The leap from a leftist take on vaporwave straight to "fashwave", as if it is a binary, is certainly something.
> 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.
I figure we aren’t too far away from Bob Woodward’s work being interpreted as hagiography by some.
