Gamers Nexus and the Meaning of Punk

Aesthetics vs meaning

I realise that it is a very man-yelling-at-cloud thing to say, but things used to be different. "Punk" had meaning instead of being a fashion choice; not even a fashion statement, but a choice.

There are plenty of punk-suffixed words around: solarpunk, steampunk, atompunk, dieselpunk, etc. One thing they have in common is their focus on aesthetics and vibes. Gears and valves for the steam variety; farms and fields for solar; dirt and engines for diesel; and so on. How is any of this related to the suffix used? In my opinion, it is not related at all, and the suffix is simply misused—or used just because it sounds cool ie, purely superficially.

Cyberpunk

Even cyberpunk has succumbed to this curse.

Nowadays it is associated with chrome, leather jackets, sunglasses, and guns; rather than with rebellion against and resistance to corporations and governments. No longer does the street find its own uses for technology. Instead, the technology is bought on the high street, beautifully packaged and nearly arranged in a walled garden.

The high-tech low-life ethos has been all but forgotten.

My judgement and thinking is surely clouded, because I grew up with cyberpunk. It as a literary genre, as an aesthetic (yes!), and as an associated set of ideas—going against corporations, distrust of authority, anarchism—are what shaped my worldview and to a high degree. All of these things made me into who I am today.

Against corporations

To be completely honest, I find it hard to take "punks with iPhones" seriously. Sure, you can dye your hair green, put on a leather jacket or a trenchcoat, go to an punk concert in some abandoned warehouse in Berlin, and feel good about how counter-culture and against-the-system you are. Are you really, though?

If you use your phone to take pictures to post on a corp-owned social media, where you authenticate using your corp-provided and spied-upon SSO or email address, and then go back to your cose corporate job... that is not very punk of you. I would argue, even, that it is very far away from punk.

Sure, some people would use their positions inside the corps to undermine them; or would use the corp-gotten gains to help causes they believe in; or at the very least would ditch as much corp-stuff as possible as soon as the short hand hit five o'clock.

Case in point: Neo from the first Matrix movie. He works a corporate job, but in his free (as in freedom) time he acts in a severly uncorporate manner.

Actions speak louder than words

I find it a sad state of affairds, that the punk got so dilluted.

Of course, the aesthetics are cool. However, they are meaningless without the ethos they used to be associated with: anti-corporatism, anarchism, freedom, and non-conformity. It does not matter if you wear a spiked jacket and combat boots if you live a corp-approved life. It does not matter if you scream "Fuck the system!" at the top of your lungs every now and then, if you obediently support the system on every other occasion.

From where I stand, a definitely non-punk-looking guy in a well-lit room who is willing to say "Get fucked, Big Corp!" and push back embodies the old-school punk much more than any amount of the aesthetic-punks.

It also reminded me of the old classic from one of the Pirate Bay founders. Quote: "Go fuck yourself. Polite as usual, anakata".

It does not matter how you speak, what music you listen to, or what clothes you wear. If you are willing to go against the corps, or at least in parallel to them—you are in. If you are not willing to do that, no amount of fashion choices will make up for it.