I personally think cringe culture killed any form of counterculture

I think most people consider a person "cringe" when they're trying too hard, when they're coming off as fake. A lot of people in my generation think Freddie Mercury was really cool. I think it's because he never came off as try hard. What you see on stage was just what he was. A modern example is Sabrina Carpenter. The over-the-top sexiness and horniness never comes off as cringe because you can tell she's having fun with it, she knows she's goofy, she embraces it. So it doesn't come off as fake.

Well as we all figger it out I'll be
Waiting for the sun.🎸

Waiting for u to

Come along...
Waiting for u to
Hear my song....

Waiting to find out
What went wrong.....🤥

.

Personally, I think being a kind and caring individual is starting to reach counter culture levels. The got mine, f everyone else and hustle cultures seem to be prevailing at the moment.

It's also hard to develop culture when neighbors don't even speak to each other anymore. If you don't know other people well enough to have a culture it's hard to be counter to that.

On shuffle just now I had a track released by The Doors years after Jim Morrison died - effectively his poetry set to music. I'll probably make you jealous because I saw The Doors live at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970

If you look throughout time, there has always been a counter culture.

Counterculture is still alive in me.

Perhaps not ALL of it's aspects, but most of them.

At least all the aspects of it that are interesting to me, leastways.

Anyone alive prior to 1980 probably knows about Jim Morrison and the Doors. You come across as quite condescending.

By the time I was your age, Morrison was already past his peak notoriety, so I wouldn't be too surprised if many people in the younger generations don't know of him. Well done you for raising keeping the flame alive for him. When The Doors we're at their height, from memory, they were very much the 'bad boys' as far as conventional culture was concerned. They've become saints mainly because of their music these days, I suggest. I've always enjoyed their music, while not following their lifestyle.

I very much agree with you about labels, but I suspect we're all guilty of applying them as it makes life simpler in dealing with other people. I try very hard to fight against it and it's interesting that even on SW we are asked to put ourselves in certain boxes, although fortunately you can leave them empty if you feel they don't reflect your full personhood.

Why would one want to be 'normal'? Fitting in seems to be a basic need for us, whether that's fitting into what one might call traditional culture or counter-culture. It's probably my age, but the term 'cringe' perhaps means something to you which it doesn't mean to me. I still have my moments with The Doors on a 45yo CD (never bought the vinyl) and my extremely conventional lifestyle, the same as I do with Bach whose lifestyle I also do not live.

Morrison was neither "cringe" or "counter culture". He was a suicide machine. It was not if he would die by his own actions and lifestyle........it was always when. Drugs created a Morrison that didn't care about common sense or guard rails. He literally lived a life that he knew...and forecast..... would kill him if he continued........and he did.....and it did. As short as his life was..........he was an incredible talent and his music will outlive him by centuries.

I love Jim ❤

I want to be a Shaman 😆

Indians scattered on dawns highway bleeding

Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind

Choose the day. Choose the sign of the day. The earth's divinity. First thing you see. A vast radiant beach in a cool jewelled moon. Couples naked race down by its quiet side.

But we don't laugh anymore.

We're losing the magic, drowning in bureaucratese and antipathy

One inked form away from screaming into the void

Paid bills, littlest of thrills. Numbness. Normal = death

I see more people complaining about "political correctness" than I ever, ever see any manifestation of political correctness ... it feels like all the angst over this is made-up. More often than not, the people whining about it also can't even define it, or define "woke" for that matter either. They rarely can define any of the awful things they routinely complain about, but they damn sure know it's bad!

Everyoone still has free speech (which ihcludes whatever you're perceiving as "backlash"). People have not suddenly shut their collective mouths. Quite the opposite. In case you haven't noticed, the US for example now has a batshit crazy man-child idiot for its head of state — for the second time no less! That couln't ever happen in a reality where the whiny grievance culture that enabled him is actually being "canceled".

And I never understand anyone complaining about the basic linguistic utility of words having meanings ... you'll never see me say "I am human, I hate that word, because it puts me in a box". Well that doesn't change the fact that I am human, and I am everything that box entails. It is basic reality. Complaining about something that innocuous would be like complaining about 2+2 always being equal to 4, and manufacturing some existential crisis over 2+2 being placed into some horrible "box" when in fact it's not even a big deal at all. It's like some people need smething to be upset about and will pull things out of thin air to have a focal point for their axnieties.

Moreover, "counterculture" is itself a box!!!
And it still exists, it's never gone away, if anything only the shape has changed, as does with anythign with the passage of time and advances in technology. It's not just the non-counterculture people who are now more screen-oriented rather than outdoor-oriented.