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Notes -
Status in the progressive art scene
There’s a thread on Reddit about social progressive influences in the youth arts and music scene. (The link is an archive with all comments, no need for account.) It’s a glimpse into a social world from members who would otherwise not talk about it. This particular community is artistically and culturally aligned with progressive culture but politically more moderate or to the right. A lot of this you have probably heard before (quick to cancel, quick to signal), but I found the below selection to be informative:
The characterization of “palace intrigue” is insightful. Indie art, basement shows, etc are unpoliced places where the members have no religion, organized morality, or moral mentors. They are anarchic gatherings of young horny people who do not believe in higher authority or cling to a moral tradition. Status is rewarded with fame, sex, drugs, favors from the few trustfund members, and coveted but longshot employment opportunity at some shop / label / magazine / bar. Low status leads to utter and irrevocable ostracization. The stakes are, uh, big. So what happens is that authority and a code of conduct develops organically but very primitively through cliques and “palace gossip”, with the valuable positions at the top guarded tyrannically. Its Lord of the Flies except sometimes it smells worse.
I think the missing piece for understanding why the scene is so unhealthy is that members are imitating group exemplars. The imitation of group exemplars is a universal human habit, a relic of tribal days. These scenes first congregate on Twitter, tumblr, or instagram, and only then do they disperse to real life watering holes. (As one user put it: “music scenes were about capturing real life and putting it online; now it's putting online into real life.”) What they see on social media is that gossip and public accusation gets the most attention and name recognition, which is valuable for securing a place in the social hierarchy. The more signaling you do and the more explicit you do it, the more you gain attention. The increasing numerical value of likes or reblogs on social media tricks the users into believing that the number is an accurate sign of social value — and this consequently turns it into a real social value. You only need to persuade a small minority that the numbers indicate social value for the numbers to eventually become the dominant social value. Why? Because if 5% of social value is suddenly administered according to an online number, then this will be noticed and more people will pay attention to it, leading it to comprise 6%. And if 6% of social value, then … and so on. This will continue until participating online is a necessary requirement for obtaining the niche’s social value (how LinkedIn works). That original 5% is guaranteed because social media is addicting.
The reason it devolves into a base form of status signaling is that, well, everything is status signaling. But developed cultures long ago figured out ways to sublimate status signaling toward prosocial ends through the laying down of criteria and similarity with which to judge value. Were these guys Confucian, their ability to memorize prosocial axioms and follow certain rituals would give them value. If they were Muslims, their ability to mirror Muhammad in their life and live according to Allah’s decrees would give them value. (Interestingly, Muslims go one step further and ban all music except the whiny melodies which color the precepts of the Quran. This is certainly one way to ensure that your music scene doesn’t devolve into a monstrosity).
But why does the signaling competition devolve into Progressive shibboleths? Why not something else? I think the boring answer is that it started that way. If this alt scene were originally Confucian, then all new members would have adopted Confucianism. But it started progressive because no one with a strong traditional morality would dedicate their whole life to hosting licentious music. They cared more about school, they prioritized health, they had reservations about playing music bad for the soul. Meanwhile those without morality have no such concerns, and also use drugs as a lure for their power. There’s probably also an element of progressive shibboleths being boosted because the primitive wisdom that kids learn in early education is “everyone is the same, be nice”. So naturally, any devolution would go back to the shared morality which encites even the dumbest person. If everyone in school learned that the ultimate evil was being racist and mean, then that becomes the criteria for ostracisation. If you’re in a group of not very intelligent or moral art people, you can imagine the difference between accusing someone of being racist versus accusing someone of “a sophisticated ruse in which they themselves accuse others of being racist in order to elevate their standing”. The second one makes less sense when you are drunk or high, and it’s way too many words for me to read on Twitter at 2am. The first one contains the word “racist”, which I have been trained to bark at like a dog.
As mentioned in the thread, artists and musicians can’t say anything about the tyrannical hold of social progressivism because their career, reputation, and social network and under the purview of this process. When that occurs the shibboleths become an unconscious signal of membership, leading to a deep internalization in the heart of individual member. (Remember that normal people don’t think their beliefs through; like, writing about social and political values and engaging in discourse is an unusual thing. People want social value, not an optimally correct system in the grand scheme of things.)
One more thing to add. There’s a story in the Book of Daniel where two high status men threaten to blackmail a woman for sexual favors. She refuses to be blackmailed, so the high status men accuse her in front of the whole community of infidelity — something that would lead to her death. Our heroic prophet of the story, the young Daniel, takes on the role of Mr Bean. “Are you all so stupid that without examination or evidence you are going to condemn this woman?” He asks each one of the men alone under which tree the event transpired. One says a large canopied tree, but the other says a distinctly small tree. They have been caught in their lie, and the high status men are executed by the community.
This is the kind of story which humans once had as their foundational tales. Less “crime bad”, more “withhold judgment until wisdom, because corruption worse”. Kids would have learned this story instead of “racism bad”. And for artists, the story of Susanna was one of the most popular scenes in the history of Western art. Think how beneficial that is! You require your artists to draw Susanna, a beautiful semi-nude figure, and then you require him to draw the corrupt licentious high status figures, ready to blackmail her before being executed. It not only creates a good moral tale for children but it ensures that your artists don’t become regressives.
You're giving these people too much credit. When you said "Progressive Art Scene" I thought at first you may be talking about gallery openings or legitimate theater or modern classical music. Instead you were talking about the horrible "scene kids". These are usually punk bands that have only perfunctory instrumental talent and virtually no songwriting talent who latch onto the "scene" because they know that they're too untalented to become professional musicians. They usually put a high value on vague concepts like "authenticity" and "selling out" and look for reasons to create internal drama and ostracize people. You know you're at a "scene show" if, say, you go to a show at a venue in the city one night and then a couple weeks later you go to a show in an exurb 30 miles way and the audience is composed of almost entirely the same people. They mostly play the same circuit, though, because these bars are owned by scene people themselves. If it were a self-contained community of people who just wanted to play locally it would be no problem; less popular styles like jazz and bluegrass are usually like this. The trouble is that these people all have aspirations of playing music full-time, which makes the stakes higher and introduces a lot of stress. It's almost like a combination of Orthodox Judaism and Old Order Amish, where there's a comprehensive Mosaic law you're expected to follow with shunning the consequence of violating it. It's a breeding ground for drama.
Everyone in that thread may have differing politics but they all seem to buy into the scene mentality; their problem is that it's placing emphasis where they don't want it placed. The fact that politics plays a more prominent role isn't surprising but it could honestly just as easily be right-wing politics as left-wing — it just so happens that most of the participants were already lefties so that's the natural direction it took. In the grand scheme of things, though, it's beside the point. These people are rank amateurs involved in a circle jerk, and their bullshit has about as much influence on the broader culture as what's going on in some random subreddit.
For some reason the idea of punks of all people forming rigid, hierarchical societies which have palace intrigues and make sure that their members conform to their norms feels really amusing in an absurdist way to me.
From stories my sister and brother (older than me by ~15 years) have told me of the 80s local punk scenes, it has always been thus.
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