Mallwave - MEL Magazine

[Joyrex]

MEL Magazine has a great article on Mallwave/Vaporwave, and the "false nostalgia" listeners too young to have directly experienced it have and why: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-teens-who-listen-to-mallwave-are-nostalgic-for-an-experience-theyve-never-had

 

 

Another great example of Mallwave/Vaporwave: https://mistakenforrobots.bandcamp.com/

[joshuatxuk]

Good primer on that aspect of vaporwave and retro aesthetics in general. It's a weird thing to witness as someone who experienced a lot of the era vaporwave draws from either directly or hazily as a little kid. I suppose I can relate to these kids born in the 00s engrossing themselves emotionally in 80s/90s culture with my own fascination with things like 50s/60s exotica or the references BoC so heavily has drawn from a decade or so earlier (late 60s, 70s, early 80s). That era of pop culture was the kind I didn't experience directly but stumbled upon via old cable tv, vhs rentals, and magazines, records, and books at my grandparents. 

[Joyrex]

Good primer on that aspect of vaporwave and retro aesthetics in general. It's a weird thing to witness as someone who experienced a lot of the era vaporwave draws from either directly or hazily as a little kid. I suppose I can relate to these kids born in the 00s engrossing themselves emotionally in 80s/90s culture with my own fascination with things like 50s/60s exotica or the references BoC so heavily has drawn from a decade or so earlier (late 60s, 70s, early 80s). That era of pop culture was the kind I didn't experience directly but stumbled upon via old cable tv, vhs rentals, and magazines, records, and books at my grandparents. 

Yeah, exactly - I think I was fortunate to be born in the early 70's so I got to experience (and later relive via nostalgia) most of that decade, then the heady 80's, and the 90's as a young adult. Your comment about how people are drawn towards 50's and 60's despite not being born then is spot-on, but oddly I don't feel any nostalgia for those eras (perhaps the 50's and early 60's a bit, especially when I watch old shows from that era like The Twilight Zone).

[Rubin Farr]

It's so weird that malls are considered a thing of the past now.

[Limo]

Fun fact: the ancient Greeks (who coined the term) considered nostalgia to be a disease.

 

I used to think the same, and probably still do for the most part, but I will grant the people who make mallwave - or the people who glorified the 80s or the 50s despite not having lived through them this - they help us see what was kind of cool or amusing about these periods in time that those of us who *did* live through them maybe cannot see because those times are, for us, inextricably connected with all of the emotions we felt at the time, many of which were, by necessity, negative.

 

I *hated* the fact that malls were all there were in the way of entertainment when I was a teenager. But if you take away the boredom and the anger that is a necessary part of the teenage experience, then, yes, maybe they did indeed have an amusing aesthetic.

 

Likewise, 50s design is really, really cool. My parents, however, who lived through them, primarily remember being cold and having to wear hand me downs because everyone was poor.

 

And so forth.

 

The music posted above is kind of neat, by the way. I could definitely stand having it on as background music.