Ask Lemmy

27066 readers

3375 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

If there was a 90s retro aesthetic similar to the current 80s neon and synthwave like the 80s never were - what would it be like? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by whaleross to c/asklemmy

59 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Edit; I'm not asking what the 90s were like because I was there. I'm thinking what the pastiche of the 90s would be like should it have a revival like the 80s one that is nothing like the real 1980s by young people that presumably only have vague ideas from magazines and music and movies to go by. Like for example if it takes off from grunge but not like it was then but like it is idealised by kids today, what would it be like? What else was a 90s thing? Boy bands and indie pop mixed together on MTV? Hardcore techno and jungle/dnb with it's own analogue distribution channels by mail, flyers, mixtapes? Last generation of B-movies with practical effects shot on film before that part of the industry degraded into C-tier on digital with terrible CGI in the 00s? Mainstream pop culture, whatever that was? Television and radio, magazines and records before the internet took off? How would any or all of that be reimagined by people that didn't live it back then? I had no interest then nor do I have today for fashion magazines so if somebody knows I'd love to hear your twist on the topic.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's kind of earlier, but a little bit would be casette futurism.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CassetteFuturism

A technological aesthetic reminiscent of mid-1970s to late 1990s tech (regardless of the real-time setting of the media) as codified by early microcomputers like the Altair 8800 and the IBM Personal Computer, late Cold War era technology, the iconic imagery of the mid to late space race, or the post-Cold War "end of history" period in The '90s, which was characterized by a fascination with virtual reality technologies (such as helmets) and 2D computer animation.

Whether it be the bold colors and geometric shapes, the tendency towards stark plainness, or the exotic-looking computers and proto-cell phones, it is clear that this is neither the Raygun Gothic of days past nor the Everything Is an iPod in the Future aesthetic that would follow, but a bridging point that contains elements of both styles.

Amazingly, nobody appears to have done a Wikipedia page for cassette futurism yet, or I'd link to that.

EDIT: Here's a DDG link to an image search for cassette futurism, to sort of give an idea:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=cassette+futurism&iax=images&ia=images

[–] D1G17AL 2 points 1 month ago

That's mostly synthwave aesthetic. Synthwave covers that same sort of stylistic convention as cassette futurism.