Vaporwave is a music genre branching from electronic hypnagogic pop, which was what much of its music was labelled as before the term Vaporwave was coined, but the unique and iconic visual aesthetic cultivated alongside it is now, debatably, more popular and recognizable than the music itself. Vaporwave, as an aesthetic and movement, has been described as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on late 20th century consumerism and the soulless glamour of late capitalism[1], although others have disagreed with this depiction.[2]

Vaporwave, like many other aesthetics, gives you nostalgia[aesthetics.fandom.com]. Even if you weren't around from the late 70's to early 00's, both the images and music (mostly the music) send you to a whole different version of the world as we know it today. The images associated with vaporwave proper are often related to the late 1980s and early 1990s, but can include as far back as the late 1970s (the beginning of mall culture) to circa 2006 (the peak of Windows XP usage). Vaporwave has a strong connection to the mental struggle to disassociate pleasure and fulfillment from artificial environments - such as shopping malls, virtual realities both real (computer GUIs, Second Life, video games) and fictional (see many examples of "the metaverse" in Cyberpunk works, which are often repurposed for the creation of vaporwave media) and trendy or nostalgic advertisements - in a modern Late Stage Capitalist world. The duality of the message, even if unintentional, simultaneously calls into question both the legitimacy of advertisements and corporations to try and dictate what people find happiness in, and the legitimacy of the traditionalist idea that valuing people and "the little things in life" over material goods inherently makes someone a morally superior and happier individual, through it's half-cynical yet longingly captivating images and visuals of environments evocative of modern childhoods spent with mothers or teenage friends in colorful or eye-catching shopping environments as well as reminders of the early days of[3] personal computing technology and the internet.

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The genre emerged in 2011 from online communities, such as Turntable.fm. In subsequent years, it gained popularity through websites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Last.fm, 4chan, and YouTube. Its rise in popularity coincided with the decline of Seapunk[aesthetics.fandom.com] and while the two certainly share similar aesthetic choices, there is a distinct difference between the two.

The key difference between Seapunk[aesthetics.fandom.com] and Vaporwave is that Seapunk had a much more focused aesthetic on early '90s CG images and aquatic life. On the other hand, Vaporwave cast a broader net on its aesthetic cues, choosing to highlight the period from the 1970s to early 2000s (crossing over somewhat with the Y2K[aesthetics.fandom.com] aesthetics of 1997—2004). It is debated when the period that Vaporwave is centered around ended; some mark the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as the ending point, while others mark the Great Recession of 2008 as the end point. Over time, Frutiger Aero[aesthetics.fandom.com] aesthetics of 2004—2013 have started to make their way into the Vaporwave scene, which would make the cutoff point 2012—2013 when smartphones and Flat Design[aesthetics.fandom.com] became fully popular and social media took a different turn.

One of the big early inspirations for the Vaporwave visual aesthetic draws direct inspiration from the Memphis[aesthetics.fandom.com] Group, a name given to a group of post-modern designers and architects, founded in Milan, Italy by Ettore Sottsass in the early 1980s. The original group disbanded in 1988, but their influence still lives on to this day. During the group's heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was seen as a tacky product in its era, and its popularity faded by the mid-late 1990s. Toward the turn of the millennium, it began to gain appreciation from designers, collectors, and many of those with nostalgia and fond memories of the 1980s decade.
The bright colors and simple shapes would later inspire media and products aimed at children and youth of the era including Nickelodeon, MTV, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Discovery Zone, Gymboree, Trapper Keepers, toys, and many other staples of Kidcore[aesthetics.fandom.com], which given the time period it was popular in, makes it perfect to fit in with the Vaporwave aesthetic, since many early members of the Vaporwave community were kids during the time the Memphis Design[aesthetics.fandom.com] style was popular.

Vaporwave has garnered some significant attention from the music press as of late. Most recently, artists such as Vektroid, HKE, Infinity Frequencies, The 2814 Proyect and R23X have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ covered by music sites and blogs such as The Guardian, Dummy, Fader, FACT, The Wire, Thump (Vice), Red Bull Music Academy, The Quietus, Resident Advisor, TinyMixTapes, Marcel's Music Journal, Cokemachineglow, The Needle Drop, and others. Coincidentally, several Vaporwave zines have started popping up, the most notable of them being Private Suite Magazine.

Popular visuals utilized in Vaporwave aesthetics can include, but are not limited, to Anime and cartoons, (often from the '70s to '90s but not always, ie. Sailor Moon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and even The Simpsons, as popularized by artist Lucian Hughes), drug use[aesthetics.fandom.com] (almost always in the form of codeine syrup or lean, or pills), Classical sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoon, Consumerism (often displays brand names and logos, such as Adidas, Pepsi Cola, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Plus, PlayStation, Arizona Iced Tea, and Fiji Water), computer hardware and graphics from the '80s-early '00s (The Windows 95 operating system is used often in vaporwave artwork and edits, as are images of early computers such as the first of Apple's Macintosh PCs), city skylines, malls, sadness or distress (often employed to emphasize the ironic soullessness of the Vaporwave aesthetic, in a 'sad but aesthetically pleasing' kind of way), Liminal spaces[aesthetics.fandom.com] (while on a creepier level, the surreal and nostalgic[aesthetics.fandom.com] feeling goes quite well with this aesthetic), grids/lines/shapes (the inclusion of this in particular has led to some confusion with Synthwave[aesthetics.fandom.com] aesthetics), pink and teal, altered reality (pictures with unnatural hues and tones can be seen throughout this aesthetic. Heavily edited pictures of the world around you can soon become unrecognizable and foreign), glitches[aesthetics.fandom.com], and the gratuitous use of Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters. Japanese seems to be one of the most used languages in the vaporwave community's artwork. Full width versions of Latin characters[en.wikipedia.org], used in Japanese, Korean and Chinese computers, are also commonly seen in the aesthetic.

There is an air of ambiguity of whether Vaporwave artists are either celebrating the rampant capitalism that birthed the Vaporwave aesthetics, ironically mocking the hollowness of a lot of these visual cues which mistakes shallowness for depth, or just happens to think they look or sound cool/nostalgic. It is generally left up to the listener as to what they think the artist meant with the final work.

A less-often spoken about characteristic of vaporwave is vaporfashion or clothing inspired by the vaporwave aesthetic. This can include brands that were popular in the '80s and '90s, such as Nike, ESPRIT, FILA, Adidas, etc., as well as specialized stores that sell vaporfashion (most famously among these brands being Vapor95).

Most Vaporwave entertainment seems to be relegated to YouTube series (although that doesn't stop a lot of major corporations to, ironically, co-opt a lot of Vaporwave aesthetics for their marketing campaigns), with series such as Dan Bell's Dead Mall Series and Retail Archeology being prime examples of cataloging what Vaporwave is all about, while SkyCorp Home Video takes the Vaporwave aesthetic and becomes a major pastiche of early '90s entertainment and commercials. The films Spider-Man: Into The Spider Verse, Valerian City of a Thousand Planets, and The Wave use the vaporwave aesthetic within their respective worlds and for stylistic and creative narrative.

Vaporwave originally started as an offshoot of the genre hypnagogic pop, which was what the the founding artists of the genre, such as Daniel Lopatin, Vektroid and James Ferraro were labelled as at the time. The genre was first characterized by its heavy use of samples from the 1980s and 1990s music, typically pop, smooth jazz, or Muzak. Samples are often pitched down, layered, or altered in classic chopped and screwed style. However, vaporwave has started to incorporate more original compositions in a range of directions, from the happy, and faster paced sounds of artists such as Surfing and George Clanton to the more distorted and surreal sounds of artists such as 2 8 1 4 and Nmesh. Artists have also started to get creative with the physical mediums they sell their albums on, ranging from the conventional (vinyl and cassette) to the unusual (Minidiscs, floppy discs and even Game Boy Advanced cartridges). There are so many Vaporwave Music Artists out there that we won't be able to exactly list them off, but we can give you a list of some Vaporwave artists that can serve as an introduction to the genre.

Some of these artists include:

• Vektroid[open.spotify.com] (a.k.a Macintosh Plus, PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, Virtual Information Desk, dstnt, Laserdisc Visions, New Dreams Ltd)
  
• Daniel Lopatin[open.spotify.com] (a.k.a Chuck Person, Oneohtrix Point Never, sunsetcorp)
  
• James Ferraro[open.spotify.com]
  
• Skylar Spence[open.spotify.com] (a.k.a Saint Pepsi)
  
• George Clanton[open.spotify.com] (a.k.a ESPRIT 空想)
  
• S U R F I N G[open.spotify.com]
  
• BNDBlazrt[open.spotify.com]
  
• Windows96[open.spotify.com]
  
• t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者[open.spotify.com]
  
• Infinity Frequencies[open.spotify.com]
  
• ２８１４[open.spotify.com]
  
• R23X[open.spotify.com]
  
• Nmesh[open.spotify.com]
  
• 猫 シ Corp.[open.spotify.com] (Catsystem Corp.)
  
• Angela Regina Rossi[open.spotify.com]
  
• Blank Banshee[open.spotify.com]
  
• Luxury Elite[open.spotify.com]
  
• Tupperwave[open.spotify.com]
  
• Yuni Wa[open.spotify.com]
  
• https://open.spotify.com/artist/5OmqY8dwR6GFMocNY3ph68
  
• Cosmic Cycler[open.spotify.com]
  
• マクロスMACROSS 82-99[open.spotify.com]
  
• Vantage[open.spotify.com]
  
• Moe Shop[open.spotify.com]
  
• Desired[open.spotify.com]
  
• BarbWalters[open.spotify.com]
  
• サクラSAKURA-LEE[open.spotify.com]
  
• bl00dwave[open.spotify.com]
  
• LensCorp™ International[open.spotify.com]
  
• Subliminal Network[subliminalnetwork.bandcamp.com]
  
• MILLENNIAL DREAM CORP[millennialdreamcorp.bandcamp.com]
  
• TOWERS[geometriclullaby.bandcamp.com]
  
• https://deathsdynamicshroud.bandcamp.com/
  
• AKANE IN TOKYO[akaneintokyo.bandcamp.com]

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Vaporwave, unsurprisingly, also has a rather strong and thriving presence in video games. Although it's primarily in the independent game space, the two best-known examples of Vaporwave video games are Broken Reality and Mall Quest. Although one can find many examples of Vaporwave gaming on GameJolt to play for free (which is fitting for the general tone Vaporwave goes for).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757480/Broken_Reality/

Vaporwave also prominently co-opts video games within the aesthetic as well, as the video game industry was becoming increasingly profitable at the time vaporwave is based around, so the aesthetic often incorporates video games from the time, including the NES, GB, SNES, PS1, GBC, Dreamcast, GBA and occasionally Atari devices.

A game frequently referenced in vaporwave is the game Ecco the Dolphin, as well as it's sequels, even inspiring one of the founding albums of the genre, Chuck Person's EccoJams, as well as the song ECCOと悪寒ダイビング by Macintosh Plus, from the famous vaporwave album Floral Shoppe. The music of the game is popular among fans of vaporwave for it's trippy feel and all around vaporwave vibes, and the game is one of the reasons why dolphins are so prevalent in vaporwave imagery.

Due to a lot of similar aesthetic cues, most notably neon grids, palm trees and the famous sunset, to the untrained eye, it's easy to confuse the aesthetics of both Synthwave[aesthetics.fandom.com] and Vaporwave (and some people have tried to make politically motivated edits that do, indeed, confuse the two aesthetics and assume they are the same). Let it be known; they are, indeed, two completely separate aesthetics with two completely different goals in mind. While Vaporwave is more political, satirically using consumerist media, including advertisements, products, shopping malls and brand logos, as well as presenting its nostalgia[aesthetics.fandom.com] in a way that feels more dreamy or trippy[aesthetics.fandom.com], using faded pastel colours and glitched visuals. It also celebrates the expansion of civilisation, often showing computer graphics of the time[3], and most notably using Japanese visuals, including anime, Japanese text and Japanese music, as Japan was at the forefront of the expansion at the time, experiencing an economic miracle and producing all kinds of technology that was shipped all across the world.

Synthwave is more of a genuinely earnest celebration of television, music and video games from the 80's, sometimes mimicking the bad plot lines and awesome visuals, and has a more dramatic colour palette, featuring vibrant neon colours (excluding green) in contrast with dark blues and blacks. This confusion is also not helped due to the fact there have been several instances of Synthwave and Vaporwave artists collaborating on projects and some artists coming in-between the two genres, such as Home and Hotel Pools.

In short, Synthwave concentrates on fast-tempo electronic music inspired by the emerging synth scene in the 80's, while Vaporwave concentrates on the ironic use of consumerist media and mass-produced and artificial pop music, but also celebrates nostalgia from the 80s and 90s.

Vaporwave has been accused of appropriating and commodifying elements of various cultures, particularly from East Asia. This includes borrowing imagery from Japanese pop culture, incorporating kanji characters without full understanding or respect for their meaning, and treating cultural artifacts as mere visual tropes. Due to its high potential for becoming formulaic and lack of any accompanying real world contexts, it could be said that this applies to all content vaporwave samples, regardless of origins, including Western cultures, Latin cultures, and even propagandist variants when in context to a seeming lack of any input from modern nations who may no longer follow or approve of the past actions being promoted by such subgenres.

Additionally, even "low-brow" culture such as advertisements are often misinterpreted as having been popular or well-remembered, despite such famous vaporwave samples as "Mac Tonight" (from a late 1980s commercial for 24/7 McDonalds) having always been obscure among the general populace; if cultural appropriation can be extended temporally, it can be argued that vaporwave has contributed to a muddied and inaccurate perception of worryingly recent historical events.


Vaporwave's tendency to rely on recurring motifs and visual clichés, such as palm trees, statues, Greek columns, and VHS artifacts, can be seen as formulaic and repetitive. Critics argue that this can result in a lack of innovation and originality, with many vaporwave works appearing similar or derivative.

External links to help get a better understanding of this aesthetic.

• Reddit
  
• Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe Member Forum[forum.agoraroad.com]

• Vapor95
  
• Catori Clothing
  
• Palm Treat
  
• Public Space
  
• POPKILLER
  
• Ishihara Design
  
• In Control Clothing
  
• Staycool
  
• Pink Dolphin
  
• Neon Talk
  
• Iced Tea Aesthetics
  
• MoonLambo
  
• ToastyCo
  
• Coolshirtz
  
• Pit Viper
  
• Crazee Wear

• Vaporwave Nostalgia: A journey to the 2010s, by eMBe1979[open.spotify.com]
  
• Vaporwave by Spotify[open.spotify.com]
  
• vaporwave/lo-fi chills by Angela Regina Rossi ☁️ on Spotify[open.spotify.com]
  
• 👾 VaporNights 👾 by Gaby Sena[open.spotify.com]
  
• Immersive Vaporwave/Lo-Fi by Gaby Sena[open.spotify.com]
  
• 🌃🌸 by stoner on Spotify[open.spotify.com]
  
• Mallsoft by Piem Ión[open.spotify.com]
  
• Vaporgoth / Vapornoise by Piem Ión[open.spotify.com]
  
• Dreampunk by Piem Ión[spotify.link]
  
• Signalwave / Broken Transmission by X-modem[open.spotify.com]
  
• The sound of Vaporwave[open.spotify.com]
  
• Paradox - A Vaporwave Experience by TruthParadox[open.spotify.com]

[1] Zhang, H. Arts Studies and Criticism Vaporwave—Anti-Capitalism Internet Music.

[2] Nowak, R., & Whelan, A. (2018). “Vaporwave is (not) a critique of capitalism”: Genre work in an online music scene. Open Cultural Studies, 2(1), 451-462.

[3] as example, "Much of the philosophy of Weathercore centers around the visuals, sounds and stories associated with the aesthetic.", https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Weathercore#Philosophy