Youth culture and capitalism had become fully aligned by the mid-2010s
Evidence
By this point, youth culture and capitalism were no longer in opposition. The world may have set up millennials for failure, but the best revenge was their paper. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 327
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Reverses the classic counterculture-co-optation narrative; echoes Thomas Frank’s ‘The Conquest of Cool’ where youth rebellion became marketing.
- SEED: Angle for an essay: the girlboss as proof that the counterculture’s oppositional stance is dead — ambition, not rebellion, is the new transgression.