Exploring Post-Subcultural Participation through a Practice-Centred Approach: The Case of the Vaporwave (Virtual) Scene

This chapter explores vaporwave as a virtual music scene through a practice-centred approach, addressing how post-subcultural formations characterized by fluid boundaries and aesthetic heterogeneity achieve persistence over time. Drawing on second-generation practice theories, vaporwave is conceptualized not as a fixed canon of cultural artefacts, but as a bundle of interrelated online practices, including production, curation, distribution, consumption and canonization. The analysis is based on four years of virtual ethnography (2018–2022) and twenty-five interviews with European and American participants, and adopts a diachronic perspective to trace the evolution of the scene across three main phases. Particular attention is paid to canonization as a reflexive and ongoing practice through which participants negotiate the genre’s boundaries while maintaining openness to innovation. The chapter argues that the coherence and longevity of vaporwave do not rely on shared stylistic features or stable political meanings, but on shared practical understandings and discursive engagements. More broadly, the contribution highlights the analytical value of practice theory for the study of digitally mediated cultural scenes