You are so right. It's not just nostalgia - a nostalgic movement would seek to mimic the specific time it's referring to. Happy Days was nostalgic - it was a recreation of the 1950s in a 1970s TV show. Vaporwave doesn't seek to mimic the 80s, we know the 80s didn't look like that. Instead, vaporwave seeks to recreate the future that the 80s imagined. And it does so because the present can no longer imagine a future different than the present we currently live in. Neoliberalism has taken that from us, given we now live in an age where the free market rules, the Fukumayan "End of History". We know live trapped in a constant present - our tech might change, but our culture hasn't, it remains static and trapped in the 1990s/2000s, endlessly regurgitating tropes from the past in a pastiche. Consider how little the world has changed in the 20 years since the turn of the century and today, and contrast to how much the world changed in the 10 years between 1962 and 1972. Since we can no longer imagine a future, we steal the future belonging to a time when we could imagine one - just before the "triumph" of neoliberalism and the end of the cold war: namely, the future the 80s imagined. The malaise will continue, I expect, until we escape the clutches of neoliberalism.
You are so right. It's not just nostalgia - a nostalgic movement would seek to mimic the specific time it's referring to. Happy Days was nostalgic - it was a recreation of the 1950s in a 1970s TV show. Vaporwave doesn't seek to mimic the 80s, we know the 80s didn't look like that. Instead, vaporwave seeks to recreate the future that the 80s imagined. And it does so because the present can no longer imagine a future different than the present we currently live in. Neoliberalism has taken that from us, given we now live in an age where the free market rules, the Fukumayan "End of History". We know live trapped in a constant present - our tech might change, but our culture hasn't, it remains static and trapped in the 1990s/2000s, endlessly regurgitating tropes from the past in a pastiche. Consider how little the world has changed in the 20 years since the turn of the century and today, and contrast to how much the world changed in the 10 years between 1962 and 1972. Since we can no longer imagine a future, we steal the future belonging to a time when we could imagine one - just before the "triumph" of neoliberalism and the end of the cold war: namely, the future the 80s imagined. The malaise will continue, I expect, until we escape the clutches of neoliberalism.
Could barely have said it better myself!
The malaise will continue until we escape the clutches of liberals, the woke, SJW's, most of mainstream media, those that want socialism etc...