The rebel sell
by Heath, Joseph · first published 2004
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that counterculture rebellion has itself become a driver of consumer culture, linking business, consumerism and identity.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"In this wide-ranging and perceptive work of cultural criticism, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter shatter the central myth of radical political, economic and cultural thinking. The idea of a counterculture - that is, a world outside of the consumer dominated one that encompasses us - pervades everything from the anti-globalisation movement to feminism and environmentalism. And the idea that mocking the system, or trying to 'jam' it so it will collapse, they argue, is not only counterproductive but has helped to create the very consumer society that radicals oppose." "In a lively blend of pop cul
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Also check out The Rebel sell by Joseph Health and Andrew Potter. Another great read in the same vein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell.
on “Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)” ↗…it is to be reading; what to actually do with books; how they function and circulate and affect people; and why they are, despite often being too long and dreary and just boring, irresistible. In "The Rebel Sell," another one of those books that I continue to think about and reference many years later, the authors make the provoking claim that, contrary to the self-images of most tourists, backpackers, and lovers…
on “Books Are Getting Longer” ↗If you're talking business books try The Rebel Sell "How the counter culture became the consumer culture". and I book I love for it's story telling is Boo Hoo "$135 million. 18 months... a dot.com story from concept to catastrophe".
on “Ask YC: Road trip. Which audio books would you recommend?” ↗>Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does. "Mainstream counter-culture" is certainly a funny turn of phrase. That's largely the problem with it, there's a great book, The Rebel Sell[1], about how American counter-culture isn't the opposite, but the actual driver of American commercial culture. The Hunger Games is not authentically creating any kind of subversive message, to be a…
on “Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025” ↗…my experience, as yours, people who value experiences do tend to look down on consumerism. ----- EDIT: I found the comment, a good re-read :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10725521 In "The Rebel Sell," another one of those books that I continue to think about and reference many years later, the authors make the provoking claim that, contrary to the self-images of most tourists, backpackers, and lovers…
on “The most relaxing vacation you can take is going nowhere” ↗Potter was co-author (with Joseph Heath) of The Rebel Sell, in which they argued that the hip counter-culture rejection of competitive mass consumer culture is itself a primary driver of that culture, setting up fashion and lifestyle as positional goods and enforcing…
on “Why It's So Hard to Get Real” ↗…much damage to hackerdom as the self-titled programming rock stars, ninjas, wizards, etc. etc. did to those professional groups. ---- 0. Incidentally, does anyone else get reminded of things like The Rebel Sell or The Conquest of Cool by pieces like this? All of this handwringing serves to subtly indicate that the author is the sort of person who happens on these scenes before they were cool. 1. Even if you…
on “How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos” ↗The book "The Rebel Sell" points out that creating businesses and selling products was central to the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. The "Whole Earth Catalogue" was not a 'leave a penny, take a penny' dish!
on “Why isn't the internet more fun and weird? (2019)” ↗it didn't recede, this kind of rebellion was what made it thrive (see the book The Rebel Sell, Why Culture can't be Jammed) or Deleuze: “The death of a social machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the contradictions…
on “We are living in a version of the future out of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson” ↗