Can "Deliberate Scarcity" Halt Excessive Consumption AND Foster Community?

Abstract

Shopping malls once functioned as consumer-driven utopias within suburban landscapes. They were controlled environments where commerce, novelty, and social life were deliberately intertwined. This paper proposes that the decline of these physical spaces is inextricably linked to the contemporary loneliness epidemic.

While malls were designed as sites of consumption, the “productive friction” inherent in physical retail unintentionally fostered shared public experiences and stable social archetypes. The transition to frictionless, algorithmic digital consumption has replaced these communal environments with individualized “simulacra,” leading to a mass collapse of stable identity in favour of disposable online micro-trends.

This essay argues that “The Mall” functioned as a consumption-mediated “third place” that late-stage capitalism has since hollowed out through hyper-efficiency. By practicing “Deliberate Scarcity,” which involves intentionally reintroducing friction into our shopping and social rituals, we may begin to rebuild the sense of community and individualism that has been dulled over time.

Keywords

capitalism, commodification, consumerism, culture, late-stage capitalism, loneliness, shopping malls

Introduction

Shopping malls, hereby known as “The Mall,” were an attempt to build a consumer-driven utopia amidst otherwise bland suburbs. They offered community and novelty without risk or weather. At their core, malls were designed to connect shoppers with global trends and cultures. They were a way for us to feel as though we were participating in something larger, even if we were simply shopping or wasting time.

This piece proposes that the decline of shopping malls and our loneliness epidemic are connected—ironically—through excessive consumption. I am not only referring to ultra-fast fashion retailers like Shein, making it cheaper to shop online than in-person. The ease of access to nearly all material goods and entertainment has transformed most aspects of our lives in a relatively short amount of time. Two important dates are the release of the first iPhone in 2007 and April 2020, which was the first time that online retail sales surpassed brick-and-mortar sales in Canada (Statistics Canada).

While official statistical research directly linking the loneliness epidemic to the decline of brick-and-mortar shopping is largely the domain of humanities scholars, significant data exists regarding the correlation between rising isolation, increased internet usage, and the erosion of “third places.” These studies include the public health advisories of the U.S. Surgeon General, as well as academic reviews of consumer behavior and the psychological drivers of online compulsive buying (Dymecka et al.; Liu et al.; United States, Dept. of Health and Human Services).

As an example, prior to the proliferation of online shopping and streaming, if you wanted to hear a new song you had to wait for the radio to play it, wait for MTV or Much Music to air it, or head to your local mall to buy the album or preview it in a listening booth. The Mall was also the primary place to spot new movie posters or see what was in style. You needed to go somewhere physical to accomplish these things, which ended up forcing a sense of community amongst shoppers and mall employees alike. Today, however, everything has become so abundant that the ease of access provided by the internet has not only destroyed shopping malls but also contributed to an ever-snowballing loneliness epidemic that few people seem to know how to stop.

This information would imply that it is teenagers and young adults who have been the most impacted by the decline of The Mall. However, seniors and those who are physically disabled also rely on The Mall for socialization opportunities and often exercise. The decline of The Mall has impacted practically everyone, regardless of class or physicality (Silva et al.).

In late-stage capitalism, almost everything becomes commodified, sharing the bond of existing within the system. I genuinely believe that the solution to both saving The Mall and addressing our loneliness epidemic is the same: practicing Deliberate Scarcity. Not “deliberate scarcity” in the same way that marketers practice to create buzz for products, but by deliberately buying less and also shopping in person in order to embrace the friction of life. I am not referring to “minimalism,” although there are similarities between the two. While Deliberate Scarcity is about focusing on intentional consumer choices to reintroduce friction into our lives, minimalism as a movement and aesthetic emphasizes decluttering and personal space. In short, Deliberate Scarcity aims to renew declining social rituals and habits, while minimalism is typically connected to decluttering and the efficiency of one’s environment.

Think of Deliberate Scarcity as a spin-off to the “Slow Consumption Movement,” which is an offshoot of the “Slow Food Movement.” Both slow movements are about encouraging more balanced and sustainable lifestyles by doing things in a slower and move deliberate way. The “Deliberate Scarcity” that this essay discusses is has similar methods to the “Slow Consumption Movement,” but is unique in that Deliberate Scarcity argues that friction is essential for community building and for a healthy sense of self.

Scholars have long argued that informal gathering spaces – so-called “third places” – play an important role in fostering community (Oldenburg). More recent research suggests that the disappearance of these spaces may contribute to rising loneliness (Finlay et al.). However, relatively little attention has been paid to the role consumer culture itself plays in both creating and eroding these environments.

This essay argues that shopping malls functioned as consumption-mediated third places, and that the expansion of unlimited digital consumption has undermined the social structures they once supported. Because late-stage capitalism absorbs and commodifies nearly everything it touches, when shared experiences like shopping become too easily accessible, identities formed around those experiences risk collapsing into commodity-driven performances. In this sense, the same forces that once helped create communal retail environments have also contributed to their erosion. By acting contrary to the logic of frictionless consumption – returning to physical locations like The Mall and practicing a form of Deliberate Scarcity through personal style rather than chasing online micro-trends – it may be possible to begin reestablishing the shared experiences and social structures that once formed around these spaces.

Communities: Real and Imagined

There’s nothing like walking around a mall to tell you that the old world is dead.
— Tim Dillon (The Tim Dillon Show, ep. 492)

The designer of The Mall as we know it, Austrian-American architect Victor Gruen, had a very strong vision for what he wanted to create. He initially envisioned The Mall as a “socialist-utopian experiment to build a space both for consumption and community” (Brown 105). Gruen wanted to create a center that wasn’t just for shopping, but that could act as a community gathering place complete with food halls and accessible social services. As a staunch socialist, he prioritized urban revitalization projects that encouraged pedestrians over cars and fostered healthy communities. But when his template for The Mall became so successful that it became the template for every mall (as well as contributing to the decline in small-town Main Streets), he eventually disavowed his creation and moved back to Austria.

Despite Gruen believing that he essentially created his own Frankenstein’s Monster in the form of The Mall, shopping malls themselves ended up shaping not just global shopping habits for many decades, but also the socialization habits and communities of entire generations (specifically, Gen X and Millennials).

“Shopping centres (SCs) serve as important social arenas where individuals frequently experience positive emotions unrelated to shopping activities. In Norway, recent research indicates sociodemographic differences in how people appreciate SCs as spaces for social interaction. Elderly individuals, immigrants and those with lower educational levels find the physical and social features of SCs particularly attractive.” (Pettersen et al. 1)

While this essay is arguing that the rise of online shopping at the detriment of brick-and-mortar malls is connected to an increase in social isolation, there are studies that show how the internet can help some seniors and disabled people to feel more connected to the world. However, this is often at the expense of or in lieu of real-world experiences that they are unable to experience anyway due to their physical limitations (Silva et al.). In a study about the COVID-19 pandemic and its connection to shopping habits, researcher Jiawei Wang found that “consumers with more frequent bouts of loneliness prefer offline consumption, whereas consumers with higher self-efficacy prefer online shopping. Perceptions of vulnerability and severity caused by loneliness increase consumers’ negative attitudes towards online shopping” (Wang 4).

But this essay is not arguing that online shopping doesn’t serve a purpose; it is arguing that in order to halt the increase of loneliness on a large scale, we need to conscientiously choose to shop online less so that we can “embrace friction” and have more human-to-human interactions. I understand that that is not possible in the same sense for everyone (for example, the physically disabled), but do believe that every one could benefit from more time amidst friends and loved ones and a stronger sense of community.

As the internet became increasingly accessible and the prevalence of online shopping continued to grow, consumers were initially excited; online shopping was too convenient not to participate in. But, just as The Mall wiped out many small-town businesses, online shopping eventually decimated The Mall. What many of us didn’t realize at the time, though, was how much shopping malls impacted our lives in ways that weren’t directly related to just shopping. During its Golden Age (mid-1980s to 2005), The Mall was an essential socialization spot for working-class families, teenagers, and the elderly alike (Hartmans). It was the ultimate “third place.”

A “third place” is a term first used in 1989 by sociologist Ray Oldenburg. His definition of a third place is a location outside of home and work that offers entertainment, leisure, and community. By his definition, the main purpose of these locations is to foster socialization through conversations both with friends and strangers alike.

“Taken together, the concepts of social interaction, social infrastructure and third places provide a cohesive framework for understanding how commercial spaces like shopping centres (SCs) may support everyday social life. Social infrastructure offers the broader context in which physical and organisational settings enable repeated contact and the formation of relationships. As elements of the social infrastructure, third places are informal and accessible venues that encourage low-threshold interaction beyond the domains of home and work. SCs function as third places to the extent that they foster routine encounters, co-presence and a sense of ease and familiarity.” (Pettersen et al. 2)

Not only are third places a source of fun and entertainment, but their roles in communities shape patterns of both morbidity and mortality (Finlay et al.). Bluntly put, a healthy third place (i.e., a successful shopping mall) is the sign of a healthy community; a decline in third places represents a decline in the overall wellness of a community.

The internet initially offered communities in the form of social media, but as with most things touched by the ever-accelerating forces of late-stage capitalism, those too were gradually hollowed out by the profit motives of tech companies. While websites like Tumblr or Reddit fostered conversations and a sense of belonging in their early days, those positive interactions have been largely replaced by – at best – frustrating interactions with combative strangers, or at worst – frustrating interactions with bots. Endless scrolling transformed social media from genuine online communities (though, as we now know, they were also secretly data-mining operations) into soulless applications designed primarily to shovel advertisements and algorithmically curated content into users’ feeds.

The “communities” that exist online today are largely simulacra. Simulacra is a term coined by philosopher Jean Baudrillard which refers to the idea of things that have been copied or duplicated so many times that the original has been completely replaced and/or forgotten. For example, the “Fantasyland Hotel” in the West Edmonton Mall, which offers various themed rooms such as “tropical” or “Egyptian,” could be deemed simulacra as the themes are so far removed from what would really represent the tropics or Egypt that they have become their own thing. Essentially, simulacra is a copy of a copy.

In that way, many of the remaining “successful” malls are a form of simulacra. Stores may be open and people may appear to be shopping, but many retailers operate at a loss and function primarily as physical reminders of their online counterparts. Meanwhile, many shoppers are simply passing time rather than participating in the kinds of spontaneous, pro-social interactions that malls once fostered.

In a capitalist society, it is nearly impossible to not participate in it (Author’s note: This would be true in most hypothetical dominant economic systems). So yes, even in their heyday, malls existed entirely to promote consumption. It was incidental and serendipitous that they ended up becoming a beloved third place that fostered communities. I would argue that this only happened because of the slight barrier to access that malls had, versus today’s complete and unending access to online shopping and streaming. By gathering people in close proximity and exposing them to others from similar economic or cultural backgrounds, The Mall also once functioned, in a sense, as the “great labeler” of social life (Were you a “Bootlegger” teen, or a “Hot Topic” teen?).

“The Mall wasn’t just a place to consume; it was a place to be shared with others. Stores, food courts, booths that showed off the newest trendy gadget or skin-burning acne treatments, and occasionally a mismanaged zoo or water park made The Mall a place where you could easily waste hours without ever spending a dime. It was like walking through a living catalog or tabloid magazine. Safe from the weather, free from car traffic, and often home to a collection of “international” cuisines like bad Italian food, bad Chinese food, bad Mexican food, and more recently bad Korean, Japanese, and Indian food, The Mall was as close as many suburban teens would ever get to wandering around an international city.” (Good, “What We Lost”)

Eventually, though, The Mall began to die because consumer culture finally found a way to sell us everything without requiring us to leave our homes (and often at a cheaper price), not because we stopped wanting community. The ease of online shopping, coupled with attractively lower prices, was especially alluring to shoppers who were struggling because of the 2008 economic crash. (As a side note to younger readers: early on, online-only stores were less expensive to shop from as they did not have nearly as much overhead. Eventually, however, as we can now see, prices would balance out regardless of corporate profit margins.)

Lest anyone think that this essay is only looking at The Mall through a thick lens of nostalgia, it is important to point out that there were negatives. Just as online shopping has all but decimated The Mall’s sales numbers, The Mall at its peak was blamed for the decline of countless independent small retailers. It was criticized during that time as being a forebearer of late-stage capitalism. In his accidentally prophetic 1986 book, The Malling of America, author William Severini Kowinski agreed with many of Victor Gruen’s previously mentioned critiques about how these shopping centers had become large, bland corporate monstrosities and were a symptom of a much larger problem with capitalism.

Ironically, one of the other criticisms in the mainstream zeitgeist was that The Mall was a simulacrum of public squares. Time has a way of changing our perspectives, though. Perhaps because they had destroyed the public spaces that existed before them – thus giving society a collective gap in our memories about what existed before The Mall – or perhaps because The Mall really was superior; it is subjective. For better or worse, The Mall, even in its death, has a strong grip on many people’s psyches:

“It is more than just a building to those in the dead mall scene. It is living and breathing, growing and changing. The Mall “lives and dies” with its enthusiasts. Critics of malls see them as depoliticizing, exploitative, and even zombifying … However, these critical views do not negate the affection enthusiasts have for The Mall. Enthusiasts attempt to reconcile these seemingly contradictory perspectives. They reckon with a ruin that is both a marker of the wastefulness of mass consumer capitalism and a place once central to their communities, childhoods, and lives.” (Brown 105)

Consumerism is deeply interwoven into Western culture. While the prevalence of excessive and performative consumption is relatively new, American President Calvin Coolidge openly argued in the 1920s that advertising was meant to “create desire” and shape how citizens lived their everyday lives. According to him, consumer culture was not an accidental byproduct of capitalism but an explicit national project. To Coolidge, advertising created “new thoughts, new desires, new actions… Desire is the crucial element separating the civilized from the uncivilized.”

In the 100 years following Coolidge’s presidency, that idea has metastasized from encouraging economic growth to becoming an inescapable belief that has started to rot away at everything that once made capitalism enjoyable.

While loneliness and the decline of shopping malls are connected, loneliness itself actually encourages capitalism. To put it bluntly, the more isolated we become, the more we are inclined to shop. Online shopping thrives because of loneliness, not in spite of it. This is why to meaningfully address our loneliness epidemic, we do not want more consumption, but less of it. So, in order to save The Mall – the very thing once criticized as the pinnacle of 1980s consumeristic excess – we need to spend less money (and/or spend it in deliberate ways). I imagine that Victor Gruen would be very pleased with this.

Are We What We Buy?

I was ashamed of myself until I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.
— Franz Kafka

In late-stage capitalist society, are we actually what we buy? First, we must distinguish between the material and the spiritual. The definition of the material world is straightforward – it refers to the physical world around us. “Spiritual” can mean many things to many people, but for the sake of this paper, the spiritual refers to our internal sense of self, our agency over our own lives, and our personal sense of meaning. So now we can ask: what separates the spiritual from the material if identity itself is largely performed through consumption? Online, you are “targeted” and siloed through algorithms that predict your desires before you even feel them. In The Mall, and physical life, we are able to make our own decisions based on external stimuli and a true internal sense of self and spiritual will.

Yes, fashion and internet subcultures allow for self-expression. But what is the point when these performances are only for external validation? To me, online external validation is empty because it is quantified. Online, your “style” is reduced to a metric of likes and shares, stripping away the “vibe” that can only exist in a room. In a digital sea of billions, you are just one more account. However, in The Mall, you are a full human. In The Mall, you can be whichever archetype you fit into (and we all fit into one). You could be the skater, the goth, the preppy, or the exhausted mom, existing in a balanced ecosystem of other archetypes. The Mall is a shared space, creating a social friction that digital platforms, try as they might, cannot fully replicate.

Although malls were commercial, they were socially structuring. They helped teenagers form identities through constrained environments, rather than being told everyone should dress the same a la modern social media trends and shopping habits (Kim et al. 140). An identity based entirely on consumption runs the same risk of collapsing just as shopping malls have. This is especially prevalent on the online platform TikTok, which has become known for its rapidly produced and then disposed of online micro-trends and aesthetics like “mob wife” style or “Cottagecore.” From roughly 2023 to 2025 alone, TikTok pushed over twenty-five viral nail polish trends. All of these were initially touted as users’ “new identities” and “favourite aesthetics” but were quickly forgotten by the time the next trend arose. Although it is almost satirical to say at this point, TikTok has become known for its rapid creation of these trends that it quickly disposes of. Some are more egregious than others, as some trends even involve pretending to be entirely different ethnicities.

YouTuber, Ashley Aviola, described this trend aptly in her video “The ‘Becoming Chinese’ Trend Is Nonsense,” which detailed the racist TikTok trend of non-Asian people pretending to be Chinese for online clout: “Consumption is not the same as care” (@ashleyaviola). This is a strong example of how online identity is often performative rather than lived. To these TikTok users, they are showing how simple it is to “buy” a culture’s aesthetic without being a part of it or ever even having met someone from that culture. It is, once again, simulacra.

This hyper-acceleration of style trends is another example of late-stage capitalism; by shrinking the lifecycle of a lifestyle trend down to a few weeks, the system ensures that the consumer is trapped in a permanent state of inadequacy, constantly trying to buy the next version of themselves instead of having a stable identity (again, the irony of The Mall being seen as a solution to late-stage capitalism is not lost on me). If meaning is personal and perception creates reality, then a self based entirely on an economic system is very fragile. Without the friction of physical locations that comes with actual community belonging, identity dissolves into a homogenous, bland mass (i.e., the shared aesthetics and even mannerisms of many “Disney Adults”). Identity requires friction so we can experiment with what doesn’t work for us to find out what does. Because, if ultimately all we have is our own self-perception, what does that mean when the self is based entirely around an economic system?

One could argue that as long as we are content with the way we see ourselves, the endless cycle of buying, displaying, and being observed may carry its own meaning, even if it cannot stave off the loneliness built into our culture. But in my heart of hearts, I believe that the end result of years of excessive consumerism is going to be a mass collapse of self – a society of bland drones; towns full of lonely people who don’t even understand that there could be a better way. As cultural critic bell hooks said in her book, Eating the Other, “Fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo” (22). Identity requires constraint and context. Without limits, identity will dissolve. In other words, without gatekeeping, capitalism and consumerism will eventually swallow up all identities into a homogenous mass.

But Wait… There’s Hope!

Systems need mobility to function. In this case, the system of society. Think about it: if everyone had a Ferrari, they wouldn’t be “special.” They would be standard, boring. You need something to strive towards. And as capitalism is the current dominant economy, you need to strive towards things by spending in order for the system to keep functioning. If everyone keeps buying literally everything they want the moment they want it, eventually everyone will have everything they could want and there will be nothing left to buy. Capitalism literally has to consume and commodify everything possible or it will starve. This is why, to save The Mall (and perhaps even capitalism itself), we must deliberately slow down or even consume less. This is why we need to practice Deliberate Scarcity.

Think of Deliberate Scarcity as an offshoot of the “Slow Consumption Movement.” Similar to how the Slow Food movement aimed to encourage more balanced, healthy eating and a way to slow the damage of factory farming by prioritizing local, ethically sourced food, the “Slow Consumption Movement” asks us to be mindful of our purchases in order to slow wanton consumption. Deliberate Scarcity takes that messaging a step further, and proposes that by going out of our way to shop in-person, to once again seek out third places, and to embrace analog technologies, that we can reintroduce friction (minor struggles, if you will) into our lives. Friction that once gave us reasons to talk to strangers. Strangers, that sometimes became community. Friction gave us shared experiences, and stories to tell.

I am not arguing that we should become Luddites. This essay is not anti-tech. I am arguing that we need to be “pro-intent” when it comes to our shopping and consumption habits. By choosing Deliberate Scarcity, we can use consumption itself to demand the “socialist-utopian” vision Gruen originally intended. It is a way of forcing the hand of late-stage capitalism to provide the social infrastructure it has otherwise tried to render obsolete.

Visiting The Mall instead of simply loading the H&M app and having your order shipped to your door is a great first step. Making food at home, or ordering it at a sit-down restaurant (or food court!) also creates more friction and chances for human connection than ordering a contactless DoorDash delivery. Who knows who you could run into at the grocery store, or the stranger that you might converse with while waiting in line at the food court. Other examples of being deliberate and practicing “pro-intent” with our technology include embracing analog or obsolete technology, such as CDs and vinyl records, or film cameras. Film creates many opportunities for human connection as there are more steps involved than simply pointing your phone at something (such as buying the film, truly focusing on the photo you want to take, and the developing process). Shopping for physical music in stores also offers the chance to not only connect with other shoppers but also to have conversations about the music itself.

I recently went into a music store for the first time in ages and was able to have a conversation with an employee who was much younger than myself. They liked the album that I was buying and started talking about the artist’s earlier work. As someone who listened to the band when they first came out practically twenty years ago, I was also able to share my stories from that era. It was a small interaction, but a human interaction. And by sheer happenstance, we both learned about how cyclical trends are, which brings me to my next point.

One thing that gives me hope about our collective future is that trends relating to capitalism are nearly always cyclical. Initially, advertising (and therefore consumerism) was driven by print media, door-to-door salesmen, and multi-level marketing (such as Tupperware parties). Door-to-door sales were popular as people either needed to shop locally in their towns or travel quite a distance to find what they were after.

While advertising in media has always (and will most likely always) existed, door-to-door sales were largely replaced by department stores and shopping malls, which brought “the world” to these formerly isolated towns. Those malls ended up being largely replaced by box stores like Walmart and Best Buy, as they were able to import larger volumes of products and therefore sell them for a lower price. Those big-box stores, which once replaced malls, are now facing similar financial struggles thanks to online stores.

Now that everyone can buy practically anything they want at any hour of the day, and the joy of shopping has started to fade, my hope is that more people begin to migrate back to the few surviving shopping malls and locally run stores. Just as there is an uptick in younger generations embracing analog or intentionally using outdated digital technology, my hope is that this longing for real experiences – even capitalistic ones – will defeat the simulacra-dominated path of consumption we have been on.

Conclusion

To summarize, while the decline of The Mall is representative of shifting shopping habits, it is also connected to a much deeper sense of social malaise and is directly connected to the ever-growing loneliness epidemic. By trading the “productive friction” of the physical world for the convenience of the algorithm making choices for us, we are losing many shared social rituals that once brought us together.

In an ironic twist that cynical Gen-Xers would have scoffed at in the 90s, the solution to saving “The Mall” and halting our modern loneliness problem is one and the same. The solution is a conscious return to the intentional and the physical. By practicing Deliberate Scarcity and forgoing convenience for social interactions, we can reclaim our identities that are being slowly eroded by modern consumption driven society. By slowing down and no longer chasing unlimited options, we can start to once again find community and meaning in the things that are already around us.

Works Cited

@ashleyaviola. “The ‘Becoming Chinese’ Trend Is Nonsense.” YouTube, 25 Feb 2026, youtube.com.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, Harvard UP, 1984.

Brown, Maria-Gemma. “Ghost in The Mall: The Affective and Hauntological Potential of Dead Mall Ruins.” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, vol. 3, no. 1, 2023, pp. 101-20. doi.org/10.22387/CAP2022.70.

Dymecka, Joanna, et al. “Loneliness and Fear of COVID-19 as Predictors of Online Compulsive Buying: The Mediating Role of Stress Coping Strategies.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 2, Jan. 2022, p. 775. PubMed Central, doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020775.

Finlay, Jessica, et al. “Closure of ‘Third Places’? Exploring Potential Consequences for Collective Health and Wellbeing.” Health & Place, vol. 60, 2019, article 102225.

Good, Ashley. “What We Lost When We Left The Mall.” Substack, 27 July 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/what-we-lost-when-we-left-the-mall.

Hartmans, Avery. “The Rise and Fall of the American Shopping Mall.” Business Insider, 6 Jan. 2023, www.businessinsider.com/shopping-mall-rise-fall-timeline-1950s-to-today-2023-1.

hooks, bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Black Looks: Race and Representation, South End Press, 1992, pp. 21–39.

Kim, Youn-Kyung, Eun Young Kim, and Jikyeong Kang. “Teens’ Mall Shopping Motivations: Functions of Loneliness and Media Usage.” Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, 2003, pp. 140–67.

Liu, Yang, et al. “Consumer Loneliness: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 71, Mar. 2023, p. 103218.

Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. 2nd ed., Marlowe & Company, 1999.

Pettersen, Gry Rustad, et al. “‘This Is the Best Place!’ A Qualitative Study of Shopping Centres as Third Places.” Cities, vol. 169, Feb. 2026, article 106563.

Silva, Patrícia, et al. “The Contribution of the Internet to Reducing Social Isolation in Individuals Aged 50 Years and Older: Quantitative Study of Data From the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 24, no. 1, 3 Jan. 2022, p. e20466.

Statistics Canada. “Retail E-commerce and COVID-19: How Online Shopping Opened Recently as Physical Stores Closed.” The Daily, 24 July 2020, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2020001/article/00064-eng.htm.

United States, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General. Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. 2023, www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf.

Wang, Jiawei. “The Relationship between Loneliness and Consumer Shopping Channel Choice: Evidence from China.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, vol. 69, 2022, article 103101.

Further Reading

Aboutalebi, Sahba. Shopping Mall as Third Place for Senior Citizens: A Case History of the Place Versailles Mall in Montréal. Urban Design and Housing Research Report, Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University, 2018.

Black, Kate. “For Generations of Teens, Malls Meant Freedom. But as They Decline, Are They Really Worth Mourning?” The Globe and Mail, 1 Mar. 2024, www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-for-generations-of-teens-malls-meant-freedom-but-as-they-decline-are/.

Crawford, Margaret. “The World in a Shopping Mall.” Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, edited by Michael Sorkin, Hill and Wang, 1992, pp. 3-30.

Davis, Lizhu, and Sean Seepersad. Effects of Social Interaction and Loneliness on Teenagers’ Mall Shopping Experiences: An Exploratory Study. California State University, Fresno, n.d.

Good, Ashley. “Bring Back Novelty.” Substack, 27 Oct. 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/bring-back-novelty.

Good, Ashley. “Let’s Treat the Internet Like Eggnog.” Substack, 1 Aug. 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/lets-treat-the-internet-like-eggnog.

Looking for Life Amidst the Dead Internet – The Philosophy of vaporwave

Edit made on 16 February 2026: An expanded version of this paper has been published in the academic journal, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge.

Author’s Introduction:

While vaporwave (deliberately stylized with a lowercase v) is best known as an aesthetic built around glitch art and remixed Lo-fi 80s and 90s inspired music, I would like to propose that vaporwave is actually a living breathing school of thought. This new school of thought is centred around the collective mourning of the once bright future society was seemingly striving towards in the 1990s with the emergence of the internet. Vaporwave as a philosophical lens takes the toxic nihilism of post modernism and twists “nothing matters because meaning is inherent to the individual” into “EVERYTHING matters because meaning is inherent to the individual.” Vaporwave may be inherently melancholic, but it is also full of hope.

Those of us who grew up or came of age in the 1990s were promised a bright future with universal connectivity through the World Wide Web. Vaporwave acknowledges and puts a name to the ineffable heartache and longing that many Gen Xers and Millennials feel, even if they struggle to articulate it.

Since this topic is quite niche, I should explain who I am writing this for and why: It is for people who remember how the internet used to be, and for those who were too young or didn’t exist yet, but want a more hopeful future. I was inspired to write this piece after reading nearly every piece I could find on vaporwave, as well as art history, theological, and spiritual texts. When I decided that I needed to be the person to write this, it was as if my brain had been running a protein folding program in my subconscious and everything finally clicked (Does anyone else remember Folding@Home by Stanford?).

I also want to add that this was written from a western perspective. That being said, I personally would be really interested in reading an examination of this proposed theory of vaporwave from an Eastern perspective, and someone should totally write that.

In a world with amnesia, vaporwave's collective memory and nostalgia is a form of rebellion. Like vapor, the movement itself is subtle; it holds a mirror (rather, a scrying mirror) to society as a way to say "look inside yourselves and remember what you once believed your future was going to hold."

Vaporwave is our way of pushing back against the status quo by reminding everyone of the future we were collectively promised. Although exhausted and increasingly apathetic, those of us in the vaporwave sphere piss people off with our unfaltering memories of how things were and our desire to still make it happen. Just as Dadaism was created as a reaction to the horrors of the First World War and a rebuttal to the Enlightenment movement, vaporwave is a deliberate retaliation against the sterile banality of late-stage capitalism and algorithmic groupthink. Vaporwave is inherently pro-capitalist—but it knows that the system we exist under now is not capitalism. If the Internet is dead, and late-stage capitalism killed it, then vaporwave is its zombified corpse hopelessly wondering around and looking for a cure. - Ashley Good, 1 September 2025

Abstract

This paper explores vaporwave not merely as a musical or visual aesthetic, but as a school of thought that reflects on late-stage capitalism, digital saturation, and the erosion of authentic human experience. Deliberately stylized with a lowercase “v,” vaporwave channels collective nostalgia for the once-promised optimism of the 1990s internet era, transforming existential malaise into a form of hopeful critique. Drawing connections between early 2000s post-9/11 New York party culture, nerdcore music, blogging, and archival efforts such as The Internet Archive, this study situates vaporwave as a decentralized school of thought emerging from digital spaces rather than physical salons.

Through analysis of its aesthetics, such as glitch art, corporate iconography, and ambient soundscapes, this essay demonstrates how vaporwave repurposes the artifacts of consumer culture to critique commodification, algorithmic control, and the loss of communal experience. Mainstream media examples, including Lost in Translation (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Mr. Robot (2015–2019), illustrate how its philosophical framework resonates beyond niche online communities.

Ultimately, vaporwave functions as a collective act of memory and resistance, reclaiming the cultural promises of a lost digital utopia while simultaneously resisting commodification and satire. By articulating the movement’s philosophical tenets, which include critiques of capitalism, the use of nostalgia to resist algorithmic control, collective longing, and digital engagement, this paper positions vaporwave as a unique, emergent lens for understanding contemporary society’s relationship with memory, technology, and culture.

Keywords

capitalism, commodification, consumerism, dead internet theory, internet, late-stage capitalism, nerdcore, nostalgia, post-9/11 NYC party scene, vaporwave

Introduction

Vaporwave is more than just 90s nostalgia and glitchy music. While often described as merely an internet aesthetic (Harper, 2012; Morrissey, 2021), I argue that it is in fact a school of thought that critiques late-stage capitalism and the digital saturation of modern Western society, using nostalgia, digital decay, and repurposed aesthetics to reflect on lost futures and the erosion of authentic human experience. When this paper uses the term “school of thought,” it is referring to a coherent set of philosophical principles that shape how vaporwave artists and audiences engage with society by critically examining nostalgia, digital culture, and late-stage capitalism. This essay builds on prior research in nostalgia studies (Boym, 2001; Ballam-Cross, 2021), cultural memory, and digital aesthetics, including glitch and post-digital media (Grau, 2011; Morrissey, 2021).

The philosophy of vaporwave emerged from a subsect of society’s collective longing for a future that never arrived – typically Millennials and Gen Xers – embodying the loneliness and disappointment behind our collective “what if.” Those of us who grew up before the internet became ubiquitous remember the worldwide connectivity it was supposed to bring (it was, after all, called the “World Wide Web”). Instead of uniting us as a global family and expanding everyone’s worldview through unlimited knowledge, we ended up with algorithms that silo us according to our preferred flavor of propaganda. Vaporwave takes that collective malaise and, through music, glitch art, and “vibes,” asks us to reconsider memory, desire, and the meaning of culture in an overly curated world.

In a world with amnesia, vaporwave's collective memory and nostalgia is a form of rebellion (Grafton, 2016). Like vapor, the movement itself is subtle; it holds a mirror (rather, a scrying mirror) to society as a way to say "look inside yourselves and remember what you once believed your future was going to hold."

Vaporwave is our way of pushing back against the status quo by reminding everyone of the future we were collectively promised. To clarify, by “our,” I refer to the community of vaporwave creators and theorists who consciously explore and repurpose digital and cultural artifacts to critique consumer culture. As this essay is the first to argue that vaporwave is a school of thought, members of this “community” may not yet realise they are a part of it. However, I propose that key figures include musician James Ferraro and digital artist Sarah Zucker, whose work exemplifies both the sonic and visual dimensions of vaporwave, as well as theorists such as Paul Ballam-Cross, who analyses the genre’s engagement with nostalgia and collective memory, and Tanner Grafton, whose work discusses vaporwave’s relationship with capitalism and the commodification of nostalgia (Ballam-Cross, 2021; Grafton, 2016).

Vaporwave is not inherently critical of capitalism; it is critical of what capitalism has become – late-stage capitalism (Nowak & Whelan, 2018). Just as Dadaism was created as a reaction to the horrors of the First World War and a rebuttal to the Enlightenment movement, I propose that vaporwave is a deliberate retaliation against the sterile banality of late-stage capitalism and algorithmic groupthink. If the Internet is dead, and late-stage capitalism killed it, then vaporwave is its zombified corpse hopelessly wandering around and looking for a cure.

Origin Story – From Post 9/11 Party Kids to Prophetic Archivists

This analysis proposes that the seeds of the vaporwave movement were planted in the post-9/11, early-2000s New York party scene, when young celebrities made partying and rehab visits part of their public personas. While the milieu and aesthetics of that party culture and vaporwave are markedly different, both involve deliberate consumption as a form of ironic rebellion against the status quo. The early 2000s New York party scene was the last large-scale attempt to collectively claw back the sense of fun and optimism from the 90s that society was (rightfully) worried we lost after 9/11. The scene was so heavily publicized that even teenagers growing up in small, backwoods Canadian towns could participate in it by emulating the styles of their favorite celebrities, following along through the mass consumption of fast fashion, gossip blogs, and decorating their Myspace pages accordingly.

The emerging technologies available to these “party kids” were a major reason their scene achieved such popularity and cultural reach. Although much of the documentation of this era came from paparazzi and entertainment media exploiting the antics of young celebrities, certain figures embraced their notoriety and leaned into the rumors surrounding them. Paris Hilton, for instance, was well aware of her reputation as a party girl. She took that reputation and, when the stolen sex tape 1 Night in Paris was released, distributed by Red Light District Video, she transformed the scandal into an opportunity to amplify her media persona (Salomon & Hilton, 2004). I propose that this commodification of selfhood that defined this scene directly informed vaporwave’s later fascination with consumer imagery and artificiality.

Hilton’s early-2000s rise exemplifies the logic of postmodern celebrity, in which irony, spectacle, and self-commodification merge within an increasingly participatory media environment. Prior to the 2003 leak of 1 Night in Paris (Salomon & Hilton, 2004), Hilton was viewed as an ephemeral socialite whose notoriety stemmed primarily from her proximity to elite nightlife scenes. The leak, which was disseminated across early file-sharing sites and emerging video platforms, ironically provided the infrastructure for her transformation into a global persona. With the rise of YouTube and the viral spread of easily shareable, pirate-able media, Hilton and other “scene” figures of the mid-2000s could shape their public image by using the networks that once objectified them. Rather than retreating from scandal, Hilton mobilized it, launching The Simple Life (Hilton & Richie, 2003–2007) and crafting a self-consciously artificial identity that parodied and perpetuated her tabloid image.

In this way, Hilton embodied the “hyperreal” celebrity that Baudrillard (1994) describes – famous for being famous, a copy without an original. This dynamic parallels the aesthetic logic of vaporwave, which Glitsos (2018) argues repurposes corporate Muzak and nostalgic sonic detritus to expose the empty promises of late-stage capitalist consumerism. Both Hilton’s self-branding and vaporwave’s retro-ironic soundscapes transform shallow commercial artifacts into vehicles of self-aware cultural critique, revealing a media landscape where authenticity and simulation collapse into the same loop of endless reproduction.

Ultimately, however, the party kids grew up, and the scene fizzled during – or perhaps because of – the 2008 economic crash. Global surveillance continued to increase, the war in the Middle East dragged on, and people lost hope. In short, the vibe shifted, and nothing fun emerged to take its place. Cue the subtle rise of vaporwave’s early days, as it began to appear as an aesthetic in online forums and on social media.

Additionally, we should also credit the early days of the nerdcore scene for vaporwave’s embrace of DIY creation and the repurposing of corporate materials. Some background: Nerdcore (sometimes referred to as Chiptune) is a niche genre of hip-hop that focuses on nerdy and internet-centric themes. Some of its most prominent artists include MC Frontalot, mc chris, and MC Lars. Nerdcore was the first genre since punk to take commercial trends and turn them on their head, though it did so with ironic humor and often in celebration of the material it remixed, rather than with the critical stance of vaporwave or punk. Nerdcore was more “we love Disney”-vibes versus vaporwave’s “Disney is a cancer on society”-vibes.

While they did not recognize it at the time, the same participatory online culture that fueled nerdcore and scene subcultures also laid the groundwork for vaporwave’s philosophical turn. Angsty bloggers on LiveJournal, Tumblr poets, meme creators, and those that decided to start archiving the internet (i.e., The Internet Archive and Floppy Totaal) were some of the first people to (unknowingly) start participating in vaporwave as a school of thought. As the optimism of the early internet era began to wane, these communities shifted from playful self-expression to a more introspective tone. Their collective malaise and foreboding sense of something being wrong “let’s save/document this just in case” would be the first hints that our society was/is heading in a dark direction and not towards the bright unified future that was promised to us in the early days of the internet. Despite facing mockery at the time, I would like to argue that some of those “sad emo kids” (now well into adulthood) were vaporwave's first philosophers.

Although vaporwave has existed as an artistic and musical genre since the 2010s, one reason it has not yet been considered a school of thought is likely the lack of physical unification among its followers. Unlike the great philosophical and art movements of the past – such as the Russian Futurists and their salons, or Critical Theory at the University of Frankfurt am Main – vaporwave has no “third place” hangouts. Its participants connect online, lurking in now decaying forums and bot-infested social media platforms, hoping to cross digital paths with another human like themselves, if only to feel less alone. The Dead Internet Theory is very real.

For context, the Dead Internet Theory is that theory that the majority of internet traffic is made of bots and rehashed AI content. While the internet was once a place full of unique and seemingly unlimited websites to discover, the Dead Internet Theory also proposes that users are now cut off and unable to discover the majority of new "content" because of firewalls and algorithmic siloing. As an example, think back to the search results that Google would provide in the 2010s. The results would be in the thousands, if not millions. Now, when you search for something, there will be very few results past the first two or so pages. And what does show up, is often an ad for a product or regurgitated AI content pulled from sites that rely on news aggregators.

Aesthetically, vaporwave often includes low-resolution graphics, pastel color palettes, 3D-rendered corporate logos, Greek and Roman statues, 90s mall imagery, and glitch effects. Its entire visual style is built on a sense of irony, nostalgia, and digital decay. As described by Beauchamp (2016) in Esquire:

Visual jokes, of course—little tiny ghosts of the failed promises of consumerism (were we ever really going to find true happiness in a bottle of iced tea?), its cheapness and vulgarity—that point us towards where the name vaporwave itself comes from. Like the music, the name is a hybrid. It's a combination of the term 'vaporware,' a corporate advertising term for products that are advertised for release but are never actually intended to make it to market.

In order to make my point that vaporwave is truly a school of thought hidden amongst a collection of ironic musicians, internet-based artists and philosophical bloggers, let's compare two glitch artists, Kurtis Peskleway (@ethereal_zephyr) and Sarah Zucker (@thesarahshow). Kurtis and Sarah both use different mediums to create their art, yet both explore themes which are essential to vaporwave such as nostalgia and digital decay. Kurtis leans into fractal-esque graphics created by using a series of editing programs to continually modify a previously created picture until it glitches into something new and unrecognizable from its original form. On the other hand, Sarah uses both analog and digital techniques to create GIFs, video installations, and augmented reality filters. Her work often features distorted faces, VHS effects, and classical references, but with a more personal and interactive edge. To compare the two, Kurtis' art is meant to be enjoyed at an individual level, as compared to Sarah Zucker's art, which is more audience dependent. To put it more simply, one style is like a Netflix show you watch intensely with headphones on, while the other is like a comforting sitcom that you watch with loved ones to laugh at together.

Together, Kurtis Peskleway and Sarah Zucker reveal the multifaceted nature of vaporwave. Kurtis channels a quiet, dreamlike reflection on digital obsolescence and the ephemeral nature of memory, while Sarah emphasises interactive, identity-driven experiences that engage audiences directly. Both of their work highlights the introspective and participatory dimensions of the vaporwave movement, capturing vaporwave’s critique of consumerism, its fascination with digital nostalgia, and its capacity to explore the emotional and philosophical currents of our increasingly mediated lives.

Mainstream culture occasionally tries to adopt vaporwave vibes, but it never quite sticks. Vaporwave isn’t inherently anti-capitalist; in fact, it often evokes nostalgia for the communal consumerism of malls and food courts. Yet, in an almost perfectly ironic twist, it may be the only movement that has resisted full commercialization, simply because it’s built from stolen corporate sounds and repurposed commercial aesthetics. As the aesthetic trends of vaporwave have begun to fade from the mainstream, its philosophical dimension has started to crystallize. What remains is a deliberate reflection on the emptiness of consumer culture, the erosion of authentic experience, and the alienation embedded in a digitized world. It’s as if vaporwave practitioners are thinking: “Capitalism isn’t looking! Quick! Let’s create a philosophy before they steal this from us too!” The music, visuals, and glitches that on the surface feel like playful nostalgia actually serve as vehicles for a critique of algorithmic control, digital saturation, and the loss of futures we were promised but never received. In this way, vaporwave has evolved from a fleeting aesthetic into a cohesive, if loosely organized, school of thought.

Why it Resists Commodification

The strength of vaporwave’s aesthetics is that it can never be fully commodified, because most of it uses stolen or remixed corporate content. Remixing corporate content constitutes a form of resistance insofar as it challenges conventional authorship, ownership, and commercial absorption. Because parody, irony, and critique are already embedded in the genre, vaporwave may also resist straightforward satire; attempts to mock it often reproduce the very processes it already employs. Like U.S. Justice Potter Stewart once said of pornography, vaporwave is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Resistant to simple categorization, vaporwave functions almost entirely as a mirror – its reflection calling out, "Look at yourself. Look at how you used to be. How did you get here? Don’t you wish you could go back?"

This quality makes vaporwave strange to write about. Beauchamp (2016) observes:

How do you write about music that most people have never heard of and that fans claim doesn’t exist any more? Or just as important: why? I think the continued relevance of the genre is explained in the history of vaporwave itself. Vaporwave arose in reaction to huge economic and social forces that are still very much a part of our lives: globalization, runaway consumerism, and manufactured nostalgia chief among them. There is no other kind of music that explicitly concerns itself with these aspects of our zeitgeist. And if vaporwave still matters, it’s because those things do also.

Another reason vaporwave is difficult to commodify is the anonymity of many of its artists. Tanner (2016) argues that “vaporwave's ultimate defacement of the culture industry is the lack of transparency between artist moniker and producer.” Coleman (2025) similarly notes that:

This lack of information is rather telling, as it explains a lot about the movement’s core aesthetic values. It is precisely because of vaporwave’s exclusively virtual emergence and existence that researchers simultaneously face an abundance and a drought of information. Indeed, the excess of data provided by the internet can easily drown out important details: a quick Google search of the term ‘vaporwave’ yields around 28,400,000 results.

In fact, it is common for vaporwave musicians to share their work under multiple names. Tanner (2016) continues:

This sort of prolific anonymity allows a burgeoning community to appear much more expansive than it is and to also cement the specific traits of a genre early in its development ... What makes vaporwave unique as a new method of Internet-produced punk is its relationship to the sights and sounds of unrestrained capitalism. Vaporwave spits in the face of late-stage capitalism and mocks the very methods used to sell us the things we don't need, all while problematizing our understanding of history.

Vaporwave persists not because of its sound and aesthetics, but because of our complicated relationship with consumer culture. Comprised of imagery of shopping malls, think pieces about the ironic collective emptiness of modern society, and songs composed of stolen commercial jingles and the ghostly ambience of 90s food courts and department store noises, vaporwave is both a critique of capitalism and a longing for the communal spaces it created. That is why it is so much more than a disposable aesthetic fad; vaporwave won't sell out, because it cannot be fully commodified. It will continue to linger in the ether of our slowly decaying Dead Internet until the next global calamity happens and we end up in caves.

What is the Philosophy of vaporwave?

Vaporwave asks the fundamental question: what happened to the future we were promised, and where did things go awry? Scholars and cultural critics have suggested that Western society experienced a decline in optimism in the early 2000s, shaped by social, technological, and economic forces (Coleman, 2025; Beauchamp, 2016). I would suggest, more pointedly though, that the decline in optimism was not caused by general economic issues but the stifling and pervasive surveillance which began to appear following the 9/11 attacks and the US’s introduction of the Patriot Act, which sent authoritarian ripples throughout the rest of the Western world. While the difference in the pre and post-9/11 world is difficult to describe to someone who has grown up in a world where constant surveillance is normal, vaporwave music can capture that collective longing that elder Millennials and Gen Xers feel.

While it is nearly impossible to describe in words how the world felt prior to the post-9/11 surveillance world we now live in, vaporwave music somehow manages to capture that through its haunting use of ambient noises and echoes. As musician and vaporwave pioneer James Ferraro explained about his album's use of ringtones (Ferraro, 2011):

One person might consider it more artful and someone [else] is just going to be into the music aspect of it. ... I think the comforting sound comes from the fact that there is this sort of comfort or hope or something embedded in all these ring tones. It’s total sonic psychological behavior control. You get a text and the tone is very happy and optimistic. The infrastructure of that stuff is promoting this utopia—promising this world of hope.

In earlier reflections on consumer culture, I argued that shopping malls functioned not merely as sites of commerce but as social and cultural spaces in which middle-class North Americans could participate actively in capitalism rather than being passive consumers (Good, 2025). Vaporwave extends this critique by repurposing the sounds and imagery of malls, department stores, and corporate environments, transforming them into artifacts of cultural reflection.

The philosophical dimensions of vaporwave are interwoven yet distinct. At its core, the movement critiques late-stage capitalism, reflecting on the emptiness, commodification, and hollow promises of consumer culture – ambient sounds and repurposed corporate imagery underscore these contradictions. Nostalgia functions as a lens to challenge algorithmic control, revealing how digital technologies silo, manipulate, and mediate human experience rather than foster meaningful connections. The philosophy of vaporwave embodies collective longing and generational ennui, particularly among Millennials and Gen Xers whose imagined or promised futures never materialized, externalizing a shared “what if” that interrogates unrealised societal trajectories. And despite the absence of formal physical spaces, participants engage in philosophical critique via digital environments, forming a decentralized, emergent “school of thought” rather than a conventional movement.

If one looks for mainstream media that may not be explicitly labeled as vaporwave but align with the philosophical framework outlined here, the films Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), as well as the television series Mr. Robot (Esmail, 2015–2019), exemplify the vaporwave ethos. Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) conveys existential loneliness and urban alienation while subtly critiquing capitalism through the experiences of Bill Murray’s character, an American actor hired to appear in a Japanese whiskey commercial. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004) explores memory erasure as a metaphor for the ways technology shapes human experience and incorporates themes of nostalgia and fleeting hope during moments of melancholy. Similarly, Esmail’s Mr. Robot (2015–2019) presents a direct critique of capitalism and corporate overreach across its narrative arc, following a hacker group’s attempt to subvert a monolithic corporation known as “E Corp,” perceived by the protagonist Elliot as “Evil Corp.” The series’ perspective told primarily through Elliot – who experiences dissociative identity disorder – frequently blurs the boundaries between digital and physical realities as well as between actual memories and the lingering influence of the past. While these texts have not been widely categorized as vaporwave, their thematic and aesthetic qualities resonate with the movement’s ethos, representing my interpretive contribution.

To boil it down, vaporwave’s ethos is… We have been lied to, and we're sad as hell. Even as many of the artifacts of our pre-9/11 society were corporate creations, vaporwave has repurposed them to reflect on societal loss, unfulfilled promises, and the continuing negotiation between humans and the technological, algorithmically mediated world. By appropriating and reconfiguring these corporate iconographies (even if it involves breaking copyright laws), vaporwave practitioners articulate a philosophical stance: despite the failures of late capitalism, the futures we were promised are not entirely beyond reach.

Why vaporwave Matters - Reclaiming Our Collective Memory

Why vaporwave matters becomes painfully evident when we consider contemporary cultural conditions: loneliness has become widespread, the Internet is increasingly algorithmically mediated, censorship is pervasive, copyright laws tend to favor corporations over creators, and a general sense of hopelessness affects large segments of the population. Vaporwave’s collective nostalgia offers a way to remember a time that felt better – not perfect, but imbued with hope. At minimum, many would agree that the 1990s carried a sense of optimism, even if partially rooted in naivety.

I would like to argue that there are two primary forms of nostalgia: the first is the “comforting” corporate kind, which sells us back our cultural artifacts in a manner designed to keep the general population happily distracted consumers; the second is a form of nostalgia that acts as an angry reminder of what we had and ignites a sense of urgency to right our collective course and reclaim the future we were promised – the kind embodied in vaporwave. While Boym (2001) does not directly discuss vaporwave, she extensively explores the appeals and dangers of nostalgia in The Future of Nostalgia. According to Boym, “Nostalgia operated by an ‘associationist magic,’ by means of which all aspects of everyday life related to one single obsession. In this respect nostalgia was akin to paranoia, only instead of a persecution mania, the nostalgic was possessed by a mania of longing” (p. 12).

While nostalgia in music and art is not a novel concept, the manner in which it functions in vaporwave differs from most other revivals. Vaporwave (and its sub-genres) employ imagery and themes that evoke comforting nostalgic feelings or memories, serving as a form of collective imaginative self-soothing. This approach generates a nostalgia for times and places that may have only existed in the listener's imagination. As Ballam-Cross (2021) articulates, "the re-interpretation of cultural memory is an important structural feature" in vaporwave, highlighting their role in reshaping collective memory through aesthetic means.

Harper (2012) observed that capitalism's pervasive nature has made defending authenticity challenging, noting, "Perhaps since capitalism is so omnivorous with its co-optings and appropriations that defending the authentic no longer feels possible (Facebook bought Instagram, after all), accelerationist pop is lo-fi and avant-garde going on the offensive." This insight underscores the tension between genuine cultural expression and its commodification within capitalist structures.

While corporations have largely succeeded in capitalizing on our collective nostalgia in order to sell us back repackaged versions of our childhoods, and tech giants know that they can mine loneliness for social media engagement, vaporwave reminds us that the nostalgia we are being sold is in fact fake. The “danger” of simulacra (the replacement of reality with representations) is central to vaporwave’s critique; by repurposing these same cultural artifacts in a self-aware, ironic, and often haunting way, vaporwave reveals the artificiality of the nostalgia being sold to us. It points out: “This isn’t your childhood. It’s a commodified copy of your memory." In this sense, vaporwave's nostalgia becomes a form of resistance, allowing us to collectively grieve and accept our current reality as the only path forward. Through vaporwave, we can acknowledge that our shared memories aren't merely illusions but are reinterpreted through cultural memory, as emphasized by Ballam-Cross (2021).

Reflecting on the evolution of cultural spaces, I noted in my 2025 article, What We Lost When We Left the Mall, that shopping malls and main streets now primarily exist as aesthetic backdrops in people’s lives instead of sites of cultural significance, and social interaction increasingly occurs online (Good, 2025). Vaporwave reminds us that even as our cultural spaces and memories are repurposed, we can reclaim meaning and maintain a critical awareness of what is real, what is commodified, and what belongs to us collectively. By engaging with vaporwave, we participate in a dialogue about authenticity, memory, and the impact of commercialization on our cultural experiences.

What vaporwave is Not

I have read an extensive number of papers on vaporwave; two of these pieces, however, have struck me as particularly sensationalist. The first such example, by March (2022) argued that vaporwave is inherently racist because it embraces “techno-orientalism,” citing its frequent use of Japanese graphics popularized in the 1990s. However, I would propose that the use of Japanese aesthetics prominent in vaporwave is done in loving tribute, rather than any form of cultural appropriation or fetishization. As Ballam-Cross (2021) notes, Chicago-based DJ Van Paugam argues that the primary appeal of 1990s Japanese aesthetics for Western listeners lies in nostalgia:

We’ve saturated and commercialized our 70s and 80s so much that younger generations can’t even form a cohesive impression of what those times were actually like…‘city pop’ (a Japanese musical genre) has just enough Western influence to sound like untouched, untainted versions of what we once had, but without being hyper-commercialized (p. 75).

In an interview with Japan Fans – a website for fans of Japanese arts and culture – Van Paugam further explains that his love of city pop is connected to his longing for childhood and his love of anime (Paugam, 2022).

The second article suggested that the genre has been, or is in the process of being, co-opted by the alt-right, pointing to a Trump-themed subgenre called “Trumpwave” or “Fashwave” (Bullock & Kerry, 2017). My argument is that a genre is not responsible for who uses it. For example, punk music has been embraced by both anti-establishment anarchists and far-right extremists, yet the genre itself does not inherently advocate either ideology. Having immersed myself deeply in vaporwave, these are the only instances I have encountered that claim the genre is racist or embraces fascism.

The previously discussed anonymous nature of most vaporwave musicians makes it impossible to gauge how widely any niche subgenre is actually listened to. The entirety of that so-called “Trumpwave” genre could very well be the work of a single individual. This sort of “controversy for the sake of it” proto-rage-bait is all too common. For instance, the viral trend from Japan about a decade ago, where people supposedly created donuts on their foreheads with silicone injections, was almost certainly the act of one or two individuals, amplified by clickbait journalism. Similarly, the infamous story of college women getting drunk by soaking tampons in vodka likely involved only a few participants, yet was portrayed as a larger movement. In both cases, what appeared to be a trend was probably an anomaly magnified by media hunger for shock value, similar to the two critiques of vaporwave discussed above.

Morrissey (2021), in his study Metamodernism and Vaporwave: A Study of Web 2.0 Aesthetic Culture, argues that vaporwave aesthetics contribute to the new cultural philosophy known as metamodernism – a term coined in 1975 referring to cultural discourse emerging after postmodernism. To his credit, nerdcore rapper MC Lars also touched on this idea in his 2006 song Space Game: “I’ve been post-post modern since junior high!” As Morrissey explains:

Metamodernism does not actually mark a departure from postmodernism; as its name suggests, metamodernism encapsulates the idea that cultural producers are returning to a modernist sense of sincerity and enthusiasm while remaining far enough outside of said attitude to be wary of its flaws (p. 14).

I do not disagree with the idea that vaporwave contributes to metamodernism, but as outlined in this essay, there is sufficient evidence to assert that vaporwave constitutes its own philosophical framework, distinct from postmodernism, metamodernism, or any other modernist paradigm.

Conclusion

This essay has argued that vaporwave is no longer merely an internet aesthetic, as some scholars and cultural commentators have suggested (e.g., Harper, 2012; Morrissey, 2021), but constitutes a school of thought centered around collective anxieties about late-stage capitalism, algorithmic control, and the erosion of authentic experience. By examining its origins in the post-9/11 party-kid scene, its reliance on repurposing corporate materials, and its unique resistance to commodification, I have demonstrated that vaporwave represents more than a passing fad. It critiques the simulacra of consumer culture while using nostalgia to reclaim and recreate the optimism for the future that many grew up with, which was curtailed before it could fully materialize. In defining vaporwave as a “school of thought,” I refer to its function as a set of shared philosophical concerns and aesthetic practices, engaged in and reinforced through digital communities, rather than a formalized academic or institutional movement (Ballam-Cross, 2021; Morrissey, 2021).

Several questions arise from this analysis: Will the vaporwave movement endure? Can something fundamentally rooted in decay be preserved, and should it be? I suggest that vaporwave’s “success” will be realised when it is no longer necessary, because we have collectively found happiness.

Vaporwave emerged, seemingly by accident, as a rebuttal to the economic and social forces that continue to shape our world. As long as our lives are being dictated by rampant consumerism and corporations continue to sell our collective nostalgia back to the masses, there will be a place for vaporwave as both an aesthetic and a school of thought. In the meantime, archiving "outdated" media and continuing to create remain important; you never know if you or your work will become a part of something much larger, like a new philosophical movement.

In closing, I want to give a shout out to all the now-grown-up party kids, emo poets, and nerdcore rappers. You were just having fun and expressing yourselves, yet by living the vaporwave ethos – reclaiming meaning from our commodified culture – you shaped the cultural zeitgeist far more than any manufactured performer ever could.

References

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Bullock, P., & Kerry, E. (2017, January 30). Trumpwave and Fashwave are just the latest disturbing examples of the far-right appropriating electronic music. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/trumpwave-fashwave-far-right-appropriation-vaporwave-synthwave/

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For My Old Haus of Fog Subscribers

I'm alive and trucking along!

Jul 14, 2025

Hello —

It’s been a minute! Or, more accurately, roughly 438,000 minutes. Yes, I asked ChatGPT how many minutes are in ten months. These days, that’s about the extent to which I’m comfortable using ChatGPT. The novelty has worn off, as I’m sure it has for many of you; I’ve relegated ChatGPT back to its deserved role as a glorified search engine rather than a creative assistant. With every update, its capabilities have decreased. Its editing “assistance” has gotten worse (even more so than when it completely revised the ending of one of my stories when all I’d asked for was a light copy-edit).

Just as the internet used to empower complete unknowns, only to become a massive online shopping mall, the technology behind predictive-text engines like ChatGPT has been dumbed down for the masses. Alongside yet another useful tool being stripped from us (while ironically, said tool is taking over many humans jobs), the whole Epstein “debacle” has shown how deeply corrupt many Western governments are. I’d be happy to discuss my views in person, but won't rant here. (As I’ve consistently said my entire adult life, I’m on Team Human. Everyone’s views are shaped by upbringing and experience, and none of us will ever agree on every issue. But anyone who wishes to subjugate others can fuck right off.)

All of that is my extremely long-winded way of saying that I haven’t been feeling particularly motivated to create content for the public. Why create a YouTube video or write an article when algorithms seemingly only promote cheap AI content or individuals who push approved narratives? But the truth is, I miss it. I miss it deeply. I miss writing for those of you that enjoy reading my work.

While Haus of Fog died a slow death thanks to burnout (which I’m gradually recovering from) and some frustrating autoimmune issues I have never discussed publicly, I have decided to launch a Substack to share articles and the occasional video. It will be free as I have no illusions about ever making profit through my art, which is also why I have been working extensively in my limited free time to start a business which I hope to work on more once my son starts school. (Don’t worry, it’s not an MLM and you’ll probably never hear me discuss it publicly.)

If you’re interested in consumerism, technology, and semi-woo-woo spirituality, please subscribe to Musings of an Indie D-Lister here:

Musings of an Indie D-Lister

A collection of short stories and navel gazing articles. I'll try to be entertaining while being perhaps a bit too honest. Topics include consumerism, technology, and semi-woo woo spirituality. No AI BS.

By Ashley

I am no longer going to push myself to write/create just for the sake of it. Everything shared on Substack will be something that I really want to discuss and which I hope will resonate with you as well. With no AI-bs.

Sincerely,

Ashley Good

Is Groupthink Causing Society to Split in Two?

Originally published on Medium.com.

My intention with this article is to explore the existential struggles of being a centrist creative in a world increasingly dominated by groupthink, examining the potential consequences of a society that divides itself into two distinct factions: those who prioritize truth and authentic connections versus those who are swept up in consumerism and superficiality

Is anyone else struggling to create these days? Not because of writer’s block, but because of something deeper, something more existential? It feels as if the act of creating, especially for a broader audience, has somehow lost its meaning. Every day, more of the world feels like it’s spiraling out of control, and each headline screams that we’re barreling toward world war. On top of that, all the revelations about Hollywood have proven the so-called “conspiracy theorists” right — it’s actually a cesspool of corruption. With more people pulled into these traps of “groupthink,” I’ve had to step away from my passion for indie film.

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For clarity’s sake, let’s define a few words:

Groupthink: a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a group of individuals prioritizes consensus and conformity over critical thinking and independent decision-making.

Commodify: to transform an object, service, idea, or even a cultural practice into a commodity that can be bought or sold.

Producer: someone/something that creates something that can be sold to or used by others, ideally fostering authentic connections and community rather than merely contributing to a cycle of consumption.

Consumer: someone that purchases goods or services for personal use, often seeking validation or identity through material possessions rather than through meaningful relationships.

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Over this past year, I have found myself creatively burnt out. I wouldn’t say I am experiencing writer’s block, but a profound feeling that, at this moment in time, the world doesn’t need me to produce fiction. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but hopefully, a few of you understand the feeling I am trying to describe. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the concept of groupthink, particularly influenced by what I witnessed unraveling within my old indie film community.

(For those of you who haven’t read my pieces before, the groupthink in indie film that I am refering to is how I frequently witness project funding going to projects that push certain world views, thus encouraging other filmmakers to only produce films that push those very same world views, therefore encouraging an endless production chain of nearly identical films. This results in very few people producing anything remotely artistic — just low budget regurgitation of similar previously exposed opinions.)

In an effort to ignite a different part of my brain, I have found myself reading a lot about various religions and spirituality. These explorations often lead me back to the idea of groupthink and how it influences our choices — whether we lean towards nurturing family connections or getting lost in the consumerist mindset that prioritizes profit over people. Is it human nature? It feels parasitic. Through my random spiritual readings, I have learned how every major religion has formed by absorbing and suppressing smaller ones, just as capitalism commodifies every new subculture that dares to emerge. I keep wondering if groupthink is an inevitable part of the human condition or something we are, for lack of a better term, being propagandized to experience.

As someone who has upset more than a few people with her painfully centrist worldviews, I want to play devil’s advocate and suggest that you could argue groupthink serves a purpose — humanity’s way of crowdsourcing the truth and being more efficient. However, when you look at the state of media today, it’s hard to buy that argument.

I personally don’t consume a lot of fiction. I tend to find myself drawn to what I will refer to as “meta-art” — works that are about the creative process itself: films about filmmaking (ex. The Disaster Artist), books about the craft of writing (ex. Stephen King’s novel, “On Writing), songs about songwriting (ex. Marianas Trench’s Pop Music 101). I’m a satirist at heart, and those things tend to speak to me. There’s something pure in watching the act of creation, something honest and real in seeing how creativity expresses itself differently for each person. Maybe that’s why I resonate so deeply with Taoism — this sense of “the way.” (This isn’t a report on spirituality, so I won’t explain Taoism, but think of “the way” as when you are working on something and experience a flow state.)

Creativity, to me, is that way — truth itself. Individual expression and authenticity give life meaning. Yet so much of what makes up our modern society — corporate narratives and ideological agendas — acts to keep us from experiencing our truth. (Yes, I also roll my eyes at the phrases “our truth” or “my truth,” but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it.)

I know I am not alone in this feeling, this search for understanding and this dislike of groupthink. Through the isolation of no longer being a part of my old community of artists, I find myself constantly returning to this idea of a societal split — one side moving toward family, authenticity, real food, and truth, while the other clings to products, mass media, and an illusion of freedom. It feels like two distinct paths are forming. What happens if these paths continue to diverge?

I propose we’re in the midst of a societal split: one side rooted in authenticity and genuine connection, versus another defined by consumerism and superficiality. This split will shape future generations, influencing their identities and how they engage with the world.

So, what’s causing this split? It could be a natural reaction to an increasingly corporate world, leaving many disillusioned by a manufactured culture disconnected from our need for meaning. On one side, we find a vision of society rooted in authenticity and creativity, inspiring future generations to seek meaning and to live sustainably with integrity. It probably involves more spirituality, or dare I say, religion. On the other, we have those with their heads in the sand, clinging to old ways, believing corporations would never sell harmful products, and thinking the 100th Marvel movie is better than anything an indie filmmaker could create. This culture risks pushing individuals to seek identity and self-worth externally, falling into groupthink for the sake of safety.

The implications of this split are profound. Let’s picture two very different childhoods: one child might be home-schooled on a farm (if that’s still allowed), while another grows up immersed in consumerism, where every thought and expression is subject to judgment by peers and algorithms. A life without privacy or the freedom to fail — permanently documented — will have dire consequences for creativity. I worry about a future filled with individuals sporting extremely short attention spans. Have you seen teenagers watching a split-screen video on their phones of someone giving a lecture while some weird abstract video plays underneath just to keep their focus on the screen? It’s horrifying. (As an aside, can you imagine what it will be like to be in a seniors home in fifty years? We’re going to have nurses wearing headsets that make dings and beeps to indicate digital badges or rewards for changing our catheters.)

This split doesn’t just shape lifestyles; it influences how future generations will perceive themselves and their relationships with others, determining whether they will seek genuine connections rooted in family values or chase after the hollow promises of consumerism.

One path celebrates human potential and diverse perspectives, while the other risks leading people toward a homogeneous culture that feels spiritually empty.

But it doesn’t have to be this way; our future is not set in stone. We have the power to choose empathy over apathy, to stop consuming mindlessly, and to reject Hollywood’s manipulative narratives. We can create simply for the joy of creation, sharing our stories with those we truly care about — rather than for an audience we may never meet. In a world where corporations thrive on our divisions and fears, we must unite and confront the shadows on the cave wall, refusing to let them dictate our reality.

There is a genuine risk involved. When individuals rebel against a system that profits from them, they often become outliers — the “weirdos” who are hard to control. While I hate to mention the dark times of 2020 to 2022, the pandemic was a firsthand look at how people who don’t conform are treated. In a society that relies on compliance and consumerism, non-conformity — especially of a thoughtful, principled kind — can be upsetting to those who want you to keep mindlessly consuming. It’s no surprise that people pursuing this path of authenticity could face various forms of resistance, whether subtle or overt.

To be honest, there’s no neat conclusion to this article. I wish I had comforting words. This is just my way of expressing a gnawing feeling that something is deeply wrong with the world. The deeper I dig, the more I believe that creativity might be the only way through this corporate purgatory we call modern society.

What do you think? Is society doomed to split into two distinct factions of consumers and producers, or will empathy prevail?

Balancing Privacy and Authenticity

Originally posted on HausofFog.com

“Recently, this insecurity recently lead me down a deep dark rabbit hole… To a free trial of Masterclass where I watched Anna Wintour’s Masterclass on Creativity and Leadership. ”

Being a private person, but also having an ego that demands that you share your thoughts with the world, is a very tricky spot to be in, especially when you want people to care about what you are writing. In our society, it's not just about putting your art out there; people want to connect with the person behind the art. As a filmmaker, it's not enough to just make films; you're expected to be a "personality," to be authentic and accessible (or at least perceived that way).

Many people claim to want authenticity. If that were true though, influencers wouldn’t use filters, people would genuinely mean it when they asked strangers how their day was going, and make-up sales would plummet (not because I don’t think make-up and beauty isn’t a form of self expression, but because many people use it as a shield instead of an enhancement, but I digress…). The masses don’t want authenticity. They want authenticity-lite; an aesthetically pleasing version of what they feel to be an aspirational life.

Despite my efforts to keep my private life private, people are quick to slap labels on me based on their assumptions. Whether it's my sexuality, dietary choices, or political beliefs, strangers seem eager to categorize me without knowing the first thing about me. (If I had a dollar every time someone assumed I was a vegetarian and/or a lesbian, I’d have, well, more money than I do now.)

Recently, this insecurity recently lead me down a deep dark rabbit hole… To a free trial of Masterclass where I watched Anna Wintour’s Masterclass on Creativity and Leadership. While I admire Anna Wintour’s career, I realized that I know nothing about her: she is either a genius when it comes to personal branding, or incredibly lucky.

Wintour is a projection. With her trademarked bob, sunglasses, and unmoving face, she has become a Hunter S. Thompson-esque caricature. She publicly reveals very little about herself (next to nothing, actually) but surrounds herself with talented and influential people. Anna herself, though, is a blank slate. You can project whatever you want onto her, and in your reality, you will be right because she’s not going to argue back with you. She won’t engage online, give lengthy interviews, or ever have her own podcast. She is whatever you think she is.

Her Masterclass didn’t share a single personal anecdote or reveal anything about her as a person. Instead, it boiled down to “be born with good taste, and surround yourself with talented people.” (I’m very glad I didn’t pay for the class.) I am not sure if it is the reason for her success, or perhaps has happened in spite of her success, but Anna Wintour’s true talent lies in her ability to remain an enigma, allowing others to interpret her however they want.

While Anna Wintour’s Masterclass didn’t teach anything it actually said it would, it did, however, help me understand that being a private individual who also wants to share her thoughts with the world isn’t impossible, but it is a challenge. If you ever see me adopting a personal uniform and becoming a caricature of myself, you’ll know why.