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?

  • tate
    8•6 months ago

    I was a tween when the first version of “punk” came around (yes, that makes me old). I think I can say with authority that the ideals were: anti-corporate, anti-consumerism, and anti-commercialism. Ever since then people have tried to sum it up (and marginalize it) as “DIY.” But that falls well short of what it really was.

    Of course, the second it showed any sign of viable popularity, the forces of capitalism, well…, capitalized on it. The obvious examples are bullshit, high production, made-for-tv bands like Green Day getting sold as punk rock. But does anyone remember Urban Outfitters? Holy crap, the open, unashamed corporate pandering!

    • BubbleMonkeyOP
      4•6 months ago

      I’m probably equally old so yeah that’s sort of how I envision it as well.

      That helps, actually, more than one might expect.

    • @adam_yEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      She may be a Puncke: for many of them, are neither Maid, Widow, nor Wife.

      W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1623)

      Damn, you really old.

      • tate
        2•6 months ago

        Hah! Ya got me!

        But of course I’m talking about the adjective punk, as in " punk rock," which is an entirely other word than the noun puncke, (or, more modern, punk ) which Shakespeare used.

        ETA: I don’t mean to imply they’re not related They just aren’t the same word. And one of them was created in the 1970s.

        • @adam_yEnglish
          3•6 months ago

          Oh no, I get you. I think we are a similar age.

          I was at the Reading Festival in '96 and I think offspring were playing.

          There was a slightly older guy stood in the middle of the crowd shouting, you call this punk… This ain’t punk. This ain’t shit.

          The kids were laughing at him.

          This week in Glasgow Green Day played a gig and all I saw was middle aged men and their daughters wearing matching merch t-shirts.

          I’m assuming at some point I travel back in time to '96 to try to stop this.