So... what's exactly the meaning behind vaporwave?

So... what's exactly the meaning behind vaporwave?

irony and nostalgia for the early 90s

ignore this retard, he found out about vapprwave from a knowyourmeme page in 2013.

vaporwave was - and I say was because its a beaten, dead horse - a capitalist satire.

this
fuck anyone who tries to spew that bullshit about 'reaction to consumerism and our hyper-capitalist globalist society' or anything like that, it's 19 year olds blowing their load over what they think the 90's were like

Are you saying that "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" isn't accurate to the past?

lol no
like most post-modern art, it was made because it looked and sounded cool, and the ideological justifications were tacked on afterwards

lmao holy shit u dont know shit about vaporwave either lol

why is jap shit associated with vaporwave?

is it because they're just weeb pieces of shit who think listening to/making vaporwave puts them above other weeb autists? the 80s jap music vaporwavers sample sounds kind of like the simcity soundtrack? it just looks cool? what is it?

It's just part of the aesthetic.

The meme autist answer would be Japan in the 80s/90s was an example of a hypercapitalist cyberpunk consumerist society or something

g o o d v i b e s

Some people view it as a statement on the current state of modern capitalism, some think of it as some kind of funny but shitty meme but i just enjoy and apreciate it the same that i'd apreciate ambient music

>like most post-modern art, it was made because it looked and sounded cool, and the ideological justifications were tacked on afterwards

This cannot be stated enough. Artists make cool shit first and foremost, often there is a vague concept of what they want to do or have it be about going in but even in those cases most actual decisions will come down to what sounds or looks awesome. Then if the end result turns out to be particularly noteworthy all many of other concepts get tacked onto various aspects of it.

S P A C E D L E T T E R I N G

I don't understand why Vaporwave appears to merge 80s culture with 90s culture

Sure, the early 90s were like the 80s (the early part of every decade is like the previous decade), but the mid-late 90s were, like, the anti-80s. Everyone was like "fuck the 80s" at that time. Hair metal and synthpop died and grunge music was in. Neon colors were out. The Soviet Union was gone. Republicans were out, Democrats were in. The economy was booming.

it's a parody of consumerism

fuck the marble bust meme

If there was any meaning, it's gone now, replaced with random nostalgic signifiers. Marble statues, Japanese lettering, Windows backgrounds, Sega Saturn games and 80s funk have nothing to do with each other.

but it's not that at all
Look at Helios' face. LOOK AT IT. It was picked on purpose. The idea behind that album, at least, is nihilism in the face of a manic time period, saturated by information and LOOK AT MY INSTAGRAM. Not that there's anything wrong with Instagram, but the point is it can all be overwhelming sometimes. The music sampled is a reflection of shitty 80's music, a fatalist "well here we are. this is what we have now" experiment. The 90's stuff is just there to reinforce people not knowing what they're doing, akin to burgeoning Internet culture.
It's grunge. That's it.

It's just a culmination of internet culture. It's mixing low-quality music with high-minded artistry to the point of parody; it's a serious and honest attempt at not being taken seriously. Half the people who love the vaporwave a e s t h e t i c have never actually listened to vaporwave, it's more of an attitude than a discipline. It's simple, effortless muzak hiding being 7 layers of irony.

Anyone who attributes any political undertones to vaporwave just missed the point entirely. Vaporwave isn't ABOUT anything, and that's the point.

kill yourself faggot

vaporwave is nothing but stupid people into "aesthetic" there is no attachment to any time period, it's random shit that looks "cool" and "nostalgic".

>tl;dr

vaporwave isn't about the mid-late 90s

it isn't about anything

It's only the no-names, which, unfortunately, is 99% of them.

>So... what's exactly the meaning behind vaporwave?
the idea is the undeniable beauty that is cherished in western culture contrasted with the inevitable arrival at a dystopian wastland future due to the rate of irresponsible consumption and pollution that exists on our plannet
>fuck anyone who tries to spew that bullshit about
dude not all rock and roll is about sex and drugs, and the same applies to Vaporwave. the description you're denouncing is just the preferred theme that I use when subscribing to the genre. chill the fuck out lol>like most post-modern art, it was made because it looked and sounded cool, and the ideological justifications were tacked on afterwards
I dont like the irony and nostalgia aspect, even though that's pretty much what it is. idk vaporwave is fucking strange. It's like 'lunacy' being put in a good light.
>Some people view it as a statement on the current state of modern capitalism, some think of it as some kind of funny but shitty meme but i just enjoy and apreciate it the same that i'd apreciate ambient music
I think it's an insufferable mixture of those two concepts. I'm hoping that at some point that they kind of blend together into a really interesting genre - I could honestly see it being the 'music of the future' as cliché as that sounds.


I really like this thread btw guys. Its fun to talk about this genre because I think it has a lot of potential that gets kind of turned into weird shit that no one will actually like or take seriously but people try really hard/pretend to enjoy because they think it will be look cool when it's actually ironic that they enjoy it because it a joke.

It's just music that's inspired by Everything is Terrible.

Everything is Terrible is a site that encoded and uploaded cheap VHS recordings from the early 90s, and sometimes edited them to make them weirder or funnier (in a YTP manner, most of the time)

They made two feature-length movies out of those

I just want you to be aware that that's literally just your interpretation, and everyone is able to have their own interpretation as well. The way you interpret something doesn't make it the only correct way to perceive it. Yes your thought is valid, is it final and the ultimate conclusion? no

it's just like Martial Industrial, except that instead of being about the 1940s it's about the 1990s, and, accordingly, it's smooth instead of being violent.

otherwise the formula is the same.

>fuck the marble bust meme
>implying that the marble bust isn't a byproduct of consumerism.

me thinks you kind of missed the point on that one, bud.

Not all interpretations are equally valid.

His appreciation of it (negative) is wrong but fundamentally he's right.

>Anyone who attributes any political undertones to vaporwave just missed the point entirely. Vaporwave isn't ABOUT anything, and that's the point.
works without intentional political undertones can still inherently be political. art made without meaning can still have meaning.

>vaporwave is nothing but stupid people into "aesthetic" there is no attachment to any time period, it's random shit that looks "cool" and "nostalgic".
the fact that this phenomenon exists is ipso facto worthy of note

if the ideas in brave new world were translated into music, it would sound something like vaporwave. that's how i'd describe it. knowledge dropped.

>brave new world
i remember the part in the beginning of that book where that one little kid got in trouble for not wanting to have 'sex' with the little girl in the garden- that was the point when I realized "woah this book is going to be a wild ride"

The marble bust is a romanticized mannequin.

We look back upon ancient statues like they're absolutely unique masterpieces but in reality most of them are copies of copies of copies and there were thousands of those disseminated throughout the Roman Empire because rich people just wanted decorations in their villas.

It was an early example of the mass-standardization of beauty for the sake of showing off luxury

Now we have our own idealized depictions of the human body: mannequins, which were already romanticized by plenty of New Wave bands in the 80s. Vaporwave just connects the two.

So the marble bust fits right in with the "mall aesthetics" and "cheap luxury" themes of vaporwave.

this is true
we get it you browse tumblr

vapor wave artists are lazy fucks no talent

this is a basic tenet of art though. just because the meaning is found post facto by the critics rather than being generated by the artist itself doesn't make it any less art.

why do people talk about vaporwave like anything besides eccojams and whatever james ferraro makes matter to what vaporwave is/stands for. it stops there everything else is just complete derivative bullshit. nobody knows what vaporwave is besides those two people, and as far as i know opn flat out detests vaporwave. fuck off back to wherever you were referred to Sup Forums from please

I'm not a fan of vaporwave but I hate it when normies say
>it's old music slowed down

A postmodern phenomenon, vaporwave is the result of those living in a digital age rejecting social norms in longing for better times. Generally it is thought by these producers that at the heart of modern corruption lies capitalism's success over the world economy, and so they turn to a specific time period, the 80's, when the USSR began to die, as a period from which they source much of their content.

This serves the purpose of not just evoking nostalgic feelings of the past combined with modern, almost dystopian production, but it also serves an underlying, more subtle, purpose; piracy. The stealing of music for samples in this genre is so widespread and there are so many micro-labels and underground producers of vaporwave that prosecution by RIAA and major labels would be near impossible, so so many of these so-called "artists" get away with not just musical plagiarism, but as it occurs on places like bandcamp, small batch-sales of cassette and vinyl releases. This is truly the most tragic and hypocritical consequence of vaporwave, that its very conception, which was to criticize consumerist culture, has come full circle and evolved into yet another market, one full of millenials who were never even alive in the 80's (or 90's, lets be honest), scrambling to spend their money on the latest, most obscure casettes of unoriginal, talentlessly produced, garbage.

It seems that just like in 1991, capitalism has won again by turning vaporwave into a market

A N O N Y M O U S A E S T H E T I C S

Jokes on you I've never paid for music in my life

this post-music thats a little funny and really funky

Why are you fighting to know who's right ?

Just enjoy the music if you like it ffs.

It's about who can find the dankest samples slowed down.

The 80s were a time of ridiculous economic growth in Japan.
It all fell apart during the 90s.
Bubble-era Jpop is still the greatest thing ever btw

bladerunner of course

This is the only correct answer

Also

TICK
TOCK

you faggots are SEVEN YEARS LATE.

you're talking strictly to newfags right? cause we've been talking about vaporwave on Sup Forums since the inception essentially

It was a meme, now it is a dead meme

Right, that's just how art works. It's just annoying when people pretend the truth is anything more profound than that, like it can't just be good enough to have made something aesthetically awesome.

This is not a tenet of art, it is a tenet of the kind of intellectual masturbation true artists hate.

You are mostly wrong, the true artist is very principled and has their own theory behind what it is they're doing

Gotta love the art kids

its not dead
it wants to die but normies keep reviving and now its more popular than ever
its more like a zombie meme