Society didn't use to be "conservative". Like, the romans and the greeks were a lot more sexually free than we are right now. What they also had in their time is conservative people, as in, people that were against the changes in the society they were living in (like accepting Christianism during the Roman Empire, etc).

Being conservative can't be counter-culture because by definition it is preseving the CURRENT culture (which is not the "woke" one, even if boomers like to think different. All the people with power are conservatives). Being downvoted in HN doesn't mean anything, same as Twitter and Reddit. You can be "cancelled" in Twitter and still sell out the Madison Square Garden, like Louis CK. The real power is outside the social media, and that part is definitely conservative.