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[Hide] (224.1KB, 1920x1080) The world has seen many empires rise and fall, and among them is one I find personally fascinating but little discussed: the American corporate empire of the late 20th century. While other empires conquered the world with guns and soldiers, corporations harnessed spirits of computer machinery to fight wars in cyberspace with Christmas catalogues as their propaganda posters. The bones of this empire have persisted into the current day as world-grasping monsters or corpses picked over by scavengers, but I wish to focus upon brighter, fuller days.
To a lot of people who grew up during this era or after it, "empire" probably doesn't feel like the right word. It just seemed natural for America to be leading the world economy and producing the best computers, movies, and bikini models. Partially I was just young and optimistic, but in hindsight that era definitely had the guts to fill the three-piece, eight-hundred-dollar, one-hundred-per-cent-cashmere suit it wore to the office.
And the office! Look at it!
The office was a place with its own culture, its own manners of dress and address. You were expected to look and act a certain way, to be formal but not too detached. Business casual suits and pencil skirts just make people look good, even the rank and file. There were phrases and customs that needed to be respected. For many people, the office was a second home - sometimes literally, depending on deadlines. It was a beautiful mixture of ruthless work and human friendships, some of which ended precisely at 5:00 while others lasted long into the night. You weren't doing anything inappropriate in the executive penthouse, were you?
Rambling aside, I've been watching some movies and TV from the 80s/90s (Die Hard, Terminator 2, etc.) in recent yeras, and something that I notice a lot is the underlying assumption of a bluechip megacorp having a physical complex. Because, y'know, lots of big corporations had their own dedicated office towers back then; it made sense to centralize things that way, and it let the company put their mark on the map.
I have to imagine that part of vaporwave's popularity is harnessing these motifs and images, the "business castle" aesthetic that was used to guide much of the world's money and power for so many years. I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly what it is I'm trying to describe, but terms like "officepunk" have sort of floated out of my subconscious over time.
Are you picking up what I'm putting down?