Commodify your dissent
by Editors - Thomas Frank, Matt Weiland · first published 1997
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Essays from The Baffler examine how 1980s and 1990s youth culture and rebellion were absorbed by marketing. The critiques target post-80s culture with sharp, accurate analysis and offer a lens on how the world is seen.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A series of essays on consumerism, corporations and marketing in the culture of late twentieth-century America. Targets of these snarky and often smart "salvos" include malls, exurbs, business books, and record labels (remember those?). The co-opting of grunge (remember that?) is critiqued in loving detail. More serious pieces address the rise of the Internet as a commercial force, and question how we should think about work in an age of digitization.
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…cynicism/nihilism has left an identity crises for Mil/GenZ. Although it appears these groups are going back to tradition and don't give a f*k about nonconformity. Steve Albini (legendary producer) wrote an essay in "Commodify Your Dissent" from the Baffler magazine around the time of the Dead Kennedys. He hits on the ability to buy anarchy patches in department stores as fashion items when in the past they were signs of a true counterculture.…
on “Pop culture has become an oligopoly” ↗Oh, absolutely. http://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler/... Very good book, BTW.
on “Apple wins ban of HTC devices at US International Trade Commission” ↗I found a copy of 'Commodify Your Dissent' by Thomas Frank in a pile of free books when I was 17 and it had a significant and lasting impact on the way I viewed the world.
on “Ask HN: Life Changing Books?” ↗I first read this article in the book "Commodify Your Dissent", which is a collection of phenomenally accurate critiques of post-80's culture https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent
on “The Problem with Music (1993)” ↗Steve Albini captured this perfectly in an essay to The Baffler called "Commodify your Dissent". I highly recommend it, as it described the commodification of subculture that started in the 80's and really swallowed everything in the 1990's (in the USA at least); Here's the book: https://store.thebaffler.com/products/commodify-your-dissent…
on “Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)” ↗I just posted the same thing. Did you read this? https://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler...
on “Pop culture has become an oligopoly” ↗