What originally began as sci fi lit morphed into gadgets and an entire maker/artist genre.

The once thoroughly unique has recently given way to cosplay, LARP, dress up cons.

The art will continue to be explored but the the cons, IMHO are completely ruining it.

“Steampunk” was a tongue-in-cheek dig [...] in the 1990s as a joke marketing term

1987, apparently. It’s intriguing that it languished for 20 years as a minor corner of genre fiction before becoming a folksy fashion movement.

And just like 1970s punk, the movement has appropriated the term and made it its own. Whether or not it ‘understands the joke’ is irrelevant now.

And this is before people are asked to do anything, you see. Yeah, just stuck at getting people to say “this stuff is problematic in some ways”, without qualifications like, “but -isms permeates society anyway, so why single out uuuuuuus?”

I mean, really — I admire Jhameia, Ay-leen, Moniquill and everyone in groups like Steampunk POC for putting up with this shit, but if I have to hear another white cisgender person do the equivalent of jamming their fingers into their ears and going “LA LA LA THERE’S NOTHING WRONG HERE LA LA LA”, I’ll… well, I guess I don’t want to engage. I got better things to do.

Before transistors came along, it wasn’t necessary to have the resources of a huge company churning out black boxes from vast and complex factories to push the technological envelope; as this video proves, a sufficiently skilled lone tinkerer could have been at the cutting edge back in the day.

That’s a pretty damn cool notion. In fact, I gave my mate’s girlfriend a total nerdgasm with it a few months back : )

Steampunk got rid of the cyber and the punk elements while retaining some of the attitude.

I like the playful aspect of steam punk, so I mainly focus on it as an artistic thing. Let’s face it, our machines are so much better it isn’t funny, but those old fashioned knobs and gears and levers look really cool. You can actually see how the machine works.

Given some of the horrible political reactions to modernity, including the current situation in Europe and the gridlock in Congress, I think steam punk politics is a bit of a side show. Still it’s nice to know that the esthetic can be associated with a broad political field. After all, the first steam punk I ever saw was the Wild, Wild West which featured two government agents working for President Grant. The anarchists were the bad guys.

Making steampunk more significant than that is turning the molehill into Mount Everest.

White people are hilarious when penning apologetics for their particular proclivities.

So yes, there is an ideological dimension to steampunk (generally anti-establishment/anarchist), but it is just as easily overlooked or de-emphasized in favor of other elements, like fashion or design.

Because our era is characterized by fetishization of consumer products and disinterest in political theory, it’s no surprise that the movement is understood by most (including many “adherents”) as primarily about things like PC casemods and fancy outfits.

Steampunk Magazine has a good claim to being a formative influence, check it out to get a broader feel for what this steampunk thing is all about.

(Maybe things would be different if there was the least bit of consensus about what “all hands to the pumps” means but there isn’t.)

does a good job of answering charges that steampunk is cover for racism and colonialism

Beginning one’s response to steampunk’s complicity to racism and colonialism by saying that racism and colonialism is ubiquitous is about as good as saying that since dirt and filth is ubiquitous and no one can truly be free of it, therefore it is okay to not bathe.