Bring Back "Don't Sell Out"

Of the many cultural changes of the 21st century, one of the more notable has been the taboo against selling out. At one time it was considered positively unseemly for anyone who wanted to be taken seriously as an artist to shill. I still remember when esteemed American actors would refuse to do ad sponsorships in America, but take money to do commercials in Japan in order to both make a buck and protect their image.

Today that taboo is not only gone, people actively attack anyone concerned about selling out as a dweeb or reactionary. I listen to podcasts hosted by Millennials who for some reason have resentment against my generation (Gen X), who they will mock us over having been so backwards and priggish to ever judge someone for selling out. To me this reflects the current poptimist mode, which says that if that the masses like some piece of lowest common denominator audience-insulting garbage we dare not criticize it because doing so is some kind of attack on “the people” and democracy. In this way seeking money over art has been laundered as virtuous.

I will certainly admit that “don’t sell out” could get puritanical, especially in the punk rock world. However, it is an ethos that we desperately need to bring back. We need it because capitalist nihilism has become this country’s dominant worldview. Nothing matters in America today but the bottom line. Nothing.

Donald Trump winning the popular vote has made this manifest. He is a man who proclaims that he has no deeper abiding belief in anything but himself, and people support him knowing that he is purely transactional but hope to get what they want from him. That way of thinking permeates our entire society, where getting rich and getting “ahead” are the only things most people define as success in life. Traditional values are in decline, but they have not been replaced by liberationary ones, only the logic of the market. As Marx once said, “all that is solid melts into air.”

Out daily lives provide the evidence. Waves of influencers and wannabe influencers literally turn themselves into brands. Students cheat and use AI with zero sense of shame because learning is only about the outcome, not about learning itself. If they get into the right school but never really learned anything, who cares? Only the credential matters because so many corporate desk jobs are just bullshit-manufacturing sites anyway. You can’t listen to the radio long without hearing people bragging about their wealth and acquisition of luxury brands. Even an artist as bland as Meghan Trainor touts her Gucci and Louis Vitton in “I Made You Look.” I abhor the obsession with this crap but my kids all have luxury brand awareness because it so saturates the cultural seas that they swim in.

In this nightmare world of capitalism run amok, “don’t sell out” is a crucial, needed corrective. It is a rebuke to the tiresome, soulless “get that bag” grindset poisoning the minds of young people in America. (This Defector article on the Hawk Tuah crypto scam is a great examination of this phenomenon.) Though “don’t sell out” is much maligned, it is a call for putting integrity, truth, and beauty over greed and bullshit.

It helps to think back to the past moment when “don’t sell out” was not a joke. The bohemian and punk worlds of the 80s and 90s had it as their creed because it was a true refusal to collaborate with the neoliberal, corporate Moloch that had become so powerful as to be inviolable. Those who questioned the status quo were so marginalized that we could not hope to overturn it, but they could at least refuse to participate in it. In the world of the go-go Reagan 80s there was no way to give a bigger middle finger than to be a slacker.

While I find the music of 80s hardcore punk to be pretty orthodox and limited these days, I still admire the scenes that nurtured it. A band like the Minutemen (who actually were musically interesting) would go from town to town in their van, setting up their own equipment, play their hearts out, then crash on the couches and floors of fans and local scenesters, taking the music straight to the people. Major labels did not want to put your music out? No worries, make your own label.

I’m not saying that we all need to live so austerely, but we ought to draw inspiration from those who have pursued truth and beauty with total honesty. In a world governed by bullshit, lies, and the tyranny of the marketplace we need exemplars who can show us how to live our lives elevated from the muck. We also cannot imagine a better world if we keep surrendering to the worst impulses of the current one. Looking for “likes” and online clout is antithetical any meaningful movement for political change.

It’s time to live honestly if we want any hope of a better future. Don’t sell yourself short. Embrace meaning over bullshit. Don’t sell out.