I’m probably just out of the loop, but what the hell is up with slapping “Punk” after some random word and trying to pass it off as a thing?
I know cyberpunk, I know steampunk, I know solarpunk, and those I can accept as “more than an aesthetic”, tho steampunk is mostly an aesthetic… but then you have for example frostpunk (a game I know nothing about), cypherpunk, silkpunk, etc. (I don’t really know how to find other bastardizations for examples, but I know I’ve come across other random nouns followed by “punk” and I find it super weird and confusing)
Is it just capitalizing on the cyberpunk/steampunk fad for naming, or do these other “punk” things actually have a legitimate claim of being punk? Is all this ___punk watering down the meaning or am I old man yells at cloud meme here?
-core predates steampunk as a term by decades. -Core was generally only used when describing musical genre mixing in an attempt to clarify the roots of a particular group’s sound.
The only -punk terms in use prior to the 2000’s were cyberpunk, crust punk, and punk all of which were used to indicate a level of rebellion. Punk is being used in a similar way -core was until steampunk rose in popularity followed immediately by dieselpunk and atompunk cementing the concept of [powersource]-aesthetic as the primary defining trait of a fantasy genre which easily found it’s way into use as a descriptor for an aesthetic that would be expected within that fantasy setting. Things get confused again with the more recent solarpunk (follows the format) and cottagecore (does not follow the format because it is not a musically defined aesthetic)
It’s a pretty classic case of a newer generation believing they’ve invented something without realizing they’ve actually misunderstood prior usage due to limiting their sphere of influences to their peergroup. These are the same types of people who would call people posers for not conforming to the punk aesthetic because they never understood what punk actually was beyond a vector to fit into a group (and all the irony that entails in the context of punk)
Yeah, its infuriating that punk has become a suffix.
There is nothing punk about steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk. They are just fantasy technological scenarios / art styles.
Cyberpunk has an both a recognizable aesthetic and a whole lot of political, social and philosophical views baked into it. You get the punks in cyberpunk as either a direct ideological opposition to the power of corporations, or as an indirect result of said corpos creating a hell world for 99% of people.
There is nothing inherently rebellious about worlds or characters within worlds with more prevalent / advanced steam or diesel or nuclear power.
Solarpunk arguably has some actual punk to it if you actually try to follow the idea of personally minimizing your fossil fuel usage, but mostly its a utopian or post-dystopian setting / art style.
Its now like -gate being affixed to any kind of publicized controversy.
Most people do not understand what Watergate even was and why it was so significant.
I agree, of all the modern terms, solarpunk is the only one to actually fit punk, even if it is a bit more abstract. At it’s core, the idea is still rooted in rejecting societal norms and is inherently political, so it works.
Solarpunk is pretty explicitly political as a kind of antithesis to the cyberpunk future.
I think you mean watergategate.
Lul I’ve had to enlighten people on that last point of yours. Me not dressing punk doesn’t mean I’m not, it just means you won’t see it coming when I throw a brick through your window cause I look normal in khaki shorts.
I love you.
Love you too, hope you have a lovely day.
another example of an “older” -punk, if it interests anyone, is splatterpunk, used primarily in the 80’s ^^
definitely rebellious counterculture in its roots as well. very simplified summary is some authors felt stifled that horror was increasingly getting very “literary” and threw everything extreme at the wall
(decent article from 1991 explaining it: here )
Oh wow I totally forgot about splatterpunk, you’re right.
I was aware it was a pre-existing term, but it’s seeing a bit of resurgence, even in music, presumably because the younger generations think they’re inventing things left and right.
What on earth is crust-punk by the way? First I’ve ever heard of that.
Someone already got you covered on crustpunks.
These new terms have a lot more to do with where people gather on the Internet than anything else. Explains why they’ve shifted so heavily toward visual aspects because their likely first exposure to -punk was seeing cyberpunk or steampunk in film or games and then seeking out community around them hoping to capture some of that mystique for themselves.
Cottagecore is definitely the child of Pinterest x Alt girls wanting to be different when alt went too mainstream to stand out. (Which is kinda punk, but for the wrong reasons.)
music genre:
punk rock but with extreme metal elements, bassy and dirty (also known as stenchcore)
a type of punk person: panhandling, squatting, and/or homeless punk person who is homeless often by choice (also known as gutter punks)
(they also tend to be associated with each other)
While I agree it’s infuriating the use of -punk for non-rebellious things, there were several other -punks before 2000s. The main one that comes to mind is Gothic-punk, which has been used in Vampire the masquerade since 91 to express the game’s gothic and rebellious influences.