In December 2011 a free music album — its cover a Greek statue plus the full-width characters 'ＦＬＯＲＡＬ ＳＨＯＰＰＥ' — was dropped onto Bandcamp. Credited to Macintosh Plus (real name Ramona Xavier), it chopped up 1980s smooth jazz, slowed it down and drenched it in reverb — and so Vaporwave was born.

It began as a piece of satire: mocking the excessive optimism of 1990s capitalism — shopping-mall ads, the Windows 95 interface, Greek statues (a label for Western civilization), palm trees (Southern California's capitalist paradise), Japanese text (Eastern exoticism) — collaging these obsolete visions of the future into a nap you can never wake from.

In 2014 Tumblr turned it into a mainstream aesthetic; later it split into Future Funk (more danceable), Mallsoft (more empty) and Hardvapour (angrier). Today every design of 'neon purple-pink gradient + 80s retro + Japanese katakana', every lo-fi YouTube channel cover, indie game and crypto poster — is a grandchild of vaporwave.

It has an extremely short 'shelf life' — it can easily date-stamp a design to 2015 Tumblr. Treat it as one season, not a brand position.