Now im not a solarpunk fan myself but I have seen many leftwing/leftish people seen positive on it. Is it good / bad ? I havent really looked into it beyond surface level.
Exactly, it’s basically been reduced down to just the aesthetics which can be readily repackaged and recuperated. It’s a floating signifier, waiting for a brand to attach to and be capitalized on. But since there’s something fundamentally good at its core, I still see value in it.
Sorry for being a boomer mom-type character archetype. Could you explain how solarpunk and cottagecore connect and why they are good but can be coopted? I honestly need to google cottagecore again; I remember hearing the word, but I’m not that online yet, I guess.
Cottagecore was a lesbian aesthetic about escaping heteronormative society and going off grid. It got turned into a tradwife aesthetic about neo lebensraum. Solarpunk is similar, but the way it gets coopted is via green capitalism washing away the revolutionary parts of solarpunk and replacing them with consumerism of the eco friendly variety.
The sad part for me is that BMF was always completely legible to me, but I don’t think I can cook myself enough to ever actually post like that because I despise obscure jargonism.
Please continue your journey to become whitehat BMF.
Nah I think what set BMF apart was not so much the jargon, but assuming that the reader could keep up with immense amounts of subtext and implied meaning; usually their posts were long sequences of quotations followed by replies that imply several layers of contradicting and layered cultural criticisms, which you could only keep up with if you synchronized your mind to theirs in a fundamental way.
Wait the lesbians did cottagecore first? Thats cool and makes me feel better about it. There’s a minecraft youtuber I like called GeminiTay who’s wlw and before she came out she was doing Cottagecore builds in Minecraft and people found it unsuprising when she came out as bi because of this lol.
I think a really strong example of this is the fact that the most popular thing to showcase the solarpunk aesthetic is a freaking ad for a yoghurt brand that comes in disposable plastic packaging…
For cottagecore - I think it’s the fascist idealization of a past that never really existed. I’ve never really thought about the connection between cottagecore and solar punk, but I could see both having a twee idealized rural life aesthetic (with solar punk adding a dash of sci-fi)
I wouldn’t say it’s hitlerite adjacent, but it’s full idealism - impossible under capitalism and unnecessary under socialism. Also most of solarpunk art is really bad if you look at it second time - shitty infrastructure, rotting plant matter everywhere, erosion of cityspaces, insane amounts of labour to maintain it, disconnected primitivism, strong postapo ruin vibes, and this is even before we talk about AI artefacts in said pics.
I feel like even if we had communism tomorrow we’d still have discussions on if X thing is worth doing labor wise or if that labor could be used more effectively doing something else. It’s not like having a bunch of vining plants on every building is inherently a good thing. Those plants are going to want water from somewhere and they’ll probably get it from the sewer system or something which means clogged drains everywhere.
There are anarchist ultra-strains of solarpunk that straight up want to ban fertilizer and stuff as soon as possible and let the food system collapse before an alternative is made to feed everyone. And I don’t mean in an indirect way, I mean they admit this.
Shows how that’s just pure vibes and idealism. The result would be more like cannibalpunk when 8 billion humans suddenly reverting to subsistence farming.
Ok I’m only a little familiar with this aesthetic and its art, but I always thought the idea was that it isn’t being actively maintained. Like the art I saw seemed to imply a vaguely socialist society rising up out of the overgrown ruins after the apocalypse in a capitalist one. The idea being that civilization doesn’t necessarily mean the destruction of all existing life within it, that you can build a new society and let the plants that are already there just continue being there.
but I always thought the idea was that it isn’t being actively maintained
That would be logical, but unfortunately it is not so. On the art of cities/towns you have greenery absolutely everywhere, roads, roofs, houses, walls, tons of flower pots and other bigger and smaller containers. It again shows how idealist vision this is and how they know shit about greenery in city spaces, all this would very quickly just wither and die without constant care and the amount of plants needing that care means the labour would been simply crazy, especially that on the art if anyone is even doing that is always by hand. Even moderate amount of city greenery we have in some cities today need quite a lot of care. Alternatively they could make it less maintained by planting some crazy invasive species which would overgrown everything and look like Angkor Wat before rediscovery but that’s not possible under most climates and not only monoculture weed is not close to the idea, but again, the erosion of cityspace would be huge.
Also there is a thing that solarpunk is nearly always vision of at least harshly understood degrowth if not outright primitivism and you have the full vision closer to postapo disaster than to any socialism.
It’s an aesthetic. And yes aesthetics are political, but I think this is one of those ones that can go either way, in fact I feel that way about most “Punk” genres. There’s been progressive and reactionary cyberpunk, steampunk, whatever.
Some of solar punk seems to be “hey what if we did Soviet brutalist commie blocks but with more greenery”, so a more naturalistic and whimsical version of dense, organized, urban-proletariat society, which I think is kinda cool. Other times it looks more like an idealized version of what “techno-feudalism” would look like, a quaint, pastoral, sustainable version of being petite-bourgeois.
It’s also telling that one of the major artworks used to “promote” the aesthetic is literally a yoghurt commercial, but since it’s a cute animation, it gets a pass.
I think it’s fine. The societal changes necessary to address climate change are so wild that people literally lack capacity to imagine them. Solarpunk is an art genre to fill in that space.
Now im not a solarpunk fan myself but I have seen many leftwing/leftish people seen positive on it. Is it good / bad ? I havent really looked into it beyond surface level.
IMO it’s good at its roots but can be easily coopted, it’s like cottagecore in that sense.
Twitter solarpunk is cooked because they all use screenshots from the same yogurt ad with lines like “a business is only as good as its people” lmao
Exactly, it’s basically been reduced down to just the aesthetics which can be readily repackaged and recuperated. It’s a floating signifier, waiting for a brand to attach to and be capitalized on. But since there’s something fundamentally good at its core, I still see value in it.
Goblincore stay winning- the nouveau art nouveau
Sorry for being a boomer mom-type character archetype. Could you explain how solarpunk and cottagecore connect and why they are good but can be coopted? I honestly need to google cottagecore again; I remember hearing the word, but I’m not that online yet, I guess.
Cottagecore was a lesbian aesthetic about escaping heteronormative society and going off grid. It got turned into a tradwife aesthetic about neo lebensraum. Solarpunk is similar, but the way it gets coopted is via green capitalism washing away the revolutionary parts of solarpunk and replacing them with consumerism of the eco friendly variety.
Thank you, that makes sense. It’s nice to see young people respect their elders :^)
great post
I think if I just continue cooking my mind with enough Brace rants I’ll eventually become a good version of BMF
The sad part for me is that BMF was always completely legible to me, but I don’t think I can cook myself enough to ever actually post like that because I despise obscure jargonism.
Please continue your journey to become whitehat BMF.
Nah I think what set BMF apart was not so much the jargon, but assuming that the reader could keep up with immense amounts of subtext and implied meaning; usually their posts were long sequences of quotations followed by replies that imply several layers of contradicting and layered cultural criticisms, which you could only keep up with if you synchronized your mind to theirs in a fundamental way.
Meh, I always thought everything was pretty straight forward and textual, maybe I misinterpretated it.
This is sounding like the Pynchon of posting.
Wait the lesbians did cottagecore first? Thats cool and makes me feel better about it. There’s a minecraft youtuber I like called GeminiTay who’s wlw and before she came out she was doing Cottagecore builds in Minecraft and people found it unsuprising when she came out as bi because of this lol.
I think a really strong example of this is the fact that the most popular thing to showcase the solarpunk aesthetic is a freaking ad for a yoghurt brand that comes in disposable plastic packaging…
Tradwives really out here dressing like lesbians, except much like a heterosexual trad-douche, they really struggle with like everything aesthetically
It’s alright, auntie, lol.
For cottagecore - I think it’s the fascist idealization of a past that never really existed. I’ve never really thought about the connection between cottagecore and solar punk, but I could see both having a twee idealized rural life aesthetic (with solar punk adding a dash of sci-fi)
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I wouldn’t say it’s hitlerite adjacent, but it’s full idealism - impossible under capitalism and unnecessary under socialism. Also most of solarpunk art is really bad if you look at it second time - shitty infrastructure, rotting plant matter everywhere, erosion of cityspaces, insane amounts of labour to maintain it, disconnected primitivism, strong postapo ruin vibes, and this is even before we talk about AI artefacts in said pics.
Labour has never been the problem. It’s whether those maintaining it socially reproduce capitalism, or socialism/communism/anarchy.
I feel like even if we had communism tomorrow we’d still have discussions on if X thing is worth doing labor wise or if that labor could be used more effectively doing something else. It’s not like having a bunch of vining plants on every building is inherently a good thing. Those plants are going to want water from somewhere and they’ll probably get it from the sewer system or something which means clogged drains everywhere.
Looks more like utopia.
There are anarchist ultra-strains of solarpunk that straight up want to ban fertilizer and stuff as soon as possible and let the food system collapse before an alternative is made to feed everyone. And I don’t mean in an indirect way, I mean they admit this.
Survival of thr fittest oh yeah totally fine
Shows how that’s just pure vibes and idealism. The result would be more like cannibalpunk when 8 billion humans suddenly reverting to subsistence farming.
k
Ok I’m only a little familiar with this aesthetic and its art, but I always thought the idea was that it isn’t being actively maintained. Like the art I saw seemed to imply a vaguely socialist society rising up out of the overgrown ruins after the apocalypse in a capitalist one. The idea being that civilization doesn’t necessarily mean the destruction of all existing life within it, that you can build a new society and let the plants that are already there just continue being there.
That would be logical, but unfortunately it is not so. On the art of cities/towns you have greenery absolutely everywhere, roads, roofs, houses, walls, tons of flower pots and other bigger and smaller containers. It again shows how idealist vision this is and how they know shit about greenery in city spaces, all this would very quickly just wither and die without constant care and the amount of plants needing that care means the labour would been simply crazy, especially that on the art if anyone is even doing that is always by hand. Even moderate amount of city greenery we have in some cities today need quite a lot of care. Alternatively they could make it less maintained by planting some crazy invasive species which would overgrown everything and look like Angkor Wat before rediscovery but that’s not possible under most climates and not only monoculture weed is not close to the idea, but again, the erosion of cityspace would be huge.
Also there is a thing that solarpunk is nearly always vision of at least harshly understood degrowth if not outright primitivism and you have the full vision closer to postapo disaster than to any socialism.
It’s an aesthetic. And yes aesthetics are political, but I think this is one of those ones that can go either way, in fact I feel that way about most “Punk” genres. There’s been progressive and reactionary cyberpunk, steampunk, whatever.
Some of solar punk seems to be “hey what if we did Soviet brutalist commie blocks but with more greenery”, so a more naturalistic and whimsical version of dense, organized, urban-proletariat society, which I think is kinda cool. Other times it looks more like an idealized version of what “techno-feudalism” would look like, a quaint, pastoral, sustainable version of being petite-bourgeois.
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It’s also telling that one of the major artworks used to “promote” the aesthetic is literally a yoghurt commercial, but since it’s a cute animation, it gets a pass.
Or as I like to call it, “Hobbitcore.”
Kulakpunk lol
I think it’s fine. The societal changes necessary to address climate change are so wild that people literally lack capacity to imagine them. Solarpunk is an art genre to fill in that space.
Solarpunk is good this is internet poisoning.