(Comment Audit) Vaporwave: Genre Redefined
0:00 When I uploaded my video on vaporwave about two years ago, I think I really, for the first time, broke into YouTube as someone kind of known for making videos. When I looked on Reddit, I saw people that were like recognizing me for what I was doing. They liked editing, script, the laughs, but they just didn't like the Marxism. [Music] They really, really didn't like the Marxism.
And I figured, considering that I get a lot of dissenting opinions on my videos, I'd start responding to a few of them—not all of them, just a few of them. I wanted to look at some of the more positive comments here too, just to make things a bit more balanced. I think I referenced Marxism maybe three times in the initial video, and I think I said pretty clearly that vaporwave is both praising and critiquing capitalism and, for that reason, is employing a Marxist critique. But people didn't really seem to see it that way. You're either very
1:00 Pro capitalist and you love it and you think that vaporwave is supporting consumerism or you're anti capitalism full-on commie pinko neo Bolshevik cultural Marxist and your beds on me I didn't take either position in the original video at all because vaporwave doesn't really take that position but of all of the comments I got completely deriding Marxism as any semblance of a component in vaporwave my favorite had to be from Benjamin Woodham who who said to me in very plain English I happen to love capitalism and hearing vaporwave does not alert me to the dangers of consumerism it just feels like someone made a musical genre that is a massive tribute to consumerism with a bit of a sarcastic twinge to it vaporwave does not point the finger at the realities of consumerism but none of those realities appear to be injustice as if you're looking at how vaporwave seems to interpret consumerism I don't see Marxist undertones rather I see nostalgia for better days when capitalism was more prevalent Marxism from my perspective seems to be totally
2:00 absent from the genre wonderfully so I'd like to bring up another point I think Marx is tend to see their own philosophy and literally everything I have an art degree and I and I had to deal with a bunch of ideologue when I was in art school everything that was good endorsed Marxism according to Marxists I once heard a speech about how Leonardo da Vinci was Marxist and I'm not even joking they put their ideology into literally everything mr. amazing I'd like you to address this issue I have if you are indeed amazing that pretty much sums up the general feeling that I get from all of these comments if I am indeed amazed the point I was trying to make about Marxism is that what Marx says about production in the capitalist mode of production is that people are separated from their products that's the fundamental issue it's not about wealth it's not about class I mean those are all components very big components but Marx's fundamental philosophical issue is that what is unique about vaporwave really is the way it's critiquing capitalism because the support that you
3:00 evidence is in my opinion a critique it is to say that there is some greatness here but its greatness that's examined in a different way when you hear the way sounds can be distorted and destroyed and stretched out and pitch shifted in people like Beck trade or in people like a spree even saying Pepsi does a little bit VHS logos too it's a sound which is really evidencing decay it's not evidencing this beautiful utopic society it is looking at something that was once great and saying there's a problem here it's using the greatness of the sound itself in my opinion to get to something that really isn't so great and so you have here both greatness and badness at the same time and I think that is the the main critique that is also in some ways Marx's position in some cases he says that the main philosophical issue of capitalism is that man is separate from the products of his labor that is the biggest philosophical issue he has vaporwave is getting at that by using
4:01 the products of his labor distorting them and looking at them in this really ghostly sort of blurry way to articulate that difference in that separation of man from his labor you can say that you know of critique of consumerism is an intrinsically Marxist I think the way that vaporwave is using the products of labour is using copyrighted material material that has intellectual value to it and as I said in the initial video eroding at and subtracting from it it is adding a new meaning to it which is precisely what Marx said of capitalism and at the same time how can you not look at something like this redistribute the Pepsi and just love how nonsensical that is that this isn't some great huge critique of capitalism that is meant to be incredibly profound it's a surface-level sort of thing it's just it's there it's a critique of capitalism but the purpose isn't Marxist that the purpose is never to promote a
5:01 sort of communist stick even fascistic if you're looking at fash wave but god that's completely different this sort of idea of capitalism being completely destroyed and replacement with something like labor wave it's not anything like that it's just the way that it is doing what is doing is a resemblance of Marx's philosophy and it's because of that that I don't really see an insertion of Marxism I don't think that Marxists are really inserting their ideology into everything I mean I don't know because I don't talk to too many Marxists perhaps you do know better than I do with your art degree but it's not really an insertion it's not saying vaporwave is fundamentally marked system that everything we look at through vaporwave must be Marxist I never said that I never claimed that that was something you inserted into my video and I think everybody that really seemed to think that I was making this outrageous claim that vaporwave is fundamentally Marxist they inserted that I didn't insert Marxism into it I just said that there's a comparison that can be seen there if you want to go and say that I'm then saying that that is making this unique
6:02 niche internet sub-genre with wide posting text and Simpsons clips some fundamental Marxist Leninist Maoist lopatin astruc and movement of economy if you want to say that go ahead but that ain't what I said that is not what's in the video all that being said the scripting also happened to be something that a lot of people were divided over I think some people called it literature and poetry I wouldn't call it that good I think there were parts of the video where I did definitely get things way too verbose I don't think it was very good at all but someone did actually funnily enough put part of the script into a future funk song which was pretty cool I've always loved the something about it touched the mooring since the neon visuals I always thought they were green I know we can raise listening to eighties music did a lot of it was staples my parents are artists so when a friend sent me like to say Pepsi's private caller and I felt like close my eyes
7:02 [Music] [Music] then some people really took it the other direction and someone on reddit posted I hate these types of videos obnoxious pretentious kids reading Wikipedia pages for ten minutes and that's fair I don't think I really said anything too profound in that video it's an alright statement I think I did an alright job too but um then someone responded to that saying someone should post a transcript of the video in the comments that we can read and laugh at it that's a bit dark I think that's a little bit too far I can understand not liking something and thinking something is a little bit pretentious and not that good but laugh at no I don't understand that and then tangential to like my script and I guess even the marx's and people seem to think that I was also seeing too much value in vaporwave and I wasn't
8:03 aiming to see value in it for values say that is to say that there is some intrinsic great Pro fund that he to it even when I was discussing Marxism just a few minutes ago like I said it's not that Marxism is an inherent thing in vaporwave and it's the same way with regards to meaning it's not that there is some great profound message here I guess people kind of get that idea in terms of the way I write my scripts and I guess that's a rhetorical failure on my part but the message in the meaning behind vaporwave or not the intents of the video the intent was clearly the aesthetics and the enjoyment of the thing in itself looking at vaporwave for the sort of entertainment value but then saying secondarily was also something here that we can kind of talk about intellectually that it isn't just entertainment that really and that's I think that's the purpose of my channel that nothing is just entertainment that you can see a connection and a value in anything regardless of whether the intent is there and some people really took it really far in saying that the fans of the current generation is the recycled garbage disposal of twenty years ago if you don't like vaporwave
9:04 you don't got to listen to it but I don't think you have to say all that either that it's just recycled garbage I don't really think that the 2000s was the time of 70s 80s retro I don't remember seeing any floral patterns on my bedroom walls or in anyone's cars or anything like that I don't think the seventies was ever so heavily glorified recycled garbage I don't really see all that it's just a music genre whether you like it or not is up to you people like Bruno Mars I guess you could say recycling Motown but then Motown was itself a recycling of earlier jazz and even some gospel sounds and ragtime sounds it's everything is in a sort of cycle it's just the vaporwave is looking at things in a deconstructive sort of way as opposed to simply rehashing things in a new constructive sort of way hating anything for being a meme is [ __ ] I never hated on vaporwave for being a meme again I feel like so many people wanted to put their own opinions into this video where I really didn't insert them I just said that you can look at it as a meme the same way you can look at it with regards to music theory and you can look at it with
10:04 regards to aesthetic theory and with regards to Marxian theory just different lenses through which you can view something doesn't mean that those things are intrinsically in the thing itself there were also quite a few comments that were critiquing what I said about MC ride and to be honest when I wrote the video script I didn't know who MC ride was when I listened to that Death Grips remix of Macintosh Plus I knew full well that there weren't shorties and thoughts in it I just put that in there just for the joke I knew it wasn't related vaporwave is damn dope it's remind when I what dead I like that one I really do delete was a good one why do paper wave have to make sense when life do not I don't know a lot of people really appreciated the editing as well as they do for I think almost all my videos even even when stuff really misses the mark people like the editing regardless and I'm thankful for them and I'm really glad people like what I'm doing at least from a constructive standpoint of making something that can be visually enjoyed
11:06 some people asked how I made the video how I made the animated album covers and the video was initially made in Premiere Pro but stuff like the album covers was done with 3d cameras and that sort of thing in After Effects someone actually did comment as a question that I recreated these and album covers in Photoshop and the Tippmann After Effects and that is exactly what I did for the video specifically for the 2814 video I took apart the actual image and tried to find copies of similar images on Google and then put everything together in Photoshop and took it in there and in 3d space adjusted everything and then again put in the 3d camera and then I put in things like car movement and water and rain to make things look a bit more organic and I think it turned out pretty well I think the journeys that a lot of people had with vaporwave were very interesting - as opposed to the guy that loved capitalism there was another guy that very touchingly enunciated his feelings and how he became acquainted with vaporwave but then a hardcore Henry
12:07 made it about 9/11 for some reason and also McDonald's. But he has a good point: vaporwave may not have been popular, but no one can forget 9/11. It is impossible not to think about something so tragic. I don't really see how that pertains.
I think comments like this are really more how I view vaporwave. When someone says it's like their favorite genre, or it's something that they can personally enjoy and lets them think about things they don't like in today's world like ISIS and global warming, I think that's something to really be admired. It's not necessarily about thinking about the value; it's seeing value in it. And when you can look at that and you can say something about something in addition to being able to enjoy it, I think that just adds a whole other layer of enjoyment. This semester amazing. Thanks for watching. I really wanted to tone down the editing for this video just because I wasn't
13:09 sure. I don't know how well it would do, how many people would find it interesting, and also because I wanted it to be primarily something that people would just be listening to my opinion for, with the visuals kind of secondary, because most of my videos are really focused on the visuals themselves. But going forward, if a lot of people like this and they, you know, just enjoy listening to me talk about and elucidate my opinions and my videos, then maybe I'll do more of them. [Music]
Found a mishearing? Say so.