Writes Chuck Klosterman on page 307 of "The Nineties."
Yes, my name was cooler in the 90s/early 00s. I remember. It makes me think about the time a law professor told me:
[Y]ou should call your blog "alt.house" (alt-dot-house), which simultaneously (a) uses your name, (b) uses "house" more directly to suggest a place, (c) is a cyber-pun, riffing on the old "alt-dot-whatever" names for usenet newsgroups, and, relatedly, (d) with the "alt" prefix, implies the ever-so-slightly offbeat nature of what you write about and how you write about it.
And as long as I'm talking about that book again, let me quote something else that jumped out at me.... Oh, no, this needs to be a new post, otherwise it will seem as though I'm burying it. Hang on.
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14 comments:
Alternative was past its prime by the 1990s. It was the eventual mainstream label for censored or self-produced content that started coming out in the 1960s: the Velvet Underground band, Iggy and the Stooges, the Shaggs, and John Waters films.
Alternative pop culture was fully formed by the mid 1980s, but the Boomers (now all over 30) couldn't let go of their Rolling Stones, Beatles, and Neil Young music. Plus, music companies and networks wanted to control the means of production and distribution (per old school class warfare language), and refused to compete with themselves.
Mainstream music and movies became nothing but predictable corporate "product" by the 1980s, while at the same time Metallica, the Cure, the Smiths, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies released their best work. With eventual widespread boredom or hatred of overly polished content, corporate entities converted underground work into the "alternative" label. Soon thereafter, another era of packaged "alternative product" controlled the market by 1994 or so. Pearl Jam.
It was the start of cultural fragmentation, and the early social media (PC-based) era.
Usenet's alt. groups were a big influence. Maybe "alternative" did originally refer to music, but it was the early internet that made alternative alt.
Alt in Althouse means old. Old and new houses are big in names. Newhouse, Villanova ...
Alternative music expanded into the umbrella of alternative culture, meaning the prefix 'alt' could now be applied to almost anything for an instant jolt of reconsideration.
Maybe that's why you don't hear the pejorative "alt-right" so much anymore?
Alt is just a buzzword for GenX coming of age and climbing out of the considerable shadow of the middle age Boomers.
Last good time for music, at least as far as my tastes go. I loved loved loved 'alternative' music -- I lived in Seattle at the time -- and I was a teenager in the '70s. I mostly sat out the late '80s; some of it was okay to good but when Nirvana hit I was at first a bit put off by its raucousness, but eventually came to adore it.
[Y]ou should call your blog "alt.house"
I prefer AlthouseAF.
"Alt" comics were, at least initially, those that took a slightly skewed approach to standup or had a DIY attitude with regard to promotion or selection of venues, but was really nothing more than a marketing tool to push out and denigrate older, established comics.
Managers and agents used the term frequently. Media dickheads loved the scrum. They encouraged the acrimony.
Alts soon had a rep as comics who had no punchlines. Some embraced that characterization.
Many of the early alts eventually "sold out" (Patton Oswalt voiced a Disney rat, David Cross starred in a chipmunk movie), so the scam became obvious.
Only 14-year-old girls use the term alt unironically.
Yeah alt was the greatest prefix since hyper and it even has its own key on most keyboards. Yep it was totes cool until they stuck it on right as a pejorative. Then alt became suspect from a tainted association to anything non-woke. I guess it wore alt it’s cachét?
When I first started reading blogs I regarded them as dangerous, underground thinking on the lines of 4chan. I started reading this blog when it was reporting on the Walker era and elections and I thought that the poster had run alt-house together, capitalized it and taken it as a name for all the reasons mentioned in the post. "Althouse" was a professor but she had a home furnished like a commune where Velvet Underground or Prince played continuously. I'm completely disillusioned but there it is. Even Wisconsin can surprise.
Alt.house would have been a clever internet pun for about 5 minutes. After that, it would have become progressively lamer with each passing moment. It's geek ("see how smart I am!") silliness not worthy of a university law professor.
There was still a degree of difficulty in listening to new music in the '90s. You had to go to a store, buy it on solid media (such as a CD) for a significant amount of money, and put it in a player before you could hear it. Genuine "alternative" music was even more difficult, because a lot of places -- such as the music section of a department or electronics store -- were unlikely to carry it. (By the time they did, what had once been "alternative" -- like the top-selling grunge bands -- had already become mainstream.) Otherwise, you could listen to the one or two alternative-rock radio stations in your city, and hope they would eventually play that band's most-promoted song -- or you could go to the trouble and expense of seeing them in person at a club or music festival. That was pretty much it.
But today, when virtually all music is available at all times from your phone or computer, everything kind of flows together. The idea of "mainstream" and "alternative" no longer has a lot of meaning. (And when people are trying to look cool these days, they're more likely to recommend a low-rated streaming TV show than an obscure band, anyway.)
I made a few comments at other places, years ago, as "Lithping@hole.com"
I'm still proud of that one.
“ Alt.house would have been a clever internet pun for about 5 minutes. After that, it would have become progressively lamer with each passing moment. It's geek ("see how smart I am!") silliness not worthy of a university law professor.”
I agree and thought so in 2004 too. Blogged it because I thought it was funny.
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