Middle Class Millennial Nostalgia Art

Have you seen this retro art everywhere lately? It's affecting visual art, as well as music, and YouTube videos. It's a retro-inspired art movement in which people of the Millennial generation create art inspired by the material culture that affected their middle class lives in the 1980s and 90s.

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HASHTAGS: #nostalgia #vaporwave #art

[larey]

I think Vaporwave really resonates with people because the 80s represents the first truly "modern" decade - so much of the consumer technology that we take for granted now got its very archaic start in this decade. Plus, the full-on in-your-face branding of absolutely everything helped to sell it all as part of an ideal lifestyle. Paired with insanely creative design, fashion, music and aesthetics, it's no wonder it's remained so eye-catching and influential

[michaelpattie]

The empty mall imagery is particularly interesting given how many of these giant shopping malls are dying out and becoming empty in reality as the conditions that supported them are changing. It feels like in the digital age, we all remember having shared communal spaces that we miss, no matter how tacky or artificial they were. We want to go visit them again, but they're not there, and we don't know how to recreate them as things have become more and more atomized.

[Thezombiefactor]

The vibe that vaporwave gives me is the uncomfortable feeling of how much time has passed. The art creates these spaces that feel lost and abandoned, like a ghost town but for a time rather than a place. We've all moved to the future but these past spaces sit there alone. Its cozy and familiar but its also sad and out of reach.

[ZBott]

Liminal spaces were always relaxing to me and I just realized why: When it looks like that I get to go home.

[peacefuldawn]

It's strange how we look back at 80s aesthetics almost as a template for what we wish the future had become (cyberpunky).

[RhysticStudies]

this is a very smart analysis that touched on a lot of the sentiment and nuance that this art form explores. vaporwave's relationship with irony is another talking point all its own – "I unironically like vaporwave" is a common expression in these spaces.

[diegoeldehistoria]

I’ve come to notice a sort of “Twenty Year Effect” (as I like to call it), in which roughly twenty years after a certain era reached its peak people come to sentimentalize it, romanticize it, and look back with nostalgia.

You see it primarily in film and television. Happy Days released 20 years after the 50s, That 70s Show and Boogie Nights both capitalized on the “70s Nostalgia” of the 1990s, and now we’re seeing it again with millennials and Gen-Z-ers looking back at the 80s and 90s with dreamy eyes.

If this effect is real then around the 2030s we’ll be looking back at the 2010s with the same romantic melancholy.

[fren]

It's a refreshed topic actually, I'm not advocating for "comsoomer" culture, but I'm also already getting really tired of "you should be ashamed to like things"

[aplestone]

Another weird thing about the 80s/90s aesthetic is the fact that it sparks an odd sense of nostalgia in a person who grew up mostly in late 2000s/ early 2010s

[aliceseverin]

Loving all these art videos you've been doing lately. Obviously you shouldn't pigeonhole yourself into any one type of video, as I know you've talked about wanting to take a break from political videos, but I can see a light blaring in you whenever you're talking about these kind of subjects. Will be watching more of your stuff anyways but I just wanted to note how impressed I have been with these videos :)

[StarWarsDebunked]

I think that such a feeling of 80/90s nostalgia from this art scene can also resonate with anyone born even after the millenials, so like early gen zs. Simply because some of those styles and looks stayed around even in the early to mid 2000s, especially in places we have connections to or have been to multiple times. Those sorts of places include malls, schools (usually the first few grades) and whatever public transit stations and so on. Even if some people who can maybe very slightly connect to this art form even if born after the 2000s due to the fact that maybe some things that were from the 90s stayed around till their early years. In my case, I'm considered an early zoomer, and I can still connect to some degree with the art due to the previous thing I said, about stuff being around in my early years. For example, when I was in the 1st and 2nd grade we still had some items from the 90s around in our school, and lots (most) of the designs and architecture was still here and only started to reach it's end-of-life term, like those tvs on the carts that the teacher would bring in to watch a cassette during class (best time ever tbh). Some of the things I remember watching at one time was a school bus safety video (we used to watch them once a year in mid September, so like 2-3 into the school year) and that video was from 1992 I think, since I remember the copyright symbol being there and the year (1992) being right next to it. So I think that anyone who experienced this sort of life from their childhood in some form would definitely connect and even those older or younger could still make some connections and distinctions. Great video JJ! Absolutely well done.

[malfattio]

There was a movement of nostalgia for the 1890s that kicked off in the 1920s. The decade was actually refered to as the "Gay Nineties" for a while. I bet people in the 1820s were nostalgic for the largely pre-industrial 1790s.

[rosecity_chris]

I was born in 87. Although nostalgia is a hell of a drug, I think you did a good job of explaining why the 90s was such an interesting time to grow up. There was such a specific feeling that's really hard to describe without having experienced it.

[cheeto_chief_]

My favorite YouTuber talking about Vaporwave, couldn't get any better, I'm a Gen z but the aesthetic of this movement and the artificial nostalgia it creates is really interesting, you should listen to a song called Resonance by Home

[seastormsinger]

Boy, I never realized how much of a weird creep I was for seeking out empty parking lots, after hours school hallways, and depopulated public transportation hubs as a teenager and young adult.

Liminal space art isn't unsettling for me, its relaxing. It is *actually* nostalgic for me. I have memories of quietly walking through those spaces, alone and in artificial twilight, feeling like I could finally breathe and see.

[Marylandbrony]

When ever I pass through the Owings Mills subway station outside of Baltimore, the whole station gives me a very strong vaporwave vibe. The music on the speaker is more or less just 80s or 90s era easy listening and the whole design and artwork is very much from the 80s. Not to mention being near a once famous abandoned mall. Now the whole area has been redeveloped to be more modern and I haven't been their since about February 2020 so I don't know what's going on right now.

[zeken]

Surely, JJ won't miss out discussing "The Sims" in relation to this topic? An early aughts game about middle class nostalgia, escapism, and consumerism that has some mid-century influence on it?

[JasonMoir]

Ironic how you and Drew Durnil always post at the same time. The competition continues beyond Spaghetti Road's quiz...

[DanCapostagno]

I think, as a Millennial, the genre of Millennial Nostalgia Art is interesting in it's duality: it is a reminder of something that we simultaneously find much-needed comfort in but are also intrinsically aware that we cannot return to. There is still a post-Recession trauma that taught the entire generation that much of what they understood of the society, and the degree of consumerism that completely saturated their entire existence, is unsustainable and that they need to look elsewhere for meaning in their lives. It's why, as that generation entered their prime earning years and started acquiring material wealth, they turned to minimalism, "natural" products and finishes, and mid-century modern design. In short, the shock of seeing the disposable, consumable world ripped-away from them created a sort of conservatism that made them crave the stability of more time-tested (or durable) goods, design, and means of consumption. Having said that, I still believe that as the generation ages further, we'll see more collecting artefacts of our childhood and affecting the look of that time, much in the same way that Baby Boomers did with the 1950s & 60s. One imagines that the market will be all too happy to cater to that nostalgia in search of that afore-mentioned disposable income we're finally coming into.

[imilliterate]

To me it's very interesting to see Millennials age and have more influence over society. The oldest millennials are around 40, and soon enough they're going to be the largest generation in power in America. Seeing the culture of the 1990's and 2000's becoming the most idealized nostalgic recent era will be interesting.