this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I feel like vaporwave draws a lot of reactionaries because the use of 80s/90s kitsch aesthetics combined with greco-roman imagery is like, a RETVRN thing for them. Which is funny because the original vaporwave artists were suggesting something very different by juxtaposing elements of our vapid consumer culture with those of a fallen western civilization, but of course chuds always miss the point.
The three figures I could point to as creating vaporwave as a style of music are a black man, a trans woman, and a Jewish man. (DJ Screw, Vektroid, and Daniel Lopatin respectively). And every time I go in a vaporwave production discord half the profiles have trans flags.
Not to say reactionaries don't love to adopt culture from people they deem lesser though. They love rock music. But this one always felt really weird for fascists to try and usurp.
I think you could throw James Ferraro in there as well, another black guy
but that early era of vaporwave came and went over a decade ago. a lot of those original artists moved on to other things and the vaporwave scene became flooded with a lot of white cishet male weebs lazily copying their style without understanding the artistic intent beyond a surface level
I miss that era of vaporwave. It has led to some interesting spinoff subgenres that have leftist aesthetics like sovietwave.
James Ferraro is the best musician alive at making music that sounds like it was spit right out of a corporate board room meeting on how to make the most inoffensive, blandest thing possible. And yet he's amazing, he's extremely talented. It's like the musical equivalent of those street performers who pretend they're statues. It's like if Goku started playing golf.
Intentionally making robotic, soulless music. I love him and can't believe I forgot him.
The audience was definitely way left of the average American
It was filled with Asian Zoomers in San Francisco
well I definitely don't think most vaporwave enjoyers are chuds per se, but there's a definite contingent there