Hacker News Reader

Comment by thatgerhard | Hacker News Reader

It just needs galleries, I'm not going to read a blog post about a defunct mall without any pictures..

The YouTuber Dan Bell has a series where he explores dying or abandoned malls, juxtaposed with archive video from when they were alive and vaporwave music.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx...

Those videos have a very interesting aesthetic, it kind of reminds me of what happens when someone who doesn't know how to make videos (and thus doesn't know the current trends) starts making them, in the process inventing their own, totally new style.

Some are pretty trippy. I like it.

Vaporwave aesthetics are pretty interesting. The late 80s - mid 90s period of pop culture seems to have a lot of nostalgic and pseudo-nostalgic appeal for a lot of people.

Well, for tons of people at theirs 40s/30s or close they were kids or teenagers then, it makes sense for them to be nostalgic about it.

As for younger people, it's a period before the web/mobile/social media rise (and pre 9/11), so it's quite distinct from their own present today and thus can be interesting.

It's also a period of relative growth and optimism, as opposed to today...

It's weird. My partner and I are late twenties and talk a lot about 'nostalgia for something never truly experienced'.

We were too young to experience the '80s, and most of the '90s passed us by as children. But now, looking back, there is such a strong appeal - technology was still exciting without the societal consequences and complications - we really only used computers to play games and not for productivity. The anxiety and stress of social networks did not emerge until we were effectively adults and therefore a bit more immune.

Anyway, we love Com Truise, HOME, Flamingosis, and other artists (Simpwave on youtube!) creating a neo-retro-synth-vapour kind of pastiche, but it's odd to think that it's all referencing things that we are experiencing only in hindsight.

It's even odder from the perspective of someone who actually lived through it. I'm guessing the way I feel now is similar to how people my parents' age felt with all the hippie culture appropriation my friends were doing in the 90s.

>it kind of reminds me of what happens when someone who doesn't know how to make videos (and thus doesn't know the current trends) starts making them, in the process inventing their own, totally new style

At the same time, it's a well known aesthetic, established for a decade or so, with several sub-genres (including sub-genres of the music it accompanies it), well covered in the media, and so on...

The odd thing about these videos is that he adds faint background music which makes it sound as though the abandoned malls still have lobby music playing.

They're soothing. Especially the "Miami Nice" video in the series. I could loop that all day if only it didn't have voice commentary.

There was a guy on imgur who used to post photos all inside dead Malls and it was very interesting. This website is very boring for me cos I see nothing. Seeing the demise over time of the mall is what’s interesting.

IMO the videos don’t work. I just wanna look at a clear still picture.

The stories with photos are marked with an icon. But a lot of the content is from the early 2000s and the photo quality not exactly up to modern standards.

So I clicked the link and the first thing I thought was "Cool, there'll be a bunch of ruin porn on this site", then went in, clicked into my area (was a little disappointed at the lack of two malls that I've seen quite a bit about on the web over the years) and realized there was ... one picture?

And I'm thinking, of course -- that's a lot of why I like Hacker News -- sometimes something that seems like it's going to be a click-baity time-sink of pretty picture links ends up being a write-up that's got actual value.

But hell, this time I just wanted some ruin porn. And I was about to comment on it and was trying to think of respectful way to inquire if anyone had a solid "Ruin Porn for Dead Malls" link without expressing dissatisfaction with the content provided here[0].

Since you broke the ice on that one -- does anyone solid bookmarks ... with pics? :) I dig it partly because there's a whole lot of Detroit "ruin porn" -- my home town (metro) -- and many are places I've visited/dined in/seen shows in. It's depressing (and fascinating) how quickly these places turn[1]. The first "Ruin Porn" site I visited had pictures of the interior of a Detroit steak house ... 3-6 months after we ate there. 90% of the damage was probably people picking at whatever was valuable that was left in the first few days, but the amount of natural growth (food/all kinds was left out and the building was exposed to the elements) and how quickly the earth started reclaiming what man had built was humbling.

Malls tended to be closed up in parts. Heck, I can't remember ever being at a mall that had every space occupied, but when they failed, they'd start blocking off large portions of the realestate. There'd be walled off third-floors, then all but the first. Some were partially converted to the headquarters of the real-estate company who owned them and later went bankrupt. The two abandoned malls that I've visited had full-time police deputies with a security office[2]. There were a lot of things related to running such a large property that you would never know about unless you had that job and it's interesting seeing how that all worked.

[0] I did read a little bit, but ... Wikipedia fills that need for me. Not sure why that made me think I'd sound like a d*ck, but hey.

[1] There was a steak house downtown that my boss had taken a coworker and I out to -- great dinner, very inexpensive. It closed a week later.

[2] One was in a gang area where you're just not going to get anyone buying things if they're fearing for their safety, and the other in an upper-class area with the tax dollars to warrant giving the wealthy visitors a sense of safety beyond "mall cop".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com