The Terrifying Rise of Post-Vaporwave

[DISCLAIMER] The statements below are purely for entertainment, and not meant to be seen as anything other than that. Any references to the likeness of specific people, companies, or events are purely coincidental. This blog post is a satirical portrayal of a non-existent genre, so please do not @ me.

With that said,

Please enjoy.

Post-Vaporwavers

What is Post-Vaporwave

In the year 2022, a post-vaporwave internet emerged in an increasingly de-centralized, de-stabilized, and hyper-globalized world. Despite rapidly increasing technological progress, many people within the post-vaporwave sphere have created a metaphorical bubble of accepted norms where fetishized aesthetics of 80s, 90s, and an incoherent amalgam of the two, allows for a faux-authentic lifestyle that aggressively glorifies memes, corporate machinations, obsolete products, and gaudy iconography. This new type of hipster their own inability to come up with anything new. You would think we had enough magenta and teal gradients in Vaporwave, but you were wrong, oh how you were wrong. Some will say this is being too critical, but without critique there is no development, and sadly, Vaporwave itself suffered the consequences of having no standard for quality, quickly bubbling up and being overwhelmed by waves of mediocrity during the hyper-sensitive years between 2014-2016, when even just basic feedback would be met with hostility in a time when everyone’s artistic expressions, however deranged were ‘valid’, allowing for the bloated neon demon it has become today.

In contrast to old Vaporwave that mostly mocked and parodied consumer-culture, Post-Vaporwave celebrates capitalism with feigned naivete, secretly priding itself on how well it can mask its greed, ambition, and turpitude with trite simulacra meant merely to impress on an observer. I mean, c’mon, no one actually believes you enjoy looking like a Lisa Frank knock-off plastic dolphin from China that got left in the sun for too long and listens to music equally as slow. This new paradigm created by post-vaporwavers gleefully perpetuates the dystopian reality that it once subtly cautioned against. At one point in time, lets say 2011, the genre was dripping with sincerity and curious flirtation with the potential for a new age punk mentality, Vaporwave would go on to collapse on itself by becoming quasi-popular on social networks, inevitably devolving into its lowest common denominators to keep its repetitious slowed down droning easy to communicate to others. To put it simply, Post-Vaporwave is popular because it’s easy to classify now, where as Vaporwave at its start was not as easily put into a box.

Post-Vapor Moment

“It went from being ‘is this Vaporwave?’ to ‘THIS is Vaporwave!’”

Post-Vaporwave became the most dominant form of Vaporwave around 2015, once enough followers of the style abandoned any smidge of philosophical, anti-capitalist, or marxist tendencies that can be argued originally helped foster many of the genre’s ideas surrounding music copyright, creative commons, and manipulation of nostalgic artefacts as acts of rebellion circa 2011. Increasingly pro-capitalist, the post-Vaporwave frontrunners and their subscribers eventually were able to help organize a new a reality for the scene that once set into motion was never able to recover its original uniqueness and charm. Post-Vaporwave is the delusion of appearing counter-culture, by assimilating into their online communities that offer a variety of options to purchase this identity and find acceptance through monetization.

This fate of Vaporwave was expected, as almost every genre that has been assigned recognizable qualities becomes more of a costume than an actual identity. Vaporwave, once it reached its saturation point became a grey goo that long since reduced any meaning it had left into nothing. The original sentiment that created Vaporwave is no longer possible to replicate, because those times were different, and circumstances changed. Post-Vaporwave is then a mask for the ego to satisfy its desire to belong to something that no longer exists. The Post-Vaporwave era proliferated because it became accessible, and easy to replicate, eventually ending up just tired clichés. It became a normie’s way to seem edgy in the same way fedoras did.

Fancy making this company richer by feeding into the illusion that wearing this gaudy pattern makes you cooler?

The Death of Anonymity

A big part of what made Vaporwave special before it’s fall was that anonymity was commonly used as part of the expression of the artist. The mystique of the these anon artists was refreshing because it sometimes felt like a shared dream between fans, coming together online to piece together the vague details we would find to put together ideas about our favorite albums without being hand-held by the artists. Releases wouldn’t be overshadowed by the ego of the producer, who didn’t really need to be known in order for anyone to enjoy an album, and I would argue it even made it better. For the same reason Daft Punk wore helmets, I think producers were better for being discrete about their identities.

In an internet world plagued by just god-awful people, the mentally disturbed, and idiotic trolls, it was almost a privilege not knowing that a producer you liked wasn’t the terrible human being that they likely were. Thanks to Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, and Discord, we found every avenue to interact with whatever misguided hot take our favourite post-Vaporwave music artist had in the oven. Vaporwave just became another game of talking heads, jibber-jabbering about any and every topic without a sense of direction for where any of this was going, because they knew there was no direction or destination, which paradoxically became the point.

The illusion of anonymity was shattered by a growing call to be able to track, trace, and identify internet users by government officials. Hiding your real identity, while not impossible, often took a bit more work. This was in addition to many big names in Vaporwave to start seeing the power and privilege that came with notoriety online. Post-Vaporwave is the opposite of Vaporwave in that it encourages recognition. It wants you be seen, heard, and use any platform available to broadcast yourself. This development coincided with the expanding concept of Web 2.0, where plastering your face and name everywhere carried the intoxicating scent of some form of niché pseudo-fame. Sadly, for Vaporwave, many of those who were once intriguing ghostly presences on the fringe of the internet’s most interesting music scene are now just more of the same stardom-starved post-vaporwave clout vampires watching, waiting, for their moment in the gradient sun.

And just like that, you’re a post-vaporwave icon.

The Post-Vaporwave Virtual Plaza

The virtual Plaza was once an imagined fantasy of never-ending escalators slinking onto infinite floors of a pristine mall dotted with perfect storefronts and immaculate decor that stays frozen in time but still hauntingly satisfying. This virtual plaza predicted the multiverse of online shops, print-on-demand, drop-shipping, and micro-diy store boom of the mid 2010s. Online shopping ofcorse existed before then, but internet shopping became so integrated into almost every facet of daily life that it became practically inescapable at some point mid-decade. This same self-gratifying need to purchase things today is what drove millions of Americans back in the 80s & 90s to practically live in these glowing corporate oases. Malls were expertly crafted to create feelings of almost being in a fantasy, a hyper-reality used to attract those looking to browse wares indefinitely, which is a human trait that never really died in the 80s. This concept is warped further by post-Vaporwavers who are consumers first and foremost, especially if said consumption furthers their ability to identify with their chosen social media persona/clout ID.

Post-Vaporwave is the over-saturation of products tagged with the word Vaporwave, but no longer defined by things like established traits or qualities and instead just a chaotic maelstrom of synthwave, retrowave, chillwave, 80s, 90s, forcibly smashed with other nostalgic references. The most successful, and profitable post-Vaporwave products are the following: the floral aesthetic of a 99-cent can of iced tea, and a blue and white brush stroke on a disposable paper cup. These two images have come to overwhelmingly define post-Vaporwavism, with their respective owners, and opportunists cashing in on the obsession with these two meaningless corporate designs. You can find these designs on almost anything you could ever want, and if it doesnt exist, you can just do it yourself. Once apon a time these aesthetics were sort of novel, and not really considered trendy, but post-Vaporwavers created a frenzy around these random graphics that give the impression that its more about signaling your affiliation to the scene than actually thinking these corporate-sponsored products are in any way significant. Seeing someone wear anything like this out in the wild is cringe, but cringe has been embraced by post-Vaporwave, who are unable to grasp baseness.

A must-have.

Post-Vaporwave’s Music is an Afterthought

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been listening to Vaporwave since 2011, and before that I was listening to Chillwave, and Synthwave before that. Sub-genres are not a new concept to me, and I have collected a wealth of useless information regarding these styles throughout the years. There was a point when the music in Vaporwave was more important than the aesthetic… CRAZY, I know, but before becoming post-Vaporwave, fans actually didn’t need larger than life personalities, graphics, or sponsored products to feel connected to the music. Similar to what happened to music when MTV came out in the 80s, so too did Vaporwave become all about its visual components rather than audio production quality. Notably discussed by the creator of Floral Shoppe 2, post-Vaporwave was about who could abuse the genre’s stylistic tropes to ‘out-Vaporwave’ everyone else, even at the cost of making listenable music. This album’s creation was the metaphorical Hadron Collider experiment that caused the rift in the Vaporwave universe’s space-time, allowing post-Vaporwavers to cross over into this dimension [queue laugh from audience].

I think music for post-Vaporwavers doesnt really matter, though some will say they have an affinity for it regardless of if they actually enjoy it or not. What matters most to this subset of fan is being a part of the scene, the influence their patron artist has, and the potency of the artist’s persona, aesthetic choices, and or product line-up. I know you’re probly shaking your head saying that YOU aren’t one of those post-Vaporwavers, no, you actually like to hear good production quality and listenable music. I’m glad to hear that. There are all sorts of people and I’m in no way suggesting every single post-Vaporwaver is the same. There is however always a majority that exhibits predictable behaviors when it comes to these things, so really its all very ephemeral and hard to pin down, but we try anyway, don’t we? But, I digress. Some prefer to listen to the music, others prefer to groom, but thats a whole ‘nother story about what the post-Vaporwave community fosters.

The Future of Post-Vaporwave

At some point in the last decade, something happened that knocked this universe into another, possibly something with that damned Large Hadron Collider. Maybe that’s what they’re trying to tell us with all these stupid marvel movies talking about multiple timelines crashing into each other and what not [conspiracy alert]. When will they learn to stop messing with time-space! Clearly we’re in some insane variation in the multiverse where we spiral downhill in everything, and Post-Vaporwave is another Mojo-Verse caricature of reality that we believe is real, but just a theatre of the absurd performance that is as confusing as it is loud, and damn it’s loud, day-glo loud. Where might Post-Vaporwave go in the future? I have no clue, but from what I’m predicting it could be what the generation after Gen-Z starts to think is an actual depiction of the past, without ever knowing that it was all just a joke—a joke on them.

-Van

Blog RSS

---

AUTHOR

Van Paugam is an Internationally-Acclaimed DJ and leading figure specializing in 70s and 80s Japanese Music, dubbed City Pop. He has organized and hosted over 100 events globally dedicated to the style, and actively promotes Japanese culture while on the board of the Japanese Arts Foundation of Chicago. He has been featured on CNN, NHK, and many other publications for his dedication to City Pop. Van is credited with being the first person to begin popularizing City Pop online through his mixes on YouTube in 2016, and subsequently through live events. Learn More…

---