• dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    6 days ago

    I had to explain the concept of Vaporwave to my father, a musician who was active throughout the '80’s. I told him it’s zeitgeist for an era that never actually happened. So I think this hits the nail on the head.

    There are similar, albeit less ᴀ ᴇ s ᴛ ʜ ᴇ ᴛ ɪ ᴄ, notions for other decades as well.

    Everyone thinks the 1950’s were a nonstop sock hop and an episode of Leave it to Beaver.

    Everything thinks the entirety of the 1960’s was Woodstock.

    Everything in the 1970’s was brown and orange, or wood grain, and had a ridiculous mustache on it.

    …But then, everything that everyone knows happened didn’t actually happen in the decade everyone thinks it did anyway.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      17·
      6 days ago

      Not sure where that’s coming from, I’m an anti fascist and interpreted this as more about how nostalgia twists our memory

      • EldritchFeminityEnglish
        6·
        5 days ago

        My first thought had been along the same lines. I thought of the word anemoia from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

        anemoia - n. nostalgia for a time you’ve never known

        youtube.com/watch?v=wH6ZClRjl14

        Imagine stepping through the frame into a sepia-tinted haze, where you could sit on the side of the road and watch the locals passing by. Who lived and died before any of us arrived here, who sleep in some of the same houses we do, who look up at the same moon, who breathe the same air, feel the same blood in their veins - and live in a completely different world.

        Vaporwave is inherently about a time that never existed, as it’s a re-interpretation of very specific parts of a time period into an aesthetic. A nostalgia for dial-up modems, corporate ad jingles, and hold music all rolled up in that one pattern every paper cup had in the 90s with classical era statues, southern California palm trees in the sunset, and dolphins. A tourist’s view of the nascent internet and the corporate tech world of the time.