was Cobain a big deal in the mainstream, or was he countercultural? I don't think you can have it both ways.
> So which is it? Was Cobain a big deal in the mainstream, or was he countercultural? I don't think you can have it both ways.
But why not? Result (huge sales, mainstream popularity) and process (not aiming at that goal, or even resenting ending up there) are entirely decoupled because the result is the sum of actions done by everyone else and only the process is the action of the person involved.
To be a big deal in the mainstream is about saturation and mass appeal.
To be countercultural is usually to be celebrated for the process/intent.
Entirely possible to hit both of those.
An even longer-lasting example: Radiohead repeatedly shifted directions after huge hits into more-and-more avant garde styles. But many of their songs kept ending up hugely popular regardless. Their intent was "let's do what we want to do, not just try to appease the lowest common denominator" - a classic "indie" sentiment. But it ended up appealing to huge numbers of people anyway, time after time. Even today's kids are picking them up in substantial amounts.
All punks - and quite a few non punks - are aware of NOFX. They refused to play the game yet had a 40+ year career and even bigger impact on punk music since the late 80's.
I think this is a reasonably framing, and I agree with your take by this framing. But I don't think it's the same thing as "mainstream" vs "countercultural". I think those two things are just antonyms.
IMO the tension is a feature, not a bug. We (humans) put far too much emphasis on the current state (is Cobain a mainstream success or counter culture hero?). We need to focus on the change we're observing; Cobain was an alternative that we watched catch on and take over everyone with a pair of Doc Marten boots regardless if they were a punk or a sophmore at Duke. The tension exists in the change we are living within, and it does not move at a steady, universal state. I liken trying to decide "What is this?" to trying to stand still in a raging river. It doesn't really matter as the current churns past, with logs zipping along and rocky outcrops threatening. The "movement" either consumes itself (ex: Pop Music), is terminated prematurely (like Cobain) or consciously never lets itsef happen (ex: Nofx)
> So which is it? Was Cobain a big deal in the mainstream, or was he countercultural? I don't think you can have it both ways.
Both, and it's referenced in the chorus of the song In Bloom. They were becoming popular in the mainstream and attracted an audience who were the antithesis of what they believed in:
"He's the one who likes / All our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means / Knows not what it means"
see also: people who sing along to their favorite patriotic song Born In The USA.
There's one good part of this article, the chart of sequel/reboot/spinoff movies. And I wonder if it's just cause of movie piracy, cause it really went to crap around 2010. There's effectively a price ceiling now on how much you can charge to view a movie, which changes the risk/reward. Why make something new that can be a total hit or miss when you can stick to an existing brand and make something just ok?
A non-percentage-based one would be more interesting. The whole MCU phenomenon would likely increase the absolute number, but I doubt that it would be as dramatic. What the chart as-is fails to show is the specific loss of other types of movies that have moved to other media.
Ever since made-for-cable TV series went mainstream with HBO in the late-90s, a huge chunk of yesterday's non-blockbuster movies have become today's TV series. And there are massively more TV series than ever before.
That "25%" in the 80s shows you that there were already tons of those, and it's easy to remember them (Jaws 2, Empire Strikes Back, Temple of Doom, Aliens, Godfather Pt 2, etc etc etc).
Yeah I tend to agree. What is the thesis here? Is it that being indie and not selling out was mainstream and now it's not? I don't think that adds up. It wasn't mainstream then either, that's what was notable about it...
So is it that there is no culture that feels this way about selling out in the present? I'm pretty skeptical of that! Is it really true that if I went to a high school or university right now and asked every kid there what they think about selling out and consumerism, that I wouldn't find a subculture there that feels that way? I suspect I would find that subculture.
So is it just that this subculture is smaller now? Ok, maybe so. But this seems like a much weaker thesis?
Or is it actually that this subculture is less visible now? This seems the most plausible to me. Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam were interesting and frequently reported upon. But then this is a more boring phenomenon: things that are interesting become less novel and less interesting over time.
I do very much like the section in this essay pointing out that the masses in the US have changed from temporarily embarrassed millionaires to temporarily embarrassed celebrities. That resonates!
Indeed, in music there is a fandom subculture where bands are appreciated only so long as they aren't too successful - hence the indie music scene. Some fans want to discover new bands that are obscure, but not too obscure (after all, they need somebody they can talk to about the band, thus the fan can prove themselves to be cool for knowing all about them). The ideal band is one that only cool people know about, not those lame masses who only ever hear commercial music.
I also generally think it's not that different today.
There's no numbers there to show that disliking fame was bigger than compared to now. Billie Eilish has written big hits about not being happy as a result of fame or the downsides of it.
Also, look at the amount of anti-AI/anti-big-tech memes/commentary/activity today. You can draw a straight line from No Logo to that. And I don't think it's that hard to extend that line MUCH further back than Naomi Klein. Open Source itself has plenty of adherents and is inherently a don't-sell-out movement and mentality.
"Selling out" as a concept back then only came about because everything felt fake and contrived (to some people). Just like today, not everyone would agree that everything is fake and contrived - look at how many people are still listening/watching some of the "nepo babies" or suspected"industry plants"...
The pop-culture part of this article is just "I have nostalgia for this thing I remember and knew a lot about" while ignoring the pre-existing-and-continual Michael Jackson / New Kids on the Block / Vanilla Ice / N Sync / Britney Spears mega-stardom super-celebrity mainstream hype machine that was also massively successful through the whole period.
Many people today are listening/watching/reading AI generated music, art and literature, so a sizeable part of the consumers simply don't give a hoot on the culture part - whether the artists sold out or not, what opinions they might have, or whether they exist at all.
> Everyone now has the ability to go viral and make it big financially, so it does feel like much of our actions (even if that's not our goal) are shaped that way. A random person may not want to be a rich, famous Instagram influencer... but that doesn't stop them from acting similarly (posting photos for likes).
This is a good point. Though I think I'd phrase it as: the ubiquity of the revenue streams means all behavior plausibly looks like profit seeking behavior. I don't mean to be nitpicky, but I think the problem or danger lies in the effect it has on the observer, rather than the actor. To me, it's not so bad that someone might engage in profit seeking, as a little treat or way of life, but that this seems indistinguishable in social media means I engage skeptically to what could be genuine social behavior. "The only winning move is not to play" if you want to avoid being a pawn in someone's profit game. But this comes at the cost of killing the social game, the reason I'm on the app to begin with! Of course, I could just log-off; but also not playing the (profit) game could mean ignoring goal, while still making moves in the social game.
I don't know about the framing, won't speculate on causes, but the phenomenon being described is real. I have no idea how far it goes back, at least to Woody Guthrie if we're just describing people who history and artistic output I'm personally aware of, but I'm sure more than that. What the author is writing about specifically began with baby boomer countercultures of the 60s rejecting commercialism in any form. Part of that ethos for many would have also rejected any movie starring Ronald Reagan or playing sports (other than maybe running).
But everything can be co-opted. When whatever real world Don Draper managed to use hippieism to sell Coca Cola in 1971, that began the discrediting of this first wave, and punk eventually emerged as a second wave. The rockers versus disco shenanigans may have included punk, but punk as its own distinct culture rejected larger scale rock and roll just as much. As a musical movement, it was a rejection of Kiss and Aerosmith more than Donna Summer.
But then punk, too, stayed underground in the hardcore movement the cited Beastie Boys were a part of in the 80s, but also influenced mainstream rock, and grunge emerged as a rejection of that, the excesses of hair metal, glam, and even something like Guns n Roses.
Then grunge softened into "alternative rock" and Nirvana became Goo Goo Dolls. The author's point is where is the reaction to that? It feels like grunge was the last true anti-consumerism rejection of musicians selling out, softening their sound to become more popular. I've been watching Daria for the first time in 30 years the past few weeks, which I watched originally but barely remembered, and it hits hard these days. It explores this exact dynamic quite well. Daria's parents are middle-aged ex-hippies questioning themselves for becoming an attorney and a consultant. Daria herself won't wear makeup and worries about replacing her glasses with contacts because it will make her more attractive and thus less authentic. She gets mad at Jane for joining the track team because of how bought-in she to the notion that a jock of any kind is already selling their soul whether they have success or not. She isn't mad at being unpopular. She wants to be unpopular. That was a very real ethos of the 90s I remember experiencing quite starkly myself. Popularity as inherently bad, aligning your incentives as a person less to being true to yourself and more to being what others want you to be.
Do teens of the 20s still experience anything like that? You'd think it would be universal, but if there's any musical movements associated with it, I'm not aware of them. There's the revival of socialism and distrust of capitalism, eat the rich, but as I think the author is getting at, Che and Castro probably wouldn't have spared Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. The remaining question for me is whether this is still true in actual youth culture. I think the author and myself are probably dating each other here. Even Taylor Swift is nearly 40. Her concerts are selling for so much because her fans are in their 30s and actually have money. I'm not sure this is what actual kids and teenagers are listening to and whatever their sentiments about culture and consumerism may be, us adults probably don't even know. It's the nature of underground movements that most of us don't learn about them until they go mainstream.
I think the world has bigger problems than Lady Gaga's Oreos. That said, why not say "Stop Eating Oreos" altogether? Although they are certainly yummy, the sugar in them is a lot worse for people than Lady Gaga's association.
I will say, Oreos are one of the better vegan cookies on the market. The ones purposely advertized as vegan tend to be less tasty. But yeah, 100% should not be a regular thing to eat.
Definitely a fun read, I almost spit out my coffee after reading about Gen Z thinking nirvana is a clothing brand.
But I don’t follow with the whole premise. The mobility hypothesis is interesting, that people no longer see rich people as something attainable. But becoming famous through influencing or something on that vain. But famous people have been sellouts for far longer than i can remember. Kate bush did some weird promotion for a Dutch theme park called de Efteling and we have been messing with millennials for the past 20 years that nirvana is headlining the biggest Dutch music festival every year. “Ooh yeah i love that song”. And as far as I know Paris Hilton played half of the world into thinking that she was dumb as a rock.
Think that brands have given up on old school advertising. Just god lazy to give people a big bag of money for exposure. For how long will that work until people get bored of that? Yes, a music artist aligning themselves with Pantone as a color once is novel. But how many times does that really stay interesting? Just lazy advertising what only work for a couple of years until the larger crowed stops caring about the next branded Oreo deal.
> Why don’t the poor people vote to take all the money away from the rich people and redistribute it amongst themselves?
It's because the Powers That Be don't put it on the ballot. If you put "take 99% of the money from the 1000 richest billionaires (about $10 trillion, I think), and nobody has to pay any income taxes for the next four years" on some sort of national ballot, I think there's a very good chance that it would pass.
That law would take a hammer to average US quality of life almost overnight. Its hard to state how dramatic the societal upheaval would be and how destructive.
Author is way off base. Might as well tell me to stop breathing air, except they stopped selling air 6 years ago and I’ve been gasping ever since.
Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago.
Worse, it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life, showed me that true love is possible, then disappeared forever in barely a month. I’m still reeling.
I really liked Selena Gomez's Oreos, but I would prefer that Oreo brought them back as "horchata flavored" or "cinnamon cream flavored" so I didn't have awkward conversations every time I accidentally said, "I like Selena Gomez flavor" and people would ask how I knew what Selena Gomez tasted like.
There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them.
When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.
Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy
> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it.
Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.
If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.
> If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it.
Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.
Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.
Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.
In the capitalist Utopia that would be true, but that is not the case in any country on this planet.
The war being waged is not based on customer choice, its based on backroom dealing, who you know and invester interrests.
The products used by many are the products their investors have an interest boosting. One example look at what SaaS startups seeded on this site use, other SaaS from same network and investors.
Nothing about it based on war of pricing, quality or experience.
I’ve been investing in the VC space since about 2019. I can assure you that you are just wrong. Venture capital is alive and well well in America and it represents large swaths of products. These startups take on giants everyday and win.
> when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life
Sometimes I think Americans are completely lost to the rest of us, residing in a haze of consumerism and political divide as they do. Then sometimes I read something like this and I cannot deny a certain curiosity as regards the finer differences between Oreo Coke and Coke Oreo.
We have coke in my country (of both the Coca Cola and cocaine varieties, and even the pure carbon variety used for steel smelting) and also Oreos are readily available in most supermarkets. Can any of the US based HN visitors enlighten us about the exact mixture required to produce Oreo Coke (but not, preferably, Coke Oreo)?
WRT to Oreo Coke, the best description is Vanilla Coke with a dark chocolate flavor, but somehow not like the chocolate a European might imagine.
I found out recently that Oreo is in fact made with real cocoa; I find this surprising and still somewhat hard to believe.
The drink’s unique combination of flavors somehow made the whole experience less cloying than a typical zero sugar coke. And also, mysteriously, it was quite satiating, almost like I had eaten actual cookies. Except not, because any American can tell you that Oreo has negative satiation - you can eat an Oreo from a state of not being hungry at all, then discover you have eaten a whole Family Size pack.
I like the premise. However i think there's an angle about the death of religion. It happened before most people were ready to stop being religous. Energy went to sports teams, heretical charismatics and celebrities. I do worry that jake paul or mr beast or someone like that will become president. Oprah probably could have if she'd tried.
People read one person's opinion now almost as much if not more than people read the news.
I do think its on the nose about belief, people want to believe they want to be famous and can be famous and people feel less like they can be rich.
I also wonder if its just counter culture though and we're due another cycle. I find it upsetting that so many people aspire to be digital beggars.
I don't care who has their name on the package. I just enjoy the different flavors. The Selena Gomez ones were great. I appreciate the different flavors occasionally, and buy them from time to time if I see them.
I realize most people aren't like me. But that's even more reason to not bother to tell people this. People who like Lady Gaga are going to feel inspired to buy her Oreos, no matter what you say. They know she's already mega-rich, and they are happy to keep giving her money. You aren't going to stop that.
The author describes a world that existed not that long ago where similar tie-ins would still be popular, but where engaging with them would be seen by some people as a guilty pleasure or beneath you. I don't think you're going to stop Lady Gaga fans from buying Lady Gaga products, but a resurrection of some anti-consumerist crowds would be a welcome sight, because they don't seem to really exist anymore.
Stop eating oreos because they changed the formula, the filling can now be described as white paste product, and they want $4.99 for the "family" size now. I know this isn't what the article is about, but I'm sad by what Oreos have become.
I mean: Yes, but you introduced the concept of lard. And I'm nostalgic for lard (and for OS/2 Warp).
The filling for Oreos used to just be lard that was folded together with granulated cane sugar. That's all that the white stuff was (according to a good friend of mine who made Oreos way back then, and still makes them today). It definitely was a different experience back then.
So was IBM's now-completely-forgotten WebExplorer browser, especially when hacked to have 8 network threads downloading at once instead of 4. :)
And that's OK. Modern Oreos are still tasty; they're just not quite the same. And the modern web experience still works, even though it is very different compared to what it was back then.
MCA wouldn't have dropped that line about not selling his songs for no tv ads if it wasn't something lots of his colleagues were doing. (And Mike D wouldn't have rhymed "commercial" with "commercial" for the same reason)
I read and enjoyed this article but strongly disagree with the thesis.
Oreos are as important a part of life as anything else. People have feelings, memories, and good experiences with it. Just because a big company makes them instead of a small doesn't make that any less valid.
Hell, michaelangelo had to balance the art of his soul with what his patrons wanted.
And the same artist can make one spiritually deep, untouched by consumerism piece and also make a music video with Mario the next week. A healthy life and mix can include both.
> The internet decapitated art criticism, elevating the YouTube commenter to the same level as the Pitchfork editor.
Part of that issue is people think "reviews" and "criticism" is one and the same. Ideally, a critic places the artwork in appropriate historical context and provides analysis. But most people just want Numbers or THumbs Ups.
I misread the title and was confused and appalled for a few seconds sorting through the word being "Oreos" instead of "Orgasms" and the meaning that word has in Urban Dictionary.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 12.7 ms ] threadI feel like this only really makes sense in contrast to specifically the 90s? This wasn't some eternal cultural rule that changed in the 2000s, it's just two pretty recent trends in mainstream culture. You can still find people who are snobby about Drake compared to Kendrick or Taylor Swift compared to Chappelle Roan nowadays anyway. That mindset isn't gone?
But I do think there is a real difference here. I just think it's a media difference. It's true that in the 90s (and I would say longer than that) culture writers would pretty universally scoff at "sellouts" and lionize auteurs. But those gatekeepers have lost all their power to control the message. I think that's the real difference.
It really was “I hate success. Down with consumerism, buy my t-shirt”
Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars were on Wheaties. Ronald Regan (the actor!) was a spokesperson for GE.
The author was a teen back then, and teens to be countercultural, but I don't think they're drawing the right conclusions from that.
Sellouts have always existed at some level, but now it's different, I don't even think a lot of kids know what "sellout" means.
(Hell, rock and roll was born as an anti-establishment thing in the 1950s)
Maybe we're just due for another one of the inflection points where being anti-cool will become cool again.
The late 80s to early 2000s was a distribution sweet-spot for groups like that.
Early MTV didn't always line up with what mainstream radio played, but gave more new artists opportunities. This continued up at least through Eminem getting his breakout in that way - I wouldn't say he shunned fame, but until breaking through with a music video there the radio machine wasn't giving him that fame. Tapes, and later CD burners, also massively accelerated word-of-mouth for stuff that wasn't the immediate first choice for top-40 format radio stations because it let more people share more things. Then you had the internet/napster era supercharge that. "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy became a huge hit because a local DJ in Hawaii found it on Napster and started playing it.
Now we've crossed a tipping point where there's more indie stuff available than ever, but also so much personalized listening where it's getting harder again to get Nirvana-level famous outside of the system. But a Chappel Roan still fits the bill pretty well. Did you have lesbian dance-pop with 80s camp on your bingo card for massive mainstream popularity a few years ago?
So which is it? Was Cobain a big deal in the mainstream, or was he countercultural? I don't think you can have it both ways.
But why not? Result (huge sales, mainstream popularity) and process (not aiming at that goal, or even resenting ending up there) are entirely decoupled because the result is the sum of actions done by everyone else and only the process is the action of the person involved.
To be a big deal in the mainstream is about saturation and mass appeal.
To be countercultural is usually to be celebrated for the process/intent.
Entirely possible to hit both of those.
An even longer-lasting example: Radiohead repeatedly shifted directions after huge hits into more-and-more avant garde styles. But many of their songs kept ending up hugely popular regardless. Their intent was "let's do what we want to do, not just try to appease the lowest common denominator" - a classic "indie" sentiment. But it ended up appealing to huge numbers of people anyway, time after time. Even today's kids are picking them up in substantial amounts.
Both, and it's referenced in the chorus of the song In Bloom. They were becoming popular in the mainstream and attracted an audience who were the antithesis of what they believed in:
"He's the one who likes / All our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means / Knows not what it means"
see also: people who sing along to their favorite patriotic song Born In The USA.
Ever since made-for-cable TV series went mainstream with HBO in the late-90s, a huge chunk of yesterday's non-blockbuster movies have become today's TV series. And there are massively more TV series than ever before.
That "25%" in the 80s shows you that there were already tons of those, and it's easy to remember them (Jaws 2, Empire Strikes Back, Temple of Doom, Aliens, Godfather Pt 2, etc etc etc).
So is it that there is no culture that feels this way about selling out in the present? I'm pretty skeptical of that! Is it really true that if I went to a high school or university right now and asked every kid there what they think about selling out and consumerism, that I wouldn't find a subculture there that feels that way? I suspect I would find that subculture.
So is it just that this subculture is smaller now? Ok, maybe so. But this seems like a much weaker thesis?
Or is it actually that this subculture is less visible now? This seems the most plausible to me. Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam were interesting and frequently reported upon. But then this is a more boring phenomenon: things that are interesting become less novel and less interesting over time.
I do very much like the section in this essay pointing out that the masses in the US have changed from temporarily embarrassed millionaires to temporarily embarrassed celebrities. That resonates!
There's no numbers there to show that disliking fame was bigger than compared to now. Billie Eilish has written big hits about not being happy as a result of fame or the downsides of it.
Also, look at the amount of anti-AI/anti-big-tech memes/commentary/activity today. You can draw a straight line from No Logo to that. And I don't think it's that hard to extend that line MUCH further back than Naomi Klein. Open Source itself has plenty of adherents and is inherently a don't-sell-out movement and mentality.
"Selling out" as a concept back then only came about because everything felt fake and contrived (to some people). Just like today, not everyone would agree that everything is fake and contrived - look at how many people are still listening/watching some of the "nepo babies" or suspected"industry plants"...
The pop-culture part of this article is just "I have nostalgia for this thing I remember and knew a lot about" while ignoring the pre-existing-and-continual Michael Jackson / New Kids on the Block / Vanilla Ice / N Sync / Britney Spears mega-stardom super-celebrity mainstream hype machine that was also massively successful through the whole period.
This is a good point. Though I think I'd phrase it as: the ubiquity of the revenue streams means all behavior plausibly looks like profit seeking behavior. I don't mean to be nitpicky, but I think the problem or danger lies in the effect it has on the observer, rather than the actor. To me, it's not so bad that someone might engage in profit seeking, as a little treat or way of life, but that this seems indistinguishable in social media means I engage skeptically to what could be genuine social behavior. "The only winning move is not to play" if you want to avoid being a pawn in someone's profit game. But this comes at the cost of killing the social game, the reason I'm on the app to begin with! Of course, I could just log-off; but also not playing the (profit) game could mean ignoring goal, while still making moves in the social game.
But everything can be co-opted. When whatever real world Don Draper managed to use hippieism to sell Coca Cola in 1971, that began the discrediting of this first wave, and punk eventually emerged as a second wave. The rockers versus disco shenanigans may have included punk, but punk as its own distinct culture rejected larger scale rock and roll just as much. As a musical movement, it was a rejection of Kiss and Aerosmith more than Donna Summer.
But then punk, too, stayed underground in the hardcore movement the cited Beastie Boys were a part of in the 80s, but also influenced mainstream rock, and grunge emerged as a rejection of that, the excesses of hair metal, glam, and even something like Guns n Roses.
Then grunge softened into "alternative rock" and Nirvana became Goo Goo Dolls. The author's point is where is the reaction to that? It feels like grunge was the last true anti-consumerism rejection of musicians selling out, softening their sound to become more popular. I've been watching Daria for the first time in 30 years the past few weeks, which I watched originally but barely remembered, and it hits hard these days. It explores this exact dynamic quite well. Daria's parents are middle-aged ex-hippies questioning themselves for becoming an attorney and a consultant. Daria herself won't wear makeup and worries about replacing her glasses with contacts because it will make her more attractive and thus less authentic. She gets mad at Jane for joining the track team because of how bought-in she to the notion that a jock of any kind is already selling their soul whether they have success or not. She isn't mad at being unpopular. She wants to be unpopular. That was a very real ethos of the 90s I remember experiencing quite starkly myself. Popularity as inherently bad, aligning your incentives as a person less to being true to yourself and more to being what others want you to be.
Do teens of the 20s still experience anything like that? You'd think it would be universal, but if there's any musical movements associated with it, I'm not aware of them. There's the revival of socialism and distrust of capitalism, eat the rich, but as I think the author is getting at, Che and Castro probably wouldn't have spared Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. The remaining question for me is whether this is still true in actual youth culture. I think the author and myself are probably dating each other here. Even Taylor Swift is nearly 40. Her concerts are selling for so much because her fans are in their 30s and actually have money. I'm not sure this is what actual kids and teenagers are listening to and whatever their sentiments about culture and consumerism may be, us adults probably don't even know. It's the nature of underground movements that most of us don't learn about them until they go mainstream.
But I don’t follow with the whole premise. The mobility hypothesis is interesting, that people no longer see rich people as something attainable. But becoming famous through influencing or something on that vain. But famous people have been sellouts for far longer than i can remember. Kate bush did some weird promotion for a Dutch theme park called de Efteling and we have been messing with millennials for the past 20 years that nirvana is headlining the biggest Dutch music festival every year. “Ooh yeah i love that song”. And as far as I know Paris Hilton played half of the world into thinking that she was dumb as a rock.
Think that brands have given up on old school advertising. Just god lazy to give people a big bag of money for exposure. For how long will that work until people get bored of that? Yes, a music artist aligning themselves with Pantone as a color once is novel. But how many times does that really stay interesting? Just lazy advertising what only work for a couple of years until the larger crowed stops caring about the next branded Oreo deal.
It's because the Powers That Be don't put it on the ballot. If you put "take 99% of the money from the 1000 richest billionaires (about $10 trillion, I think), and nobody has to pay any income taxes for the next four years" on some sort of national ballot, I think there's a very good chance that it would pass.
There is no market to buy all of Amazon, or all of Tesla. Not at the current valuation.
You can take their fortune, but you cant spend it. Not in 4 years.
Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago.
Worse, it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life, showed me that true love is possible, then disappeared forever in barely a month. I’m still reeling.
Edit: boo, hiss!
Yea, that's a little awkward, but what is life for if not the awkward enjoyment of a musician's flavour.
When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.
Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy
Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.
If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.
Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.
Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.
Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.
The products used by many are the products their investors have an interest boosting. One example look at what SaaS startups seeded on this site use, other SaaS from same network and investors.
Nothing about it based on war of pricing, quality or experience.
Sometimes I think Americans are completely lost to the rest of us, residing in a haze of consumerism and political divide as they do. Then sometimes I read something like this and I cannot deny a certain curiosity as regards the finer differences between Oreo Coke and Coke Oreo.
We have coke in my country (of both the Coca Cola and cocaine varieties, and even the pure carbon variety used for steel smelting) and also Oreos are readily available in most supermarkets. Can any of the US based HN visitors enlighten us about the exact mixture required to produce Oreo Coke (but not, preferably, Coke Oreo)?
I found out recently that Oreo is in fact made with real cocoa; I find this surprising and still somewhat hard to believe.
The drink’s unique combination of flavors somehow made the whole experience less cloying than a typical zero sugar coke. And also, mysteriously, it was quite satiating, almost like I had eaten actual cookies. Except not, because any American can tell you that Oreo has negative satiation - you can eat an Oreo from a state of not being hungry at all, then discover you have eaten a whole Family Size pack.
Epic
Not good.
Needing bodyguards, and not being able to afford them, is a problem.
People read one person's opinion now almost as much if not more than people read the news.
I do think its on the nose about belief, people want to believe they want to be famous and can be famous and people feel less like they can be rich.
I also wonder if its just counter culture though and we're due another cycle. I find it upsetting that so many people aspire to be digital beggars.
Not that I'm happy about it or want it to continue, but we're already there, have been since 2016.
I realize most people aren't like me. But that's even more reason to not bother to tell people this. People who like Lady Gaga are going to feel inspired to buy her Oreos, no matter what you say. They know she's already mega-rich, and they are happy to keep giving her money. You aren't going to stop that.
(Anyone want to talk about OS/2 Warp like that's still a current event?)
The filling for Oreos used to just be lard that was folded together with granulated cane sugar. That's all that the white stuff was (according to a good friend of mine who made Oreos way back then, and still makes them today). It definitely was a different experience back then.
So was IBM's now-completely-forgotten WebExplorer browser, especially when hacked to have 8 network threads downloading at once instead of 4. :)
And that's OK. Modern Oreos are still tasty; they're just not quite the same. And the modern web experience still works, even though it is very different compared to what it was back then.
Oreos are as important a part of life as anything else. People have feelings, memories, and good experiences with it. Just because a big company makes them instead of a small doesn't make that any less valid.
Hell, michaelangelo had to balance the art of his soul with what his patrons wanted.
And the same artist can make one spiritually deep, untouched by consumerism piece and also make a music video with Mario the next week. A healthy life and mix can include both.
Part of that issue is people think "reviews" and "criticism" is one and the same. Ideally, a critic places the artwork in appropriate historical context and provides analysis. But most people just want Numbers or THumbs Ups.