Abstract

This thesis explores the aesthetic and cultural significance of vaporwave, an internet-born movement that blends music, visuals, and digital platforms to critique late capitalism and reimagine collective memory. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from postmodernism, media studies, and cultural theory, this research examines vaporwave’s materiality, its relationship to the internet’s rapidly expanding platform culture, and its status as both a critique and product of late capitalism. The study highlights vaporwave’s use of recontextualized media, its DIY-inspired practice, and the ways it engages with globalized systems of communication to produce a genre that is at once ephemeral (or vaporous) and enduring.

Through close analysis of vaporwave’s visual identity online, this thesis argues that the movement embodies a tension between cultural critique and aesthetic indulgence. On the one hand, vaporwave’s reliance on platforms like YouTube reveals the transformative impact of digital spaces on cultural production, fostering new forms of community and redefining the concept of the music scene. On the other hand, vaporwave’s reliance on pastiche, simulacrum, and cultural recycling, as well as its ambivalent messaging on consumer culture, raises questions about its potential as a form of political resistance.

Ultimately, this work positions vaporwave as a vital lens through which to understand the interplay of memory, culture, and capitalism in contemporary media, while also reflecting on the broader implications of internet-mediated art in the 21st century.