Utopian Scholastic
wol.fm
wol.fm
With lots more categories here: https://www.are.na/evan-collins-1522646491/channels
Sums up the core spirit really well. I've recently been using plugins like Unhook to hide YouTube recommendations by default, and can turn them back on when desired.
I think people often forget that the act of exploration itself is an important part of healthy learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiZcy86_L74
Kind of an "I Spy" meets "Tim Burton Batman" fever dream, ending in the kind of colorful fantasia you'd see on the cover of some Utopian Scholastic PC package.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO6ApZlxqo8
Sidenote: is that Clancy Brown doing the voice over on the 'Home' commercial?
Which policies, specifically, will result in a return to this aesthetic, in your opinion?
Being nostalgic is one thing, endorsing "fashwave" - which not for nothing was just a microniche within vaporwave - is another. Long story short, if you go past the surface fascination with the products of 80s consumerism, vaporwave is generally not really in praise of consumerism and it most certainly disrespects copyright, which is that fundamental to that economy, isn't it?
> even young people who aren't very "woke" can tell something's wrong at the heart of capitalism. Current techbro capitalism? Who really likes it?
There's (valid) critique of the current economic status quo, and then there's "Ugh, Capitalism": https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-capitalism - and from my time in the scene (several ElectroniCons, Neo Gaia shows in Tokyo, a dozen or so Discord servers, etc.) the trend seems to be disillusioned millennials rather than diehard illiberals (although I may be wrong; this is anecdotes rather than evidence)
What really takes me back is that if an art movement uses the imagery of a particular trope, be it fascism or communism or anti-colonialism or environmentalism or anything else, it almost always assumes an endorsement of that movement. You don't see many artists put up images of mustache man without it being seen as support. Same with Michael Jackson's Earth Song, no one concluded that MJ was in favor of environmental deconstruction.
The copyright angle is right on the money - anti-copyright views are rife inside the scene for obvious reasons. Whether it was central to the 80s-90s economy is another question. In that time, FLOSS was not prevalent as it is now. It wouldn't be for a decade or so afterwards.
> 1) as a child, that era seemed to be so exciting; 2) as an adult now, not only that culture did turn out to be an empty promise, but also a lot of it is dying or dead by now.
This is the crux, and I do want to address it: maybe the "lost hope" of my generation does see the Palm Mall as something to be mourned rather than something to be celebrated (that's my own bias - maybe others wished it never existed at all) but when I'm in a random Queens bar while Lux or Cars is playing 80s Japanese "City pop" with a projection of Asahi beer commercials on the back wall, I don't think it's a dunk on Reagan or Clinton-era capitalism leading up to the dot-com bust or 9/11 so much as a longing for it.