Thoughts on Neo-Vaporwave
Do you think in 5-10 years we will get a kind of Neo-Vaporwave based on the early-mid 2010s Vaporwave aesthetic? I think it would be weird to have an ironic nostalgic aesthetic come back because of nostalgia for it. That might make it not happen but I've seen stuff like this in other spaces. In rap I'm already seeing a return of Cloudrap aesthetics* which was already ironic visuals wise back in its day.
Perhaps Vaporwave will take longer to come back. Generally these styles are reflective of a something before the actual childhoods of the new wave of artists and fans. Vaporwave was popular 2010-2018 and looking back to the 80s-early 90s so Vaporwave fans would mid 20s at least if it was actually about their own childhood**. I think this is because there's a magic to something from just before you were alive. It feels like a ghost of your childhood, something you just missed but could still feel.
Another thing that might stop it from becoming as big as something like Frutiger Aero or Y2K is that Vaporwave never really left unlike those aforementioned styles. Bandcamp has had a strong scene through the falloff in the mainstreamish internet. But maybe that's the wrong way to think of Vaporwave. Most modern aesthetics have strong Vaporwave influences so maybe it never left. Liminal and (neo) Y2K aesthetics have a clear Vaporwave influence, Sewerslvt who kick-started the modern "breakcore" sound used to be tagged with Vaporwave on Bandcamp, and Frutiger Aero might be seen better as a continuation of the genre.
Vaporwave, the internet, A E S T H E T I C S
Forever.
*Artists like SMOKEDOPE2016 are an example of this. My guess for why it returned sooner in rap is that the nostalgia cycle for rap is faster due to rap being a more teenage thing than general vibe like the 80s-90s.
**They actually were mostly 15-22
This started as a Discord message but it got too long lmao