Video Gambling

Video Gambling

If you're familiar with the refined generational theory discussed on this and other counterculture blogs, you know that Generation Y is clearly differentiated from the Millennials by the latter's gullibility and loathing of the past in contrast to the former's tractability and morbid nostalgia. Of all the pop culture stories…
August 25, 202118 Comments
OnlyFans Dead

Winning the War on Porn

The generational shift against porn I noted a while back may have started bearing fruit sooner than expected. In a surprising announcement, the social media application OnlyFans said that they would no longer permit “sexually explicit content” on their site starting Oct. 1. The shocking news comes after the media…
August 23, 202126 Comments
Nostalgia Bar

The Nostalgia Bar

Much has been written on this blog and others about generational theory and nostalgia. Counterculture writers have done extensive work showing how the old demographic models based on age have broken down in the face of accelerating social change.  If your predictions are based on lumping folks who came of…
August 11, 202114 Comments
Lecter Skinsuit

Ignore the Skinsuits

A major hurdle to understanding our new era that most people struggle to surmount is the shift from an economic frame to a moral frame. Everyone currently living in the West was raised under a Left vs Right paradigm with roots in the eighteenth century. Especially in its American expression,…
July 27, 202127 Comments
Master and Commander

Master and Commander

As Hollywood progressively loses touch with its audience, finding a genuinely entertaining, non-propagandizing movie made after 1997 is a rare treasure indeed. One such overlooked gem graced theaters in 2003 to critical acclaim but disappointing box office. Yet it remains a sterling exemplar of its genre and even has wisdom…
July 26, 202124 Comments
Post-PopCult

The Post-Pop Cult Age

Almost everyone reading this grew up under a largely monolithic American pop culture. Whether it's Baby Boomers' love of the Beatles or the multigenerational Star Wars fandom that originated with Gen X, anyone who came of age in the past several decades could easily navigate the pop landscape by several…
July 23, 202114 Comments
Tarantino

The Tarantino Riddle

If you're a member of Generation X or Gen Y, chances are the films of Quentin Tarantino affected how you interact with pop culture to this day. His status as the last man standing of the indie directors who broke onto the early 90s film scene makes him a black…
July 20, 202110 Comments
U2 Godzilla

Defusing the Pop Bomb 2

Folks seemed to enjoy my previous look at what might have been if Cultural Ground Zero hadn't happened. Today felt like as good a time as any for a second glimpse at an alternate timeline, but instead of vide games, this "what if?" will focus on the music industry. Specifically,…
July 8, 20217 Comments
FF VII Remaster

Defusing the Pop Bomb

Rivers of ink have been spilled in our corner of the counterculture scene about Cultural Ground Zero. For the uninitiated, that's a shorthand description of the abrupt decline that struck Western entertainment right around 1997. The movie moguls, rock gods, and video game wizards who'd spent the 80s and 90s…
June 11, 202115 Comments
Miura Berserk

Berserk: A Masterpiece Unfinished

Some of the most enduring memories from my dissolute youth in the anime scene revolve in some way around Kentaro Miura's masterpiece Berserk. Whether it was crowding around a buddy's CRT monitor to binge watch the visceral anime or blasting the soundtrack on the way to a con, Berserk set…
May 20, 2021