Nothing like reading a bunch of gatekeeper “you’re not a real X” bullshit to brighten one’s day.
You know what? If you feel the need to say that about someone’s rather harmless fun, it say more about you than it does them.
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Have you been to The Edison in Downtown LA?
Can’t swear there are always ukuleles, but I’m sure there have been at times. 
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I wish it would vanish…
It’s never been impressive to me, perhaps that’s because most of what I’ve ever seen are people destroying vintage equipment for their parts and cutting the keys off of irreplaceable typewriters. The few things that I have seen that are impressive are the fully functional devices that took the maker time and skill to create. Not the hot-glued abominations covered with sprockets and gauges pried off of the carcasses of murdered equipment that could have been repaired and returned to it’s original purpose.
I’m especially sensitive to folks who take early 20th century gas pressure lamps, screw in a bunch of gauges and then wire it with an old-timey light-bulb.
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My only issue is that the Luddites are the actual SteamPunks.
Real steam punk from a building built in 1873. The gauges are still reading except the one on the top right.
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From that song that was posted earlier:
“Steampunk refers to a type of science fiction about alternate pasts, not future prediction. Often set in Victorian Britain, but the history of technology has been rewritten”. So actual Victorian technology doesn’t really cut it, I’m afraid.
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Didn’t we just get Peter Jackson’s Mortal Engines last year?
…On the other hand, that was apparently also the biggest box-office bomb in history, so perhaps that is not a positive indication of the state of the genre.
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The steampunk ethos – the look and ‘sensibility’ – does (to my eye) seem to be more connected to 19th century Europe (and especially to Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution).
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My beard just says “FECK!” and “BUGGRIT!”
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TBF, I have no personal knowledge of this band, their fans, or the scene, but just knowing a lot of band people in general, this strikes me as less a “steampunk thing” than a case of:
I guess trends come and go, and fashion is circular, but look friend, that video is 22 years old. That’s basically the gap between Elvis Presley’s first no 1 single and the Stray Cats’ first album. That is so old it’s basically retro.
Well, that was a windows build from 2008-ish, meaning he was probably running XP or Vista, so yes, obsolete!
Wasn’t that crappy Wild Wild West movie probably the most mainstream Steampunk ever got? No wonder it faded away.
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You have any idea how hard it is now to find geniune antique parts for watch restoration even more so because of steampunk people gutting perfectly good pocketwatches?
Watchmakers mostly professionally despise these people, especially the ones doing restoration. they take all the gears they can find
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I’ve noticed over the past couple of years the rise of interest in Solarpunk and how it has evolved from a movement chiefly interested in a speculative Post-Industrial/eco-tech art/design aesthetic to more of an activist movement advocating for sustainable culture. In fact, it seems more people recognize it now as referring to the latter than the former and it seems to be rapidly absorbing all aspects of what could be called ‘green culture’.
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This is also somewhat true of all the people ripping and carving up old books because they want to glue them to a wall, or make some unreadable sculpture of them.
Some people like the look of books, more than actual books.
But Steampunk is more than just the Steampunk crafters. There’s always cringe and point-defying sacrilege in any group of enthusiastic amateur crafters…
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In my book, those people are assholes.
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The whole steampunk-as-reaction-to-iPhone argument Brownlee makes seems kind of weak. Here’s how he sets it up:
“Web searches for “steampunk” tend to peak in September or October, right around the time the new iPhones hit the market.”
But couldn’t there be another reason why “steampunk” web searches peak in the weeks leading up to Halloween?
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