Millions of Dead Vibes: How Aesthetics Hurt Art
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The Aesthetics Wiki tries to explain the entire world through art movements & content trends. What does it miss?
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Voice credits:
Abigail Thorn: @PhilosophyTube
Dave Wiskus: / dwiskus
LowSpecAlex: @LowSpecGamer
Tom Nicholas: @Tom_Nicholas
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Sources:
Vox - Trends Are Dead www.vox.com/the-goods/2306546...
Aesthetics Wiki (please don't be assholes to them) aesthetics.fandom.com/
The Atlantic - Cottagecore Was Just the Beginning www.theatlantic.com/technolog...
Afrosartorialism - Problematic black iconicity: The Swenkas afrosartorialism.wordpress.co...
University of Ottawa Press - eGIRLS, eCITIZENS (ed. Jane Bailey and Valerie Steeves) library.oapen.org/bitstream/h...
Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benja...
The Face - Namecore Is the Trend that Unifies All Trends theface.com/culture/namecore-...
Stuart Hall - Who Needs Identity? afrofuturist.center/media/sit...
Media used:
Shanspeare - Social Media's Obsession with Aesthetics and Curated Identities • Social Media's Obsessi...
Mina Le - tiktok is kind of bad for fashion • tiktok is kind of bad ...
Superstorms - Part 2
The Caretaker - It's Only A Burning Memory (nightcore version)
Jessie J - Price Tag (live on Top of the Pops)
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Table of contents:
0:00 The Aesthetics Wiki
6:45 Nothing on the outside
27:13 Nothing on the inside
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heheheh i relate to these guys making a second hands-off wiki for content they think is dumb I'm an admin from the Backrooms wiki on Fandom, and to help keep the wiki clean, we have a second Backrooms Freewriting wiki which lets you write dumb pages.
( to clarify, i'm saying "dumb" more as a joke than anything, both for freewriting and for rejected aesthetics i really have no say in what's a proper aesthetic or not, go wild aaand of freewriting? well, there's no moderation content-wise while the main wiki's s )uper strict, so some of it's dumb. sure there's something good on there, if you shovel through...
Thank you so much for the Disney adult video recommendation ✨️
@@piplupz1586 my pleasure, it’s a banger!
@Timothee Lee you're*
As someone who makes a bunch of ocs, I’ve always felt it a little weird just how widespread “aesthetics” and such are. But i cant deny, being able to look up a few traits and add “core” to the end to find exactly the type of reference image im looking for? Handy.
Oh, yeah, it's great for character design!
Haha, yeah...same. I like grabbing whatever shows up for practicing character design or fool around on my tablet. 😅
Yes!!
Yes, the whole point of aesthetics being about searchability and tag-ability is distopian in a sense, but it’s also very useful when looking for inspiration for illustrationsxD
EXACTLY!!! xD I think for people who *are* into sorting connecting themes for specific feel is exactly what aesthetics/core is meant to do, for people who don't do that...well yeah they think its weird LOL aesthetics/core is like any ol niche fandoms imo, small but entertained group into the same things!
I feel like what certain people call a "coherent aesthetic" is actually just a link of vaguely connected stylistic flourishes that they happen to enjoy or identify with. Case-in-point "Acidpixie"
I think it’s more that we seem to have an innate urge to create labels to connect stuff to each other based on similar characteristics to better come to terms with the infinitely diverse reality around us.
@@Emery_Pallas as much as I like how you put it, it’s more likely to be related to searchability/hashtag/algorithms to come up with a term. ETA Not suggesting that it helps to come up with super specialized terms super frequently, but that the act itself is reminiscent or habit from the digital environment in which it takes place (in the sense that reality has always been diverse (or whatever else it has always been) - as it hasn’t changed - without people necessarily labeling their “aesthetics” or other aspects of it as much previously)
@@1chienandalou I agree but in some parts the concept of tags also links into my point.
Maybe I’m going to broad with this, :P
That was a page from someone’s scrap book. Kids did it pre internet too.
the thing that frustrates me the most about these aesthetics is how detached they are from any idea of community or culture. i’m a zoomer myself so i have no first hand experience with this, but from what i’ve read and researched, subcultures used to be defined by the unique experience of making things that were different from the mainstream with people who shared your values, philosophy, tastes and ethos. like you said, punk isn’t a look, it’s about wanting to go against society’s established structures. modern aesthetics are entirely removed from any meaningful sense of community. it makes them feel empty to me
Bingo, you’re not wrong. The aesthetic was tied to ideas, rather than ideas tied to an aesthetic. That’s why when I see people being all ‘dark academia’ I think ‘so you have Serious Money and are busy angsting about having and needing a trust fund? Suuuuuuure’
I agree with this! Subcultures like goth, punk, hippy, etc. Which were all very antiestablishment and anticapitalist have now been turned into the most capitalistic, consumeristic trends (dont even get me started on shein/romwe are selling "goth" and "punk" clothes), which is totally contradictory to their roots. Everything feels so soulless and empty now, like people putting on disingenuous fronts for social media capital
Punk is a genre of music, not dismissing social norms. That’s just post modernism that happened within the scenes of the music. It’s like how emo is a musical style that has a clothing style and personality attached. You can wear anything you want and be punk, thus making you punk. It’s basically being a “Punk” (a reclaimed slur). The music is the only thing that matters. Any kind of postmodern antiestablishment idea could be punk.🤷🏾 This, why we are where we are.
@@keepyourshoesathedoor I like that, I feel like it is osmosis at work.
Same as grunge and people kinda missed the whole point of it. It's frustrating lol
I think it's largely due to searchability on the Internet. Creating words you can type into Instagram, tiktok etc and find things you like using a one word search. But with every person creating words to describe each thing they personally like, that's how we get thousands of redundant and overlapping aesthetics
It's similar to urban dictionary in my mind. Allowing culture to be defined colloquially by those who participate in that culture (or self select as an adequate authority). The internet is a borderless space that can hold what we wish it to without burdening us beyond the weight of the device it's being accessed through. If we don't want things we save to be lost to disuse or obscurity, then it must be categorized and placed somewhere that others can find it and participate themselves. A database where every link is labeled 'aesthetic #X' doesn't have the descriptive power to communicate to other potential participants. I understand the critique offered in the video, but it seems like gatekeeping culture. This practice has value to folks who are spread out among billions of people. I'm a weirdo who consumes a lot of offbeat culture, so if I'm going to find others who enjoy the same things then I have to know where to go. It's not the fault of those participating in the wiki that search functions run our ability to connect with others. I shouldn't wish to fault any solution that might serve as a development on the way to a completely new and exciting way of considering culture. Technology gives rise to hyperiterative processes for creating, which means things we look at are evolving at high speed so how those visuals are created changes with them. Let folks keep track of what causes them to feel the same particular pangs of something when they look at two disparate images. It's collage and pinterest and vision boards and self exploration all at once. Younger folks are able to try on a number of cultural identities before they understand who they are and I think this site offers insight into movements that are at least nominally useful starting points for exploration.
Except people will then fret over their outfits or posts not being whatevercore enough. They don't ask themselves "do I like this?" they ask "is it corecore enough?" and the idea that not everything you wear/say/do has to be aesthetic never occurs to them. It may have started out about what people liked but now it's all about classifying things and then making yourself fit the classification instead of just liking what you like regardlesss.
And this is going to be more structured as AI image generators get more popular. To create a prompt with an specific vibe, you sometimes put some of those words on it.
i feel like its not that deep or intentional and more like neurodivergent teenagers trying to categorize the world on their own. it happened many times before, like an above poster said with urban dictionary, with tvtropes (ESPECIALLY tvtropes), knowyourmeme and others
A few years ago i came up with a word to describe the color range of my bedroom's furniture and decoration, and accidentally originated a whole aesthetic that's now considered a canonical part of the frutiger aero extended universe
In the book Hardcore Zen, the author talks about being a member of a punk bank in the late 70s (I think), and he had long hair and dressed more like a hippie. And he had multiple occasions where he'd go to a punk bar, sometimes to perform, and get mocked by the spike haired, clothespin-eared "punks" in the bar for not being a punk. They were aping the aesthetic, the vibe, but they were also policing the concept of punk just based on the vibe, to a guy they were there to see play on stage, without realizing. So that kind of definition-based aesthetic isn't new to the current moment or even to the internet. I think that it's just been supercharged and put right in front of us, just like the internet has done to so much else.
Policing punk is exactly what punk isn't supposed to be 🤦♀️
Ha made me think of Flaming Lips Finally the punk rockers are taking acid 😆
@@goosewithagibus You're not really correct there. A good punk scene keeps itself safe from harmful elements.
Punk and hippy subcultures have historically been at odds due to different ideas surrounding activism.
@@mr.goldfish1530 isnt punk suposed to be about being anti-comformist and fighting the mainstream bull$ h it? The biggest punk ever would actualy be that hippie dressed guy going into punk club to perform, but then you could also argue that being non-conformist is conformist to punk community anyway, it kinda does not make sense
I think you crystalized for me why I've found myself completely apathetic towards most of these aesthetics. They're very detached from everyday living. Like, I've never been a Goth but being one meant embodying it all the time (regardless of whether or not it was a "phase" that you grew out of later on). At school, at home, at the hospital, at your work place, at your family gatherings, at parties etc. etc. at all times, you were identifiably goth. In contrast, I remember seeing the "That Girl" aesthetic for the first time and just being confused. It seemed like a thing that could only be captured by the right angle, framing, and lighting. But that would be invisible in real life. "That Girl" could not walk into a supermarket and wordlessly declare that she belongs to a niche subculture. Vintage, Emo, Goth etc. they are all so deeply connected to identity that they could never be rendered invisible in this way. Maybe this really is just a generational divide, but THAT is a massive part of an aesthetic/subculture to me. But an aesthetic that can only be captured online seems so completely detached from identity and living to me.
I paid attention to every word, but would also like to point out that I just love your Kurapika profile pic!
@@megamillion5852 Aww thank you! I really love that pic too. It captures him in one of his rare "just a lil guy" moments. ^_^
Modern concepts of aesthetic are a content categorization technique, not a lifestyle. But people online consider those lifestyles to just be more categories of content, and so they get dragged into the conversation and unfairly compared to these perfect little snippets of life. It's apples and oranges, but through the lens of social media, it's all just ways to find vibes on Pinterest or whatever. This is why, for example, so many aesthetics are labeled as "punk" despite decidedly not having a sliver of punk philosophy behind them.
It's more like a genre for images from what I've seen, than actual subcultures. Although some are both, and that's where it gets messy. I sew, and I can't even put a style or name to the types of things I sew because it doesn't fit into any of these aesthetics, or fashion trends, and it makes it hard to know what to classify my patterns as. It makes it hard to form a brand for selling goods or offering commissions because I can't find the words to attract customers who also would like that style. It's a difficult topic for sure.
If your entire life is lived online, though, it is perfectly attached to identity and living. Those of us who grew up on the internet - particularly the ones who have no or almost no "real life" - don't know the difference between an internet aesthetic and a real subculture - we've never experienced the latter.
I kind of like bedroom floor core. They're all things that exist kind of on the border to trash, but aren't quite there. Things that you *could* throw away without missing them, but you don't. They might still serve a function, or you haven't gotten around to getting rid of them yet. They're varying degrees of unimportant almost-trash, and they're treated like almost-trash. Left on the floor. Like a purgatory for objects. I think you could build an aesthetic around that.
my floor is trashcore and bedroomfloorcore i guess. beacuse i have random things and actual trash on the floor (im depressed dont hate me)
@@asuka_the_void_witch you are an inspiration to millions
Ok but I put really important things on my floor, is this like a carpetcore? Where you sit on the floor to do things and are surrounded by what you love. It's like sitting in the grass but in an artificial way, it can be lonely like "I don't have a backyard and I'm allergic to the sun" or it can be more tender like "having a pijama party and playing with my friends on 2005". It could be a similar aesthetic
I am bedroom floor core. I feel it in my soul.
No joke, this comment just convinced me to clean my room. I don't want all my things to think I'd be okay with getting rid of them!
I think a lot of this categorization obsession we have is really about getting to the bottom of one’s self identity. When one puts so much attachment on the essence of things, we forget that they can just exist in and of themselves, and there is a deep freedom in that. I like to float - and often with labels I feel anchored down, and still not quite understood. The categorization will never quite do it justice. That’s why so many labels need to be made, because there is an infinite amount of diversity. Everything is too much, and words will always fail. I wonder what would happen if we relinquished the word from art. When I create a painting I can’t quite categorize it. I like that. It just is.
i think half the problem there is that to most of the labels made try to apply to something too specific when a more generalised category with lots of flexability would be better. this would be the proper way to start up and later on build a genre but not for a personal identity. also trying to base ones entire personality on a specific aesthetic is just shallow and 1 dimensional anyways and people who do it pretty much look like they have nothing else going on except that one thing.
@@BBWahoo thank you :) I made it myself out of magazine cut outs!
i relate to it
As an older zoomer, I'd like to believe that most people understand the difference between subculture and aesthetics. Subcultures generally have an aesthetic, but most aesthetics are not a subculture. There does appear to be a spectrum though. I find most if not all the aesthetics on the wiki at least somewhat interesting, they each seem to convey a general concept that can't be described much better otherwise. Yet again, there are quite a few redundant ones. I think the aesthetics wiki could benefit from more historical context, though
Yeah that was something that confused me about her argument. Another commenter said something to the affect of modern aesthetics/vibes culture being a way to describe hyper-specific momentary feelings or scenarios, not lifestyles or ideologies. The consumerism problem happens when people try to stretch the fantasy of a single moment into their entire lifestyle. The only ones I'd consider actual art movements are traumacore & cottagecore, bc the creators are explicitly addressing/critiquing specific societal issues.
I’d also argue you can have a subculture without an aesthetic, though. I’d argue something like vocaloid has enough unifying points amongst its audience that it could be considered a subculture, but it has never really been an aesthetic, just a type of music that united a bunch of super creative people, and that said group has a lot in common generally (such as love of music while acknowledging its barred to a lot of people, acceptance of marginalized communities, and strong anti ai art sentiments, because technology is meant to help humans out, not vice versa). Any two vocaloid fans will probably have more in common than any two people who fall under the same aesthetic, weirdly enough. Just my thoughts. Definitely agree
this essay just blew open my brain, it also kinda reminds me of the super weird obsession with "getting the ick" on Tiktok. When all of your ideals come from perfect media snapsots, people just being human becomes a turn off.
That phrase is really funny. I'll be the boomer millennial who make that not cool, thank you.
@@vincentbatten4686 boomer millennial???? what is that supposed to mean
"boomer" in the online sense (think the "ok boomer" thing) and "millenial" in the literal, belonging to a generation sense I assume@@realfunnyceo
Yeah, awhile ago a young acquaintance said to me that real life could never live up to media depictions of it and I was like "oh no, oh no, you have consumed too much media and too little life"
"That's how you get a 'community' made up of people scrolling their phones in isolation." That was such a raw line, oof. I wasn't expecting to get read to filth in this video 💀
If you haven't seen FD Signifiers newest video you should go watch it. It has a bunch to say about exactly this topic.
Although I don't think it's a cut and dried thing. There are actual communities on the internet although as algorithms develop I feel those are becoming less common. Nerdfighteria is probably the best example of this. If you don't know it's the community created around the channel vlogbrothers. It is an actual community that has been intentionally cultivated. It's also pretty nice community that has raised tens of millions of dollars to charity. I mean the most recent annual 48 hour charity livestream alone raised 3 million dollars. More personally I feel the beginning of my transition would have looked very different if I hadn't found the community of trans creators on youtube that actively cross promotes each other. But on the whole, yeah things are pretty dire or at least headed that way. More importantly though we can create communities. We need to create communities. In whatever way we can, preferably independent of the algorithms. Community isn't a passive thing though, it requires action from each of its members. Basically I think we should all convert to Earthseed 😁 Jokes aside, I really recommend Parable of the Sower. It's exactly the book for our current predicament. The core tenet of the book being, intentional action and radical hope are always the correct option.
@@mikkosaarinen3225 I agree with you that internet communities are a real and powerful thing even if they're comprised of distant strangers. I didn't mean to dismiss them all in my comment! (just many of them hehe) By the way, you seem to be shadowbanned since I can only see your comments through my notifications. I dunno what it takes to become unbanned but I feel bad that your thoughtful comment is only going to be seen by me ):
@@guy-sl3kr So THAT explains why some comment sections say "3 Replies" when it only shows 1. I thought it was just a glitch since to me shadowbanned means no one can see what you say at all. nothing indicates you were there.
@@stanzacosmi Yeah I dunno why KZhead bothers to show the real # of replies or allows anyone to see those comments whatsoever. I don't think any other social media site does shadowbans like this, it's super weird. Though I also don't know why that person was banned because iirc they said nothing inappropriate. So I guess it's good that banned people aren't totally silenced?
This video is Lilycore (a superbly researched critical dive into aesthetics)
haha! i was gonna say something less funny like, analysiscore
That's so Reactioncore of you to say.
this is so youtube comment section academia
this video is boomercore
@@thefakepie1126 Ok Zoomer 🙄😒
Frutiger Aero was first codified and named by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI). Later on, the Aesthetics Wiki took what CARI had started and expanded on it, adding more detailed descriptions and compiling a vast collection of examples.
Thank you, I couldn't find this info anywhere!
The aesthetic way to go to the doctor is dressing in a way that leads your middle-aged nurse to start chatting with you about her goth kid while you're trying not to pass out during a blood draw ✨
It's a vibe
I think of aesthetics as a collage board or a Pinterest board. It’s just a temporary place where you can throw random images together and try to create a coherent bigger picture. It’s a way to make sense of what’s around you.
8:25 vaporwave is like a decade old, originating in 2009-2011 and hitting it's peak in popularity around 2016, when it slowly got overtaken by future funk and a broader mass interest in 80's nostalgia. It’s interesting actually- it originated as a music genre as a parody of vapid 80’s commercialism by presenting it almost as a dead, hollow beaten corpse. It’s not just nostalgia, but almost acknowledging how nonreal it is by fixating only on media representations of said era and mangling them into ambient absurdity and focusing on looping, repetitive samples. And then people decided malls were actually totally cool and the 80’s was fine and let’s slap some japanese text on it not to mean anything but just as a weird orientalist statement and i guess this specific color palette is vaporwave now and let’s mash windows xp in there and slap some palm trees on it. That’s vaporwave babey (i hate it) And vaporwave music slowly turned into catchier and more pop samples that were just slowed down, then people were just slowing down any old full-length song and calling it vaporwave, and then people decided “ok we just like slowed down songs” and that’s where all the slowed + reverb songs come from. The other section of the more poppy remixes started adding beats and filters to make, essentially, disco but More. Got very popular with anime fans, hence why most of the songs on youtube have some looping anime gif as their video (that repetition? originated with vaporwave.) To make a long story short, vaporwave originated by taking commercialistic old sound and making it into a genre of music that strongly resists commercialization. Of course, people made watered down versions of it that appeal more to mainstream audiences and bam: the countercultural anti-consumer art movement becomes a consumer demographic. A tale as old as punk.
i never made the connection between vaporwave music and the slowed + reverb trend, but now that you mention it it’s so obvious!
You're talking a lot, but you're not saying much. Your "critique" of vaporwave sounds more like you're just personally bitter to the palm trees and luscious soundscapes that the genre presents. It sounds to me like you don't really have substantial criticism towards the genre, you're just throwing a fit about how much you don't like repetition and Japanese text (you HAD to use the word "orientalist" lest no one take you seriously lol). Please provide me with examples of how vaporwave has somehow become commercialized, I have no clue what you're talking about.
@@machine.angel.777 Vaporwave is a most recent trend I've seen that could be called orientalist. T e l e p a t h does not live in Japan, for example, but his titles make it look like he does! I find it weird that slowed and reverb is mentioned as a byproduct of vaporwave's ironic->post-ironic->sincere retro-bullshit evolution without chopped and screwed also being brought up. But the slowed and reverb looping anime gif style also came from that evolution, so this comment made me realise chopped and screwed wasn't the only influence on it. Cheers
@@propername4830 Why does it matter where an artist lives? t e l e p a t h deliberately keeps his identity vague and hard to find, because it's not about where the artist is from, it's about the art.
@@propername4830 there may be (and possibly are) orientalist streaks in telepath, likely originating in the "orientalism" aspects of blade runner (chinese ads everywhere) and the matrix (hong kong action cinema influence + using japanese script [of a food recipe btw lol] as the green matrix code) and of course, weebs are not free from slightly fetishizing asia and specificaly japan. but that said, what's wrong with using weeb aesthetics?
I rarely comment on videos, but I feel like this video was able to express something I was feeling for a long time. Especially when you mentioned the erasure of influences. The wiki boils everything down so much and gives new names to already defined subcultures that have been things for years. I'm someone who is versed in japanese subcultures, especially when it comes to fashion. It's kinda niche, but a lot if not most of the trends and "aesthetics" popular with teenagers are directly derived from subcultures, art movements, and styles that have been a thing in japan for years and already have distinguished names. I love the idea of innovating on what already exists and making something new out of it, but a lot of aesthetics on the wiki that have decades of history and influence (in this case in japan) is completely erased in favor of "someone posted this to tiktok in 2020". I think knowing why these trends you are trying to expand and innovate on even exist is super important to make a meaningful change.
Personally I think the erasure of influences is the point. Influences create connections and the point of capitalism is to isolate us so we're easier to control. Capitalism is kind of the antithesis of connection. Everything we consume has its origins in a subculture somewhere. But to highlight those influences would be to allow for connection so the influences must be erased and substituted with a singular figure that's marketable. Where did the style come from? Well obviously from the Kardashians. Where did they get it? Don't ask. By the way you speak about Japanese subcultures I'm going to guess you're not from Japan. If I'm wrong, please excuse me, I'm not trying to attack you but illustrate a point. If you're not from Japan, ask yourself why are you specifically into Japanese subcultures? Why aren't you investigating your local cultures? Do you participate in the cultures you're well versed in? Or is what you're doing consumption? "Japanese culture" has been very effectively commodified for "western" audiences over the last decades. This isn't a new phenomenon either, orientalism has a long history. But I think it's a good example of what this video is talking about. Because it's not only influences that are being eroded. It's also community. Consumption of a commodified version of Japanese culture is a good example of this since for most of the intended audience participation is impossible. Culture becomes not something you live in but something you consume. Something you imitate instead of creating. Something that's about the individual instead of the community. Erasure of influences is the point because that way we can turn culture into products and participation into consumption.
@@mikkosaarinen3225 As a counterpoint, I think reducing every interaction to consumption is somewhat reductive. Even before capitalism there were little movements and subcultures that began and died under the turning wheel of history. Now those subcultures can influence others outside a particular country or city. When I say influence I don’t mean just the consumers but also artists. They will begin with imitations but with time new styles can be realized as multiple influences bubble in the same cauldron. Art Nouveau draws some influences from what European artists saw as organic elements in Japanese art but the resulting style is distinctly its own.
I've been noticing the same issues you've mentioned for a lot of alternative subcultures and it confuses me a lot. It's one thing to innovate from something that already exists, but come on... "scenecore" and "grungecore" and whatever other term is literally just a repackaged version of already preexisting subcultures with their own histories, beliefs, music genres, etc except people treat it more as an aesthetic rather than a subCULTURE which is actually is. I'm aware that I might sound a bit like a boomer for saying this, but if you're going to create an entirely new lifestyle/outfit style/"aesthetic", you're going to have to do more than SOLELY repackaging a preexisting thing just for the sake of labels, sometimes, not having very specific labels can be useful too tbh.
@@mikkosaarinen3225 your take on how the point is erasure of influence is super interesting, so thanks for sharing a new perspective. it makes a lot of sense the way you describe it! regarding the second part, i totally understand where you're coming from. i myself still have to fight off misconceptions about the boiled-down and commodified idea of japanese culture. for me, japan has become a second home for me since i was a kid. my relatives who are japanese inspired me to learn about the country and its language. i remember at first falling into the "commodified" trap at first, back when i had already scratched the surface. although now, i know more about the actual country and its politics that super simple and watered-down idea of "japanese culture" seems silly to me. i think that world cultures are also boiled down in the same way aesthetics are by teenagers on the wiki. things that have rich histories and influences are harder to understand and in a way less marketable, so stripping them of everything besides what is the simplest and best looking makes it easier to consume. like i mentioned in my OP, the way we learn and innovate on culture and style is by learning the history of it and understanding it's roots. i think this also tied in when you posed the question "why aren't you investigating your local cultures? do you participate in the cultures you are well-versed in?". just as a i love japan, i love my home just as much, and i love to learn about the culture in which i live day-to-day. but on top of that, i also love to learn about and participate in the culture of a country that is not my birth-home. however, i believe a lot of people will neglect participating and experiencing the culture that they sport in favor of "consuming it" as you described. for humans, it is simply easier to adopt culture and style rather than learn about it and become an active part of it.
@@yellowjellow5744 First off all, thanks for taking my comment in good faith ❤️ To be honest your situation as kind of in between is something I hadn't considered and I will admit my take was a bit reductive with just insiders or outsiders. Also this is a long ass rambling comment, you've been warned 😂 I was also a bit unfair to you in the first place and definitely more combative than necessary 😄 It's the damned comments curse of how easy it is to engage with only part of what the other person is saying. Also I have ADHD so I have a hard time keeping what I'm replying to in memory and wouldn't be surprised if my brain did a little creative filling of gaps without me realising 😄 For example I have no recollection of you talking about innovating on culture etc. The thing I reacted to in your OP was how you spoke about yourself in relation to the culture you were talking about. "I'm someone who is versed in Japanese subcultures" has a very "Actually," feel to it, if you know what I mean 😄 You don't sound like you're that dude (not making assumptions about your gender), but that phrase kind of coloured for me everything you wrote after it. If I had to pin it down I think it sounds othering to me. Like the subcultures are objects to be studied. Which is exactly what commodification/fetishization does. It's a good idea to pay attention how you position what you're talking about in relation to yourself and your audience. I have to admit though that I'm kind of hypervigilant about these things atm, so I don't know if this is something people actually pick up on. You can just talk about the things you're knowledgeable about without qualifying it with anything 😊 I would've also loved for you to have yourself tied the point you make in your OP with the overall trend of commodification of Japanese culture. Like start from manga, anime and sushi, then go into imitation of fashion trends and maybe give a concrete example. Start from common knowledge, work down, and don't tell us you're versed in things, tell us about the things you're versed in. Now that I've reread your OP I think you actually got to the point of the point of the video very well. Cultures develop, like you say with imitation and cross pollination. I'd maybe add to that the necessity of seeing other people as our equals instead of lesser or an other. Where as commodification, which erases influence, is a dead end. This can also happen inside a culture. This is kind of what whiteness has done to the culture of ancient Greece or norse culture. These aren't seen as living things but rather as relics that are meant to always stay the same. Actual greeks aren't stuck two and a half millenia in the past they have a living vibrant culture and food to die for 🤤😄 I'm rambling now, but my point is white capitalist society needs to constantly consume other cultures because when it erases cultural influences to make these trends fit into its strict norms it kills them and dead things don't grow. I'm probably reiterating my previous comment but cba to edit more 😅 P.s. You're clearly a smart person who is capable of taking in criticism so I'm going to challenge you a bit further. Specifically on the end of your comment. Things are seldom simply anything, truth resists simplicity. Ask yourself, why are we so primed to consume instead of participate? To individualize instead of build community. Because I'd argue there's nothing more human than connecting with others and the fact that's not our first instinct should be cause for alarm.
I read an article about art history theory a long time ago that said something like "bad art history imagines an endless series of metaphorical filing cabinet and imagines that with enough knowledge every work of art could be perfectly filed away"
It’s funny actually, i found the wiki about a year ago when it was around 200 articles and came away with roughly the same conclusion. It’s barely about the art, or figuring out why certain things speak to us. It’s about categorizing even the most wildly disparate things into a semi-coherent consumable aesthetic, and turning oneself into a marketable demographic. It’s self actualization through the process of buying things, consuming certain types of media, associating with it as a brand aesthetic; it feels hollow inside. There’s no coherent statements about what these aesthetics actually mean, what they stand for.
And that's the point. Only engage on surface level, never ask questions or try to understand. Seek, consume, discard, repeat.
That sounds an awful lot like "being a teenager" to me. Which fortunately is common throughout the ages 🤭 We don't really know who we are, and neurologically our social self develops before our ability to impulse control. The upshot of which is that as teenagers we seek out anything that could be an identity as part of a community, but without much in the way of control. And yes, it tends to be little more than skin deep. It's a fairly common part of growing up, and oddly - so is being older-than-a-teenager and pretending like we didn't do the same, and our parents didn't do the same. Here's the secret: We did and they did. Even our grandparents did and they didn't even have smartphones. It's fascinating and funny to see so many people disparaging and doing the whole "we didn't do this in my day" thing.
For me it was two years ago in 2020
@@mikkosaarinen3225 What's wrong with consuming aesthetics "on a surface level"? People are allowed to like things just because they look nice. They're pictures of vaguely similar looking things not political essays.
As an artist who works in atompunk and general retrofuturist themes a lot, I’d say it isn’t redundant to have both. Retrofuturism is like the umbrella that holds all the past’s views of the future- generally named after the material that will power that future (atompunk, steampunk, desielpunk, solarpunk, etc). It does have a good amount of redundancy with the idea of raygun gothic, though lol. Also, I’d say the primary and secondary themes are flipped. It’s mostly about the technology but with the traditional family structures and culture of when it was first made. I personally like writing and drawing queer atompunk that plays with these ideas :)
Ooo do you have any links? I'm really into retrofuturism and would love to see queer takes on the form!
@@CreatrixTiara I’m working on a project that’s not quite done yet (though getting close 👀) I don’t have any “official” links for it yet but I occasionally log my progress on a tumblr @interroblog. There’s not too much yet tho
I have an Ed Edd n' Eddy fanseries literally called "Rétro Future"(as two words, with an é, for differentiation) and it has the same kind of umbrella term use for retrofuturism. It's primarily Y2K+Frutiger Aero based, though. Very useful for tags, but at the same time, I sometimes feel like I can't capture that vibe 100% because those two focus so much on CGI when I am a 2D artist. Then again, me figuring out all the transparency/metallic/etc. effects in my art style is fun. I love retrofuturism as a whole, honestly.
i find that aesthetics are best left as tags. just ways to associate media and find more of it - describing an outfit as 'mosscore' shouldnt really have any deeper meaning other than 'this outfit has the same vibe as moss and stuff' making it able to be found by other people who will enjoy it. if someone wanted to go more hardcore into an aesthetic, make it their lifestyle, then choosing a subculture to define yourself with might be a better option. (of course you are never required to put yourself into any catagory if you dont find it helpful) for me aesthetics have no ethos or values connected to them, just pretty pictures that will make you feel good. with things like aesthetics that are meant to be simple, the internet has a habit of over-complicating them. people begin to gatekeep, go a little too hardcore, ignore their POC and marginalised origins, and make them less fun for everyone. i think aesthetics should really be left as simple fun, while also recognising and rectifying any offensive elements they may involve. i like aesthetics, they make finding particular moods you are craving easier, and as an autistic person, it makes me happy to organise images into abstract 'vibes' so seeing a whole wiki of sorted media is nice; but of course aesthetics are not without their faults.
This sums up all my feelings about the whole phenomenon of aesthetic culture. I think the proliferation of labels is useful in that it gives us a detailed vocabulary to describe something that is very abstract. At the same time it can also be harmful when people (especially teenagers) get sucked into revolving their whole lives around being perceived as fitting a certain aesthetic, over and above actually living their lives.
@@PiGirl13 yes exactly
Honestly, I thought that's what it was. I didn't know it was supposed to be an attempt at subculture.
a few months ago i realized that my father and i were working with completely different definitions of the word "aesthetic" and i found it really hard to explain the one that i had. he didn't understand the word aesthetic used as an adjective (i.e. that [outfit, houseplant, cup of coffee] is so aesthetic), and when i tried to show him a very boilerplate cottagecore pinterest board, his response was something along the lines of, "what's the point? why don't these people just go start a commune?" but the link within these communities isn't about what you want to actually *do*, it's what you like to look at, or what you like to fantasize about. it's been turning over in my head ever since, and this video put better words to it than i ever could.
I have to admit that I don't understand your usage of that word either, even having watched the video.
@@strangejune i work with middle schoolers and many of them use aesthetic as an adj. i tell them it means nothing that way lol, and it doesnt. "so aesthetic" like wth
@@cyberpagan1172 I think it is used as another way to say appealing. Tubular. Radical. Even "cool" when you think about it. Aesthetic. Makes sense. I'm gen Z
@@josephs.3372 idk i'm gen Z too and maybe I'm being reactionary but i think using aesthetic as an adj makes you sound like an idiot
I definitely would describe it more as an evolved similar word to "genre". For example, there are incredibly specific musical genres or movie genres. However, instead of describing clothing, lifestyles, and so on as genres, we have decided to use the word aesthetic because it's very similar to visual art???
No mention of Pinterest? You can't talk about core-culture without touching on Pinterest. Pinterest has a lot of that stuff. In fact, it seem to work a lot like you described the aesthetic wiki, just less in depth, yet also on a much broader scale. A board doesn't necessarily have to say anything about the pins in it, but by putting all that stuff in a box, they can end up looking like a singular "thing", even if that thing is really just a trog (when a dog is near a tree, it becomes a single thing called a "trog"). I kind of get the impression that some people are seeing the world through a Pinterest lens.
it surprises me how much people don't talk about pinterest as a person who's used it for years now
Trog 💀
@@callmemackeroni Bingus Gaming 🤠
I miss polyvore 😢
@@thecoldglassofwatershow I will never forgive ssense for their crimes!
I went through my teenagehood as a goth (still am one) and because I was part of that grouping right between millennials and gen z, I was very aware that I wasn't part of the "original" goth scene, I wasn't around in the 80s or most of the 90s, I didn't see the original bands in concert, if there had ever been a goth club in my area it had shut down by the time I was aware of the scene. But I felt a deep connection to goth culture anyway, so I researched it endlessly, listened to the music religiously, and worked hard to create a wardrobe that would've made the original eldergoths proud - terrible DIY and thrifted boots included. But constantly I had to explain to people that goth wasn't just "a feeling," that it wasn't as much about the clothes as it was about the art, mainly the music. I was coming into my own as an artist but the people around me were already forgetting what goth music and gothic art was. To them it was just a look, just a vibe, just an aesthetic. Now I see people online tagging pictures of themselves in shitty black Shein clothes as #gothcore and it genuinely breaks my heart. The artistic subculture I grew up in yet struggled to connect to is fading more and more into a hashtag of itself and it hurts. Not to say the goth scene isn't still around. There are more goth musicians around now than there have ever been (Bandcamp is where I thrive these days). But when I define myself as a goth to other people, it no longer tells them what I value artistically, what kind of music I like, what sort of art I make myself. It just tells them I like black clothes, or maybe not even that, maybe it just tells them I like saving a lot of #vampirecore pictures on Pinterest. It's depressing.
I know right!?!?!
Girl, same. I was born in 93, so by the time I became aware of 80s and 90s goth culture as a teenager, the original scene was long gone. It was the height of the emo/scene wave though, so what little was left of an alternative scene in my little central European home town was a mixture of punks, goths, emos, grunge kids and just general misfits. Now I'm 30, and every now and then I see gen-z kids dressed in styles that remind me of those days, but in a way that seems so calculated, eclectic, and just kind of disconnected from the origins of their 'aesthetic'. I feel like the honestly rebellious, alternative, and music oriented subcultures of past decades have been replaced by fleeting aesthetic fashion trends that have become devoid of any deeper meaning, while at the same time obsessively oversignifying every obscure and niche style/vibe/aesthetic/whatever. It kinda makes me sad, but I also realize I sound like a boomer ranting about today's youth like "back in my day...".
@@suranumitu7734 fw your crowley pfp, makes it even more ironic you were born in 93. If you are a fellow thelemite that is
@@KysEcstacy haha yeah. I never was a thelemite, but I was really into Crowley and occultism/esotericism in general when I was an edgy gothic teenager. The profile pic is just a remnant from that time.
That’s how I feel about y2k..and y2k wasn’t a vibe/aesthetic thing Y2k was a life style and cultural reset because of The 1999 bug and everyone say by (2000) it’s going to be the end of world times. That’s why it’s called y2k because of a millennium bug with computer at the time fr
The sad thing is that I as an adult women fell into that same trap because it is so ubiquitous. Somehow I got it in my head that I needed to have a specific style in clothing, mannerisms, things I liked that I had to adhere to because, well, everyone else did it and if I didn't do it am I not an outlier and a weirdo? I blame in large parts the three times I was isolated for weeks at a time due to positive covid tests and where my only outside contact was the internet. I was locked in my tiny apartment with nothing to do and no one to talk to so I became what you'd call "chronically online" for that time. And in that time I found these aesthetics and got consumed by the feeling that I had to dress and listen to and like certain things, that my life had to have an aesthetic. I never considered that it already has: It has MY aesthetic. The totality of everything that I like, everything that I own and wear and the art I like and the music I like. I didn't have to narrow it down to only wearing pink or only liking metal. And no one else around me, outside of my tiny apartment that I was stuck in, did that either. My neighbour Sylvie doesn't have an aesthetic. The gardener pruning our bushes isn't "gardencore". The farmer down the road isn't living a perfect cottagecore life. People tell each other to "touch grass" as some sort of insult but I've come to realize that with our online world and the commodification and commercialization of it this is actually something you NEED to do for your sanity. Not touching grass specifically but going outside. Meeting real people. Exposing yourself to something else than the perfect snippets the algorithm prepared for you. Be human and see others as humans.
Yeah, that's the insidiousness of the systems we live in. They create images and then reinforce the idea that if we don't conform to those images we're outsiders. I love your comment about touching grass. Another thing divorced from it's original context by mass utilisation 😏 It's not an accident we're sold the idea of individualistic lives. It's an ancient tool of control. Take for example christianity. Its core tenet is that your real life starts after this one. On the surface innocent enough but I'd you dig even a little deeper its utility becomes evident. There's no need for the masses to resist or organise. Simply get through your own life without sin and you'll get the reward that's waiting for you. Communities are resilient and hard to control, so systems of power try to separate people into individuals. Further dividing us by creating others for us to fear. How we fight this begins just like you said. Meet people, build connections and interrogate yourself on who you see as other. Last part being most important. We're going to be drawn to connect with people who look like us but resilient communities need diversity. This is why whiteness is the dead putrid mess it is. So it's not enough just to see the humanity of others, we need to actively seek to connect with those we might view as other.
''Meeting real people. Exposing yourself to something else than the perfect snippets the algorithm prepared for you. Be human and see others as humans.'' Oh if only it was that easy....
@@edenjaycollins6055 Eden, it is. I challenge you to go out and sit in a local café or park for an hour. Do some journaling there or read a book or whatever else you feel like. You will naturally meet people and hear discussions that will expose you to different opinions and people in different life stages, I promise you. It takes a bit to overcome the social anxiety that comes with being in public but you can do it.
@@EvanBear Awh thanks for trying to help and all but the issues are a bit more than social anxiety, to be blunt I have a fear of being out on my own as I'm scared of being SA'ed, I stopped catching busses because of it welp. I also have OCD and a part of that is the typical hygiene stuff so it's also just a lot of effort, especially sitting somewhere and touching things like tables and seats, I can't have a job because of these issues which just keeps me inside more, good news is that I'm getting into photography which basically forces you outside lol but sitting somewhere or meeting new people still isn't much on the menu..
@@edenjaycollins6055 Photography is amazing, it's a great hobby and I can only recommend it. As for your mental health, have you considered meeting up with other people who have OCD in a support group? Hanging out with them as a group you wouldn't be alone so no one could harm you plus you would be surrounded by people who have the same struggles and get where you're coming from. Support groups like that are usually offered by mental hospitals but there are outpatient ones as well where I live. Those groups usually happen inside so if you can drive or someone else can drive you in a car that you could clean all you would have to do is clean the chair you'll be sitting on. Maybe look around? You may have issues with being outside and alone but that doesn't mean there aren't still connections you can make. Also in the end remember that my post was mostlly aimed at people whose mental health would not prevent that. I have PTSD and social anxiety and to sit out in a café, it took me years to get there. But since I have I've come to realize that there's community and kindness out there and I would love if you could find that as well. You might just have to be more specific with the people you pick but you don't have to be isolated and you too can find community and genuine human connections even with OCD and fears. You got this Eden.
I think that the reason for this is that people don't view aesthetics as expressing a view someone has for a long time, but rather a single feeling. Like something feels a certain way, but you don't know how to describe it exactly, so you use an aesthetic term. Of course you can't have the feeling of "Night-Luxe" all the time, since it can only exist at night. But the feeling is there, and the aesthetic is a name to it.
Thank you. The aesthetic wiki literally says that a lot of aesthetics of based around particular moods. Sometimes people just want to label vibes and that’s okay. I’m a huge proponent of ,over-labeling culture’ as long as people don’t feel forced to label themselves. But as a neurodivergent kid I actually prefer having too many labels rather than the ‘freedom’ or uniqueness lol.
@thebruh-gv9xe Absolutely, I think some people that dislike or criticize "vibes culture" fail to see this. Really, the thing the website fails at the most is crediting the origin of thus aesthetics/photos.
Atompunk and Retro-Futurism are not the same, despite sharing the aesthetic. 'Punk' genres include a dystopian element to them (Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Dieselpunk..) or at least they ought to. For example, Fallout is Atompunk and Retro-fututistic, but The Jetsons are just Retro-Futuristic. You're on point about redundant genres, though.
I came across traumacore in a new friendship with a gen z person, and it really struck a chord with me. it feels so disturbing yet so relatable and gives me the distinct feeling of being an adult realizing that a child has been through atrocities. and the child is me?? idk. traumacore is good fucking art, and I don't think I could handle it being shown in an irl art exhibit
Traumacore has a message. You're trying to absolve your child of the trauma by witnessing it in front of you now: older. Some of it reeks of Jhonen Vasquez edginess (no offense to him), but the good pieces have a clear implicit call to action. You see a crying kid in the street, what do you do?
@@josephs.3372 You do the most sane and moral action you can do, and punt that little cunt across the street.
@@thewizard1 LETS GOOOOOOOOO
@@josephs.3372 what did the reply say?
@@Periwinkleaccount something really fucking stupid lol. Oh I just remembered, it said "you punt that kid in the fucking face" lol
I think another huge part of it is the effect of consumerism that preys on gen z’s anxious search for identity. It’s like everyone fears ambiguity but also craves this group identity in an accessible, purchase-able form. Night lux is a good example
I've been noticing something in the same realm as you while looking at this liminal space thing. I found it super frustrating that basically all of the most popular video essays talking about liminal spaces don't really have anything decisive and concrete to say about them in an artistic sense. That's because the way the internet frames liminal spaces is not as these easily identifiable in-between spaces as it has been historically, but rather the vibe culturified version of it. Thank you for putting this into words you've literally just ended a year of suffering I've had with the liminal space stuff that's snowballed up into having me not make a video in over a year lmao
I saw a review on a mini replica Roman bust that called it "very vaporwave-y". I want to know what that person would think if they walked through a museum, like that's a historical piece of art, not a part of your aesthetic that's only existed for 5 years.
Oh my God that’s hilarious
i agree with the rest of what you said but vaporwave has been around since 2010
@@realfunnyceo 10 is not much better
@@cesarcampos8746 almost 14 lol im just saying
@@realfunnyceo doesn't matter, what are you 15? That's nothing compared to thousands of years of art history.
Traumacore actually reminds me of the Japanese esthetic of yami kawaii fashion trend it mostly focuses on dark colour palettes and medical imagery and there's a strong trend towards traumatic incidences being expressed through your clothing.
going to the doctor is so healthcore
i absolutely loved your point about consumption increasingly becoming the foundation of people’s identities. i remember when i was younger and first discovering fandom culture, it was hard for me to move on from media i liked even after i stopped liking it because i’d based so much of myself around that, rather than around like. being a whole and unique person lol. plus i remember being shocked that i didn’t get along with everyone in the fanbases i was in bc we had “so much in common.” it took me a while to realize that sharing the same media interests and sharing the same values are entirely different things. this was an excellent video as always :)
I actually found the aesthetics wiki a couple years ago and was into it for a few months (I only ever wrote one page). While I don't actually disagree with most of the stuff in this video, the joy of the aesthetics wiki, to me at least, is the joy of curation and organizing. Like scrapbooking/keeping a commonplace book or having a rock collection. You find some stuff, make associations in your brain, and get to write about it in an organized way. The problems with vibes culture are very real, but it is really fun to just. organize stuff, especially when the internet has so much stuff.
I agree I think this is the modern day scrapbooking but digital
Yes. I have three aesthetic boards on my pinterest and I use a word for each that makes almost no sense nor makes zero connections to the actual subjects of the images but it's just used to broadly organize images I use for fashion, interior designing, or drawing inspirations. It's nothing deeper than that. I didn't make them to start a community or because of a music genre or anything and two of them are probably redundant aesthetics that already have a label on them.
By organizing things you are collapsing their uniqueness and saying "you fit here" whether that is true or not. It removes context and makes things exist in a void where their only value is in reference to other things.
@@teagancombest6049 and?
I always saw aesthetics as creative tools for filling a lexical gap, and it's why I love them so much. Putting a name to the shared feeling invoked by media with similar visual aspects so you can communicate more effectively what it is and how you feel about it, just gives me pure joy. I didn't think it was being abused like this. Aesthetics are great for describing and directing a piece of media in one way or another, but when people start policing media and experiences on the grounds that it must have a specific vibe, when people start policing _anything,_ there will be problems. I have personal connections with various labels, but the "what is my aesthetic" confuses me because no one is one-sided enough to identify with a single label and only that label. I thought it was obvious that you can identify with an aesthetic and not have your life be dictated by it. It feels so much like the Myers Briggs test discourse, with people being shoehorned into boxes according to their type like the results must dictate their whole life. It's just categorizing people all over again. "What _are_ my aesthetics", that makes more sense as a loose interpretation. I assign my OCs multiple labels in their bio as a loose (keyword loose) indication of what they like, their personality and an idea of how they will appear in art. The amount of labels will depend on how complex of a character they are, but I could never assign them just one. Either way, it's just a suggestion that I may or may not adhere to with art of them. I think a good aesthetic is one that has wiggle room, slightly ambiguous, allows multiple interpretations and feelings to be felt. An aesthetic should not be a stereotype.
I think what you're getting at is when aesthetics are descriptive rather than prescriptive they're sort of a loose label you can put on a thing you don't have words for, rather than a box to fit in
@@elipticalecliptic481 exactly
When I learned of aesthetics I made a list of the ones I liked for one reason or another because that's what felt natural. It just can't be only one, people have too many aspects to them. Even when I made another list to try to figure out my ideal style of clothes it was still a list lol
Also, frutiger aero is a real design aesthetic. While the name might be new, it was not invented by the Aesthetics Wiki, but by a member of the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute
I hate how little discussion individual pieces of art get in the communities & subreddits that form around each aesthetic’s label. In the early days of liminal spaces, pre-popularity explosion (2018?), I remember reading a thread on some sort of liminal spaces community. It was a thread on this dozen-pic album, and most comments were about how certain aspects of a specific photo within the collection reminded them of memories and stories from their lives. I think I got a good hour out of reading and enjoying all the stories shared in that one post’s comment section alone, and I wish every thread could be as interesting. The boom-bust cycle of these movements mean you have to wait a few years before trying to get any real depth of discussion again, once they blow up. The bottom-up ones will endure while the artificial top-down ones invented by wiki editors are forgotten (AcidPixie from earlier sounds like one)
As a visual artist with a style niche enough that it sits squarely outside of what i've been able to find (nausicaa, monster hunter and bionicle are the closest things to my work that I know of) it's pretty interesting to me how aesthetics can both help creativity while also limiting it. I'm kinda glad my stuff isn't part of an established aesthetic but at the same time it makes it much harder to find inspiration and guidance, as well as people interested in the same visuals I am.
Bionicore
@@goosewithagibus corecore is a contagion imo. It's the Pontypool disease but the victim is art itself. This comment thread sort of exemplifies this point to me
@@josephs.3372 It was a joke.
I think there's a lot missing here when you look at broader art genrefication that have been a constant throughout history. Take music as an example, you have the broad genres, but then the sub-genres quickly sprout just as many, and actually much more, hydra heads than the modern aesthetics genres. I mean look at neo-psychodelic power pop, just as particular and specific as many aesthetics mentioned do. Or even further historically, art movement philosophy has always subsisted on the over-classification (and rejection of such). The advent of internet is not the advent of these overly specific genres (or misgenre), instead it just provides an avenue for people to accumulate all of their classifications together. Aesthetic as it's own art medium is an interesting reinvention movement, but the genrefication of it is hardly unique.
Yeah, acting like the act of sub categorising everything is new to the Gen Z aesthetics, when metalheads have been making fun of how every metal band likes to claim a new genre for themselves since the founding of Mayhem, betrays that this person may be trying to look for something that just isn't there for the sake of existential dread.
the part when you brought up the "transacionality" of art that aesthethic wiki seems to promote really reminded me of the book "Otaku: Japanese Database Animal" by Japanese postmodernist Hiroki Azuma. It delves into the process in which apreciation of art turns to plain numbers-driven consumption through the lens of otaku media with its very defined genres, tropes, character and visual archetypes, and tries to draw wider conclusions about what popularization of this model of art consumption says about society as a whole. It thankfully avoids the "old man yells at clouds" fearmongering. It's an excellent read
I'm surprised you didn't mention dark academia, it seems like one of the few modern aesthetics with a semblance of guiding principles like you describe with philosophy and punk. But looking back on my time obsessed with DA, all of the activity lists were like "read a book on a stormy day" "wistfully drink tea" "research by candlelight", all of which sound fun but are also focused on how the activity looks, how you look. It really clicked for me when you talked about the way aesthetics influence your self perception. DA is still just a genre of post, but one that pushes very heavily on the idea that 'you too can live this life! Just buy a teacup and a blazer'. I've definitely seen some DA posts on Tumblr that encourage people to embrace the non-vibey parts, or say that any kind of studying/reading can be DA, regardless of how it looks, which is nice. But then it kind of falls apart with the labels, because once you post your bright colored stationary pics, then your audience is going to fall under "that girl" or something. So the aesthetic still centers around images. And even though I enjoyed the aesthetic, those images made me much harder on myself. I always loved reading as a kid, but then I started to develop my style, and suddenly I would get dressed up for 'reading time' and I would end up just scrolling on my phone, lamenting how bad the vibes in my room were, even though the point of reading is to escape your surroundings lol. And then, as I got more disconnected from reality (chronically online, you might say) and started feeling dumber and less educated, I clung to DA more as "the way" to get my mind back. I'd kinda compare it to motivation to get in shape. Like all that fake stuff of "imagine how good you'll look" versus the real motivation of working out every day. All vibes, no action. Anyways, great video!
This wiki reminds me of that Gaiman quote "The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless."
Lol Gaiman did not invent that, he's quoting something even older, a paper by Alfred Koryzbski from 1931. The map territory distinction is an old philosophical idea.
I was first pointed to this wiki a year ago, i read the lo-fi aesthetic page and decided I am not the Gen Z audience for whatever this website is. (I’m old enough that lo-fi is epitomized by Lou Barlow and Pavement.) I love your positive attitude towards this youthful perspective. The young are who have always set the trends.
So much about aesthetic and its problems reminds me of my own struggles with the lolita fashion subculture in the mid-2000s. The Western lolita community at that time was incredibly judgemental, brand-crazy, and had a level of gatekeeping that I never saw in the original Japanese communities. There were hundreds of livejournals and blogs about how to do everything "right" and how you could and should dedicate your whole life to the lolita lifestyle (which was visually similar to cottagecore, just with more bows and petticoats). Going to events always felt like a contest and I'd often hear someone making fun of inexpensive, non-brand outfits even if they were handmade! The community seems to have grown up a lot since then, but I could never go back. It's sad that kids now still have to deal with this, especially since it seems everyone's expected to have an aesthetic, as opposed to a smallish group of fashion outliers. At least we both have the good taste to like Vivienne Westwood necklaces?
You know? Those stories are what drove me away a couple years ago when I was looking into lolita fashion. I love the dresses, I love the concept, but I felt too intimidated to truly engage with the community. Even if I have almost given up on partaking in the dresses, I'm glad to know it's not like that anymore.
This was a very interesting watch for me. As someone who grew up wanting to be a librarian and is accustomed to both the usefulness of categorization and its inherent limitations and contradictions, I never saw grouping ideas and visuals into aesthetics for easy reference as anything but positive. I'm not sure you've convinced me, but It was informative to think about aesthetics from a different perspective for forty-five minutes.
I don't know, the moment you mentinoed that this wiki exists, I went to it to figure out how to actually describe that Aphex Twin, PS1 Wipeout future-y logo design thing that started in 80s corporate design and blew up in the late 90s. Apparently people have named it Vectorheart. I'm happy to actually have a label for it rather than straining to explain what I'm talking about.
idk if retro-futurism is described thusly in the wiki, but it's an umbrella term to which things like atompunk and steampunk fall; a term for aesthetics of the future, from the perspective of the past
Idk if you know this but your video echoes alot of the points made by the wiki founder, Fairyland formerly FairyPage. They were removed from the mod team after culling a large number of pages and posting, a now seemingly lost, article, on their personal site, talking about their growing distance between the wiki and actual engagement with art. At least I think so, the relevant articles "I Created the Aesthetics Wiki. No, It's Not Easy Being Really Cool" and "| Spoke too Soon. The Fact of My Creating the Aesthetics Wiki has Vanished Into Dust. What is an Aesthetic Anyway?", have both removed form form her sub stack and I couldn't recover them form Internet archive.
This is fascinating, I knew the creator had been ousted for deleting stuff but never heard any of this! :O
One of my least favorite things with the Aesthetic trend is that slowly over time I feel more and more like I must always dress (or decorate my room) one way, which is stupid because I like so many styles and genres of clothing. (Also a ton of Aesthetics misuse historical things/fashions/stories/items and like watching a movie where the main character complains about being in a corset it makes my historian heart hurt so badly)
I feel like the only positive effect genres have is making it easier to find things and making artists' work more visible. It doesn't actually make the art better, it's a compromise.
I think some aesthetics can be useful for cataloguing niche modern art movements, like weirdcore, but I agree that they can very much be limiting and falls way too easily into consumerism.
Generally I like a few popular aesthetics, and I like to engage with them both online and in real life, to some extent. But when it comes to offline stuff, it's simple things, like appreciating how an outfit I'm wearing is reminds me of dark academia even though I didn't really try to go for it. It goes back to feeling like a protagonist of a story, even for just a brief instance Weirdcore in particular feels really important to me because it has taught me to see as beautiful places that I might otherwise think of as dull or ugly. Sometimes I like to take photographs of locations that remind me of weirdcore. It's just really comforting to be able to find beauty in unexpected places, or in places that would be oftentimes considered ugly, because nothing and nobody is actually perfect, and sometimes it's hard to accept that And I have to add this because I wrote an assignment about weirdcore, I feel like a lot of the people creating original weirdcore content are dedicated to it as a proper art movement. I love the weirdcore subreddit for this reason, people are experimenting and doing new things. Of course, the analysis of such images is lacking, but the dedication and experimentation are there
I honestly think it’s harmless fun. It’s a cool way for artists and writers etc to know how to make mood boards etc :) I understand the confusion and I didn’t even know it existed but it seems like mostly harmless fun
Exactly. I don’t see a problem with this whole aesthetics thing. It only becomes a problem when one starts to base their entire life and around a single aesthetic (like example they feel like they have to dress and act a certain way in order to “fit” the aesthetic). But overall aesthetics are pretty fun
@@yeet8627a lot of people are, but it’s not a huge problem. The core part is what bothers me i wish we could come up with cooler names.
This whole backlash against aesthetics honestly seems like a boomer outrage about something harmless, except instead of boomers it's millenials now lol
@@ahuman5772 it's dumb as hell, these things already have names, it's like when people call a guitar a lyre in Mexico (I'm from there)
I think the harm comes in that it shows how people are engaging in increasingly mindless activities and don't stop for one second to think about things more deeply. Everything about this seems superficial and it has so much potential to be explored if they were more passionate about anything
i think its interesting seeing how these movements have taken off and become all-consuming during the pandemic. i feel like pre-pandemic they were mostly smaller groups, more likely to be found on sites like tumblr, and much more just defined as “the words that i type into the searchbar to find the pictures i like”. now it feels like there is this pressure to commit to ONE AESTHETIC and embody it perfectly in its entirety. you get people picking up new hobbies, buying a whole new wardrobe, and redoing their entire life every time they find a new aesthetic they like. ive also noticed a huge evolution in the kind of content you see. ive followed goblincore + related aesthetics since like 2018, and it used to be a lot more focused on community. you saw a lot of diy stuff, a lot of people posting their own outfits, decor, and hoards of shinies, and a lot more mentions of politics almost akin to punk. there was a lot of “all goblins support trans/gay/jewish/bipoc/etc. people”, as well as a general undercurrent of anticapitalism. however, now we see a lot more aspirational and curated photos. instead of a bunch of people shitposting about their own lives, we see curated blogs dedicated to all things goblincore. we also saw the pretty much complete disappearance of the concept of “shinies” during the switch from tumblr to tiktok. shinies were like a big thing within the community, you’d have jars of random little trinkets you found that brought you joy. lots of people would post their own personal hoards, and it was really cool seeing everyone’s little objects. i used to refer to this as the “cottagecore-ification of goblincore”, because we saw it shift from this entire community based around diy and making your own space in the hellscape of a world we live in to just kinda… cottagecore but green and wearing pants.
I took a couple years break from tumblr, my social media of choice, a while ago. When I finally came back, the type of things I used to blog like worn down cabins, meadows, farm animals, plushes, old glowing box televisions, colored ponies and other things that evoked happy childhood memories, had all become part of new aesthetics called "kidcore", "toycore", "retrowave", "cottagecore". The more I looked into this new phenomenon, the more I saw these things that represented my love becoming something of a commodity; The beautifully woven tapestry of personal memories I'd collected on my blog all of a sudden were nothing more than an aesthetic mishmash. There were new categories I had to fit into and label my collection by, rewriting the meaning behind every photo, if it left any meaning to be gleaned at all. Aesthetics gave birth to new clique identity groups, with one right way to perform as each, lest you be alienated from people who, superficially, seemed to share common interests with you.
The section on erasing the history of the people who actually drive culture resonated with me. I remember having blue and red hair and wearing a choker and figuring out I was trans back in 2013. And then like a couple years later other people were doing it. And like, I never SAW that as a thing. I just found colored hair cool and punk and a way to express myself, and collars (we called em collars back then) as this typically feminizing kinda thing. Nowadays my aesthetics have evolved. I have heart and cat motifs everywhere (like wearing cat ears, a paw, or using a leash for a chain), I wear double chokers, and wear grandma clothes in ways they weren't intended (a dress with chains for example), mismatched socks, gloves and arm warmers, and cover myself in pins and patches. I incorporate punk (red n black), nonbinary (purples), femme (pinks), and/or trans pride color schemes and aesthetics. I also wear combinations of undersized and oversized clothes. Some kids looked at me with adoration, for lack of a better word, at Spencer's the other day. One of them bought and put on 2 chokers together, imitating my double choker look. I'm very happy about that... ...but I wouldn't be surprised if someday my "Ellycore" vibe (jfc I can't believe I'm actually labeling and demystifying this) gets gentrified and attributed to some tiktok kid with a big college fund and 2 parents and a minivan in a garage in the suburbs.
mismatched socks trans pride pin punk gang rise up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i've worn mismatched socks for years XDDDDDD it started out as laziness (read: anxiety about getting dressed) and then i just decided "fuck it, this is going to be my aesthetic".
@@asuka_the_void_witch people who wear the same sock on both feet are missing out. We have 2 feet for a reason. Such wasted real estate.
@@asuka_the_void_witch hell yes
as a former aesthetic tumblr girlblogger, i loved this one lily!!!!!
ooh
@@acedia2 gregg
Ngl the only time the titles work for me is when i dont know how to describe a type of music into a search bar without it thinking i had a stroke..
Holy shit you know you've made it in the niche online video essay industry if you've got an Abi Thorn voiceover!
this video made me realize, that the world isn't as cleanly compilable as everyone made it out to be... and it made me feel less bad about my difficulties of trying to categorize my messy thoughts, on trying to fit myself in a certain square everyone talks about, because it proves that i am human, and messiness is part of human nature too. thanks Lily.
"dark nautical" had me in tears. That's just living by the Washington coast
The part you said about consumer identities really made me stop and think. I tend to be a ‘lurker’ on the internet so I’m not a part of any communities. A big draw of the internet is that you feel a part of something without risking being known or judged (I can’t speak for everyone.) Whilst it can be good for widening perspectives the sheer mass of content can lead you to consuming without savouring or digesting (kind of like buying a luxury eclair but eating it in thirty seconds so you can stuff your face with a crumble right after.) I think that it’s difficult to slow down and let anything actually ‘sink in’ because of the transient way that aesthetics work. Why would you think about something that’s already old when there’s this new thing to look at. It’s kind of like living off free samples where you can taste but never be fully sated or taste deeply before moving on.
As a teenager I would have really gotten into this stuff for a while. Especially as an Autistic person who has a strong inclination towards categorization and pattern seeking. In fact, I have old notebooks filled with lists and explanations of essentially these kinds aesthetic categories, all centred around categorizing and visualizing the kind of person I liked and wanted to become. But in retrospect, I don't think it served me all that well. It maybe helped me make some sense of the vastness of culture I was encountering on the internet for the first time, but I think it actually led me further away from myself, who I actually am and what I actually like, towards these kinds of restrictive aesthetic lifestyle goals you speak about in the video. Amazing work Lily, I wish everyone talked about teenagers on the internet with as much respect and nuance as you do.
I'm often one who loves this sort of stuff and placing things in categories. I knew I had to hear what you had to say and I'm happy I did! Great video as always.
I have work boi aesthetic in the day but transform to sleepy lad in the evening. I can do both.
Great video. For a while now I've been thinking that the whole "aesthetics" thing is rooted in consumerism. People wanting to buy an identity, either because achieving the identity for real isn't possible for them or they just don't want to put the work in to do it. This sort of thing isn't new, companies have been co-opting countercultures for decades. But modern social media and the rise of cheap, online fast fashion retailers have made it easier than ever to find new styles and get into them. Which also means it's easier to throw it away and get into a new one. You make a great point about aesthetics not being able to apply to real, everyday life. Overall, aesthetics come off more like costumes than lifestyle.
But aesthetics aren't always meant to be applied to real life. People aren't defined by what aesthetics they like. Not everyone needs to make the things they enjoy their entire identity.
Saying atom punk is redundant because of retro-futurism feels wrong. Like calling power metal redundant because metal exists as a term. they are both just more specific versions of a genre
the part where you breakdown the weirdcore page, and how it doesn't actually do anything to explore what weirdcore *is* really struck a nerve with me and i think really highlights the fact that the wiki and "vibe culture" as a whole is just. teenagers learning to talk about their experiences and the way art has impacted them in the only way they know how, through the lens of tagging and internet spaces. because weirdcore is one of the only aesthetics in the video that feels like something approaching an actual art movement (similar to the way cottagecore is it's own actual defined thing) because i think most of the aesthetics mentioned in the video would fit under the weirdcore umbrella, but of course none of the teenagers have thought to describe how weirdcore functions and why it evokes the emotions it does, they only know to further categorize the small differences within weirdcore and make them their own thing. thus making the labeling of weirdcore in the first place redundant
I feel like many use aesthetics just as...well... an aesthetic? Bc i don't have another way to say that. Bc I was under the impression most of my life that an aesthetic was literally the way things look on a surface level, or a very generic way of saying a visual style - while the underlying truth can be, and often is, very different - I'd never heard the idea of it being about values or lifestyle choices or even the visual style of actual art movements until the last 5 years on the internet, and i don't get that impression from most content creators who engage with the styles, they often say they just like the visuals and imitate them as a kind of artform, and many will show the reality as a contrast to remind people this is just art and not their life - but maybe my view of the internet is curated too much? At any rate, I'm too old for tik tok. And this could be a semantics thing, like that's what the word has come to mean, but I'm sure there are many who probably just use the term in the old way I will add that every old book (1960s or earlier) I've read used "aesthetic" in phrases like "you only care about aesthetics" and "this is more than just aesthetics," or "it's a nice aesthetic, but the reality is..." or "that's an interesting aesthetic choice [when compared to the underlying reality]" - i.e. they seem to be surface level visuals distinct from the underlying reality, though it can match. And it's good if the visual match the reality, but most about society in the modern era simply doesn't in any meaningful way, largely bc of capitalism. I do think people are commodifying themselves, and I'm sure people are buying (literally) into the idea that this is about lifestyle, but the issue in my opinion isn't that it should be about lifestyle but is vacuous - it shouldn't pretend to be substantial, but it doesn't have to be substantial, either. Silly, pointless things are allowed to exist- important even for emotional health - they just should be recognized as silly and pointless. It's only when they become an as too serious that it's a problem, at least in my humble opinion
the last 20 minutes or so got so deep and hit me so hard I WAS NOT READY NOR EXPECTING TO FEEL CALLED OUT. specifically about instagram and how we are marketing ourselves as products because we are participating in consumer culture with these shallow aesthetics that basically just promote products... but also feeling inspired because there is another side to aesthetic movements where it has introduced me to new ideas that i can incorporate into my drawings, paintings, sculptures. so i want to get into online communities where people share their creations, rather than their consumptions. going to watch the disney adults video now lol i also relate edit- i cant find her disney video but im gonna watch the call me by your name one
The Disney one is linked in the description!
The end of the video where you talk about a lack of in person connection causing this online phenomenon really hit me, I’m in the generation (obviously not gonna say my exact age) and I feel that really deeply. I want really badly to start connecting with people outside of online spaces and my friends and make more of a community in real life, but I have absolutely no idea where to start and it feels scary trying to do it alone (most of my friends are queer, but have no desire to engage with the wider community in our (very) queer friendly city). If any one has any tips or starting points I would honestly love to know and I loved the video
I'm in a similar way, minus the queer-friendly city. I had a small community when I was in elementary school by dumb luck, so I didn't grow up online, but after that went away I began to feel incredibly lonely, with neither real connections nor a space on the internet I would've associated with. I felt like I was upstream without a paddle in a sort of way. Sorry for the short rambling, the point is "I get it."
Look up youth programming for your local library, park district, community theater, museum, art school, or other type of college. For example, where I live, a local art school has a pottery class specifically for queer teens! There are definitely programs out there where you can meet other cool people your own age and have adventures and make things with your hands :) Best of luck.
As someone who was in a similar boat a couple years ago: see if there's any organisation whose stuff you're interested in that does events! Much of my offline social life got traction by just going to a local queer youth org a bunch. Doesn't have to be that thing specifically but just find something that you like and can regularly attend and you'll make connections :)
It’s really reassuring to know I’m far from alone in thinking that seeking out an individual category for every single piece of visual media in existence is probably not a useful or fulfilling way to experience art.
ha! one of the y2k example images, the rave flyer from arizona, was actually a direct lifting of an early 90s flyer from the uk. speaks to your later point about these being somewhat myopic, single (younger) persons perspective speaking of rave, i'm a rave dj and ive been closely observing this phenomena in dance music forever. A song becomes a trend become a genre so quickly, with increasingly rigid rules , and perfunctory formula filling. And quite a bit of the time it's just re-invented something from 25 years ago with a different name and modern production techniques. taxonomizing is what i call it. like are there really 400,000 types of beetles? or are etymologists just kinda.. maybe in need of calming down.
"taxonomizing is what i call it. like are there really 400,000 types of beetles? or are etymologists just kinda.. maybe in need of calming down. " shit, that fucking SLAPS. no exaggeration.
@@asuka_the_void_witch I shouldn't have phrased it like I made the word up! I'm sure I picked it up from evolutionary bio reading, but I find it useful.
@@djmannik Please don't mix evolutionary biology and sociological phenomenon. That has a very dark history and also a present for that matter. As to the number of beetle species, the identification of new species kind of works as a counter example for these synthetic categories. New species are organically discovered, compared with existing species and if no match is found then it's a new species. Funnily enough many new species are actually "discovered" in museum collections. We've collected so much stuff we haven't had the time to categorise all of it and were still finding new stuff all the time. And when it comes to beetles, if I remember correctly, indentification of new species is relatively easy as they all have unique genitalia. So you have a concrete thing to compare. The scientific process also very much encourages the questioning of existing knowledge. To begin with, there isn't really even an ultimate concensus on what a species is. Just a collection of generally agreed upon models which are useful for describing what we see in nature. Also useful for other things but we don't need to go to the philosophy on systems of knowledge here. Suffices to say nothing is objective and systems of oppression and colonialism touch everything. In conclusion the diversity of nature is truly mindboggling and scientists try their hardest to avoid exactly the kind of synthetic over specific categories described here.
The entomologists are in utter shock at what the etymologists have done to their beetle taxonomy. Personally I'm fond of the etymology of entomological taxonomy. Tbh, taxonomy in general, especially mycological and botanical. Oh shucks, I think I may actually just really be fascinated with etymology in general. (Not to mention all the other -ologies..) Also, you may be surprised at the number of varieties of beetles there are just in your neighborhood alone.
Exactly. I wasn’t alive for the 90s but l’ve been into design and art for my whole life. When I saw Y2K a lot of the stuff seemed to be 90’s inspired and I was confused but I thought maybe it was just because the late 90’s would have had an influence on the early 2000’s because they were close in time. I don’t really like y2k so I don’t pay attention to it much.
Honestly reminds me of looking into metal subgenres back in the day. They get so specific but with so little differences to the point that most single bands can dip in and out of several in a few songs.
When I was 16-17 I tried to fit my entire life into an aesthetic, the things I purchased, music, what I ate, if It did not fit I would discard it out of my life. If my younger self tried to categorize my so called “aesthetic” now he would spontaneously combust.
I’ll never not be confused by how upset it makes people when people label things. It’s just a shorthand to convey a kind of vibe or emotion, humans like to label things and there isn’t a reason that it’s bad. Why do people have a problem with people having words to identify with?
super cool perspective that is new to me! ive never been into the "core core" side of the internet because every time i see an art piece that i think is really cool, because its anonymized i cant find the artist and see or buy more of their work.
Hypnospace Outlaw in real life. Reading that wiki feels like watching the total death of context in humanity’s collective psyche in real time and fills me with unspeakable dread.
lately (in the past couple years) I've noticed that "trying to be aesthetic (and failing, getting frustrated and dissociative)" has been, for some cursed reason, burned into the core of my sense of identity. I'm scared of it being something I won't be able to undo in a lifetime... aur naur.
(...maybe I can turn that into an aesthetic...)
Loving how these thoughts are coming together! A fashion youtuber called Antwon recently made a video about hyperreality as it relates to fashion, which feels like it's putting together similar sentiments on our current shaky understanding of physical reality vs constructed reality. your vids are the best!
Ooohh I'll have to check that out!
i love this very specific genre of trans women making really intellectual and interesting video essays. please never stop what you’re doing, you and contra are the best. update: THE FAKE PIE is a shell of the man he was before replying to my comment, and wants us all to know that he is a broken man who has never been so deeply hurt as he is in this moment. let’s give him the headspace he needs to recover from this traumatic event by not replying to him
Trans Women Sociological Video Essays are.....my favorite a e s t h e t i c . For real though.....Contra is indeed an internet treasure. But Lily is fast becoming one of my favorite KZheadrs. She's wicked smart....and picks very interesting topics. Can't wait to watch this one!
@@avedic I know what you mean but when you say Contra I can't help but think of the video game, and for a moment I was totally confused as to what it had to do with trans women on KZhead.
Where are all the trans guys?
@@cloudthief8918 most of the big ones i know make react content like jammidodger or sam collins
@@cloudthief8918 Check out Fintastic Mr Fox
So, this topic is really interesting to me, because it relates to a subject I've studied and pondered myself extensively. I read up on a lot of the academic and cultural studies of anime, and one very famous book (which was written in 2001) in particular directly addresses the topic you're covering, but in the context of the Japanese Otaku (anime fan) culture. The book is called "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals" by Hiroki Azuma. The book's core premise is one of subculture analysis, and has a lot of big brain takes on how we interact with media. Most famously, the concept of "animalization". Essentially, Azuma identifies a shift in how Otaku approach anime in the transition to the internet age, and how they've gone from a place of seeking out grand narratives (a story or message) to "database consumption" (elements). His idea of "database consumption" is exactly what you're describing, an incessant need to categorize and codify elements (in the context of Otaku, these are usually desirable character traits or visual flourishes in animation). Once these elements are codified, they are sook out or avoided by the Otaku, and have become part of the language for what it means to be an Otaku (the -dere classifications of female characters is a famous one, but there are many others) a shift to deriving meaning from elements rather than meaning from art holistically. My reaction to your perspective is this: I generally don't think the "vibes culture" is about creating a new life style to emulate or a creed to follow (like Punk or Goth or anything) rather, I think these are categorizing elements from the perspective of consumption (you approached this from the perspective of content creators, but I look at it more as a tool for content consumers than anything else). For example, I can't live life as a "Vaporwaver", but I can seek out art that makes me feel the way that other vaporwave does. Of course, an aesthetic that resonates with you could be expressed in fashion or decor, but at its core, these aesthetics are defined by observation and pattern recognition, not a "movement" in the traditional sense. Otaku are a relatively old and ahead of the trend subculture defined by their "one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy" interaction with fiction and media. Perhaps Gen Z is beginning to follow the same path (only, instead of anime/otaku culture specifically, it's the totality of films/music/photography/memes/etc.). I'm less doom and gloom about it than you are, but its definitely a change in the way we approach reality and art.
"Shrinking every mass movement to a conceivable scale" is exactly the sense I got on that wiki as an old school goth who has seen subculture evolve and evolve and evolve yet then be vastly oversimplified and memeified. I love and hate the wiki but I feel the same sense of despair that we don't have access to localized subculture and everything is vast and distant.
we fr are defining our lives in tags
Omg that's so observationalistic neo punk core.😍
This video is interesting because I think of aesthetics very differently, less about art and more about self expression. A way of branding, like you said. I think where things go wrong is when people only use them superficially, or because they are popular. For me personally, I dress in what I can only describe as an androgynous retro-futuristic way. But to me that reflects my personality: I am queer, but also old-fashioned for my age, so I love midcentury styles, but have to reconcile that love with the fact that America was not inclusive back then, so I dress vintage but bend the rules. And I like space, haha. I like the thought that someone can look at me and get a sense of that. I look at my own social media often as well, though I feel like I do so in a slightly different way- when I'm feeling insecure, I like to look at beautiful pictures of myself and things I have created to remind myself of who I am. I do agree that one has to be careful not to let vibes take over though, because at the end of the day, you're a human who has to eat food and go to work. I struggle with that tension between the ideal and the real sometimes, and this video helped me sort out some of those feelings. To tie it back around, I think resolving that tension by anchoring a personal aesthetic to what one actually values helps- it's just hard to also keep that separate from social media. Less brand, more personal.
aesthetic as a noun: 😎😎 aesthetic as a adjective: 😱😱
aesthetic grouping existing help me subvert or draw from them. It's almost like it's going back to the best days of the interenet 1995-2000 where everyone had their own bizzare geocities websites where new looks were experimented constantly each building on or subverting one another. Now adays most websites look the same. I suggested checking out the book "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" where new definitions are given to feelings we don't have a name for. Grouping isn't about just about marketing it's about meaningful connection.
the Aristotelian urge to categorize everything under the sun
This video is so youtube essaycore and super millions of deadcore
whenever i find memes that remind me of my friends humor ill call them “*friends name*core” and i think its funny
I see my experiences aren't unique after all...!
@@painslut LMAOO
I think that atompunk is more of subgenre of retrofuturism? It's distinct enough from soviet retrofuturism
Re: Afrofuturism and Star Trek: Giving Gene Roddenberry credit for Afrofuturism is, of course, absurd and racist. However, there is *an* association between Afrofuturism and Star Trek made by serious scholars on the genre. There's a lengthy discussion of the importance of Star Trek / Nichelle Nichols' role in the early documentary on Afrofuturism, "The Last Angel of History" by John Akomfrah, featuring several theorists and artists who are luminaries in the genre. There's a lot more to Afrofuturism than just "Black people in space," but that's not *not* an element. To be clear, your point absolutely stands - I just find it really interesting that Nichelle Nichols had such a profound effect on Afrofuturists (who were already doing their thing by the time Star Trek came onto the scene, as they had been for decades).
I think you make some very good points but from a limited point of view. You're only talking about the things that vibe culture takes away from someone who grew up like you, had the same access as you, and values the same things. You made an interest comment, that we've started to define what we consume as what we are. I actually agree with this, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. The quote "You are what you love, not who loved you" (Fall Out Boy) was and still is extremely dear to my heart because of what it represents. I grew up feeling like there was no one around me, and I had to invent myself from the ground up. I had to learn self love through the things that I loved. Even if no one loves me, that's okay. Because I'm still somebody - I'm a combination of all of the things I love. As I've gotten older, I've grown away from having to define myself by strictly consumption, but I still do define myself by what I love. Consumption was just the easiest start to that self-identification. I have friends who *very* much are, and I've seen it become harmful at times. Still, I think there's merit to the self-identification and the appeals to choice and purposeful expression
i feel that! it’s not that my identity is solely defined by liking BTS (special interests bad also oooOOOoooOO capitalism /s), it’s that i am a person who cares about/values community and love and social justice and diversity and specific sounds in music and therefore i feel perfectly at home in BTS’s fandom.
I honestly think what these kids are doing is quietly nothing short of revolutionary, and while yes sometimes they're misinformed or they lean into harmful tropes, I think on a conceptual level they're doing the necessary legwork in constructing what will come to be the dominant framework for art discourse into the 21st century, to which they'll probably never receive proper appraisal. I haven't seen your MOGAI video yet, but from my own experience, gay autistic teenagers forming online communities to enthusiastically name & categorize everything under the sun are quite the force to be reckoned with, and honestly I have them to thank for saving me from falling down the alt right rabbit hole & giving me the confidence to transition as young as I did when I was a gay autistic teenager myself back in the mid 2010s
I love how the advertisement next to your video is an link to a "What is my personal aesthetic quiz"
41:44 HEY YOU TAKE THAT BACK. Dragons are great
SAME THO DRAGONS ARE RAD
"You are your body." -- the 32nd line of the hacker mantras.
People enjoy labeling things and I find aesthetics wiki to be very interesting because you can look through some really intriguing visual styles. And some crappy ones. But each one represents a specific way of looking at the world, or a way people *want* to the world to look. As a musician, this reminds me of the anti-genre movement in music. “Can’t we just make/enjoy music without labeling it?” Sure, but why can’t people label it too? Why are people offended by categorization? Personally, I think it’s enjoyable to see these “aesthetics” and I find some of them inspiring. Even if no one has ever heard of them. Even if they aren’t extremely distinct from every other one. That’s normal. Why are there so many tiny micro genres in EDM? Same reason From what I’ve seen, even if two aesthetics seems very similar, there’s something different in it for the people who are closer to it and can see it better. And that’s really what it’s about. It’s a description of a point of view people take of the world and our culture
Another thing I want to say is, critiques like this at 16:12 miss the point of these aesthetics. They’re not about a visual language, they’re about the feeling you get (or the person who created the aesthetic got) *from* the visuals. It’s a very different meaning for the word aesthetic, which I do think used to be more about a visual appearance. But language is always changing. See the way people use the word Literally nowadays