Fashion, art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition

[eightysixfour]

I've been reading Graeber's final book, "The Dawn of Everything," and in it he makes/repeats the observation that many cultures in contact with each other end up defining themselves as "not-the-other-culture," which he called (and I think others call) cultural schismogenesis.

I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point, and they often take the opposite stance of that reference point. I think this model fits in with that pretty well - there are groups who want to be "not-the-elite" which, if successful, the elite adopt. Classic "hipsterism."

It also fits in with a lot of local, national, and global politics, market differentiation, etc.

[belugacat]

Oh wow, super fascinating reference, thank you for posting it! I’ll have to check it out, I’ve been prototyping game concepts with many thousands of agents who all do interesting things for the player to investigate (the key here is that they don’t have to be particularly complex or meaningful, they just have to overlap in enough thought provoking ways to keep the player engaged), and I’ve had a similar insight (“make agents identify a position and adopt the opposite stance”) that seems to yield interesting early results.

(sorry, nothing concrete to share and likely won’t for a long time)

[crucialfelix]

As a former hipster (and music subculture producer) I can attest that what drove us is not the desire to differentiate, but that the mainstream elite were lifeless bullshit and we wanted to express something new that only we could sense. We were being us, not "not them".

Decades later, it's what the mainstream now sounds like. It always percolates up.

[turdnagel]

See also Dr. Seuss' seminal "The Sneetches".

[throwaway894345]

> I think you can genericize it a bit and say humans are bad at defining themselves and need a reference point

I don't think the error is in defining ourselves by what sets us apart--it's fine and good to acknowledge our differences. I think the bad thing is leaning into those differences due to an aversion to the outgroup, which is the very essence of tribalism (or nearly so).

[anm89]

very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff.

I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.

[kelseyfrog]

Is that simply one aspect of cultural dialectics[1] or am I missing something?

1. https://textbooks.whatcom.edu/duttoncmst101/chapter/intercul...

[March_f6]

Mimetic theory, while not entirely complete, seems to cover the common impulse behind dominating trends. Whether it accounts for the initial spark of “anti” I guess is another question.

[optimalsolver]

Worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elite

[zbendefy]

This is also nicely illustrated in CGP Grey's rules for rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

[beebeepka]

> Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another. The role of ordinary people in such transformation is not that of initiators or principal actors, but as followers and supporters of one elite or another.

Easy to say duh to this in 2021 thanks to education, internet, and everything. Must've been a breakthrough a few hundred years ago. For various reasons

[v_london]

This concept is important to the way I think about crypto. It feels like a war between two elites (TradFi vs Crypto insiders and VCs), if crypto wins it it will not "democratize finance" when 90% of all Bitcoins have been mined in the first decade of the project's lifespan.

(This is not an attack against crypto in general, there are ways to design a cryptocurrency so it's equal to all participants regardless of the time they buy in, it's just that they fail to gain adoption because of a lack of VC funding and support from the crypto community, as neither can make a quick buck out of it)

[waingake]

This is Hegel’s Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. Not a new idea! https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1...

[beebeepka]

This was a surprisingly good read, even if a bit long.

Their observations align with my own - it's all about standing out. Me different because me better. Or vice versa. Same thing

[aszantu]

as an artist I just always think: okay I like this style, and I want something like it, but I absolutely don't want to copy, so I change it so it can't be recognized as "theft" later.

[analog31]

I wonder if another factor is that the artists themselves eventually get bored with their own stuff. I've read that this is a factor in the evolution of musical styles.

[j-bos]

At the risk of touching a nerve, this concept reminds me of the crypto/nft hostility.

[adamgordonbell]

Slate star codex has a very fun and nerdy explanation of fashion cycles.

    Let’s explain fashion using cellular automata. This isn’t going to be cringe-inducingly nerdy at all!

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/

[ineptech]

I also thought of this; this explanation is like a more complicated and nuanced, but probably less empirically testable, version of the "CDS" mechanism proposed by the study's authors. I scrolled to the bottom half-expecting to see Scott get an acknowledgement.

[reducesuffering]

Yep, this is an intuitive explanation for it.

[crawfordcomeaux]

This tracks with how I'm changing the art I embody/make. A driving intention I carry is to bring about a future where all people have the 0-payment option of living in a community where everyone's committed to meeting all needs while denying none, practicing a culture that's learned from and let go of cultural components of debt, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, preferentialism (a culture of catering to preferences), democracy, domination, violence, punishment/reward, racism, sexism, rape, adultism, ageism, and maybe all the other isms.

Any government, including human beings who identify as nations, can signal they've shifted to practicing such a culture by adopting the following symbol and integrating it into their symbology:

∀

This is the mathematic notation for the phrase "for all." A government that's operating on a model to meet all needs while denying none can signal this by including this symbol in their art, like flags, seals, etc.

[canadaduane]

There is a bumper sticker that spells out "Coexist" with symbols from each of the major religions [1] and I liked it at first, because I identified strongly with the idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are people who see that symbol, and they don't see themselves in it--they don't see the Cross for example, and think, "Oh, a Christian like me!". Rather they see "Hippie-everything-and-nothing-ism," and other it immediately. I think there is a deep resistance to "foreign inclusion" in our human psyche. Trust goes slow.

[1] https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-hate-coexist-bumper-sti...

[germinalphrase]

There’s a lot of “not this” in your statement, but can you provide an example of your work that helps me understand what “this” remains?

[v_london]

Hey crawfordcomeaux, I noticed you've shared some interesting ideas about communities in Hacker News! I wonder if you have an opinion on whether remote working will change where and how people choose to live?

Cities still have a lot going for them by providing the best access to services (especially after covid is over), but one thing I see happening in the future is the establishment of "remote working villages" in smaller towns. Price and quality of housing will be the main selling point, but they'd also have access to nature and a good sense of community (in fact the projects could be self-organised and funded by the residents if you find the right people).

[d883kd8]

Ugh they got j and k mixed up on page 3

[shadowgovt]

As the old line goes, "Revolution is never justified... Unless you win."