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?

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    5 months ago

    I think as a “genre”, it refers to being more than an aesthetic, but also a setting. It’s probably bastardized by now from the original meaning, but I’d wager that looking into the etymology of steampunk might help you find what you’re looking for.

    From there, it was probably like…“Well, steampunk, but with X! Xpunk!”