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?

  • MagnyusG
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    3911 months ago

    -Core is the new term for just aesthetics, and I think that’s much more fitting over punk. Though in the case of steampunk, it’s one of the oldest -punks so getting people to swap over to steamcore or something would probably be met with a lot of opposition.

    • @DangedIfYouDid@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      -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)

      • @Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        911 months ago

        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.

      • MagnyusG
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        311 months ago

        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.

        • @DangedIfYouDid@lemmy.world
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          511 months ago

          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.)

      • @Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        111 months ago

        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.

    • BubbleMonkeyOP
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      611 months ago

      Yes! Ok that probably helps a lot. Because I’ve seen a HUGE rise in _core (cottagecore, goblin core, Forrest core, witch core, etc. and that’s just here on Lemmy)

      I hope that takes off more and leaves Punk behind so it can fit better. :) I’m sure the distinction exists for a reason.

      And yeah steampunk is sort of the odd duck in what the other major __punk actually hit, but I did have some friends waaaaaaay back when steampunk was brand new, big into it, and they took it all the way to the social changes necessary for never evolving past the Industrial Revolution… so I’m probably heavily biased by that (then again in highschool they had canes, waistcoats, and top hats, and basically cosplayed as English gentlemen all the time so… probably not an ideal sample!)

    • Cyborganism
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      211 months ago

      That’s what I came here to ask. Isn’t -core kind of the same but only for aesthetics?

      And there I have my answer.