Seapunk is selling shoes. So that's a nice little example, I guess, of how desperate we are for any whiff of counterculture and how seamlessly we commoditize it in these internetty times.
Yeah, seapunk. That barely-trend from 2011 that started out as a tumblr affectation/vaguely novel brand of electronica and hit its pinnacle when Rihanna used the visual cues--polygonal video game textures out of Sonic the Hedgehog and clip art dolphins--in a video for a top 10 hit single.
So no big surprise that some marketing team lifted the aesthetic to hawk boots. ASOSfashion put the above together, with the following tagline:
"Wanna know what shoes are hot for S/S'13? Check out this mind-bending video and try and tell us it doesn't make you want Every. Single. Pair."
Okay, now even a clumsy web meme embraced for like a second by indie fans for the lols--seapunk was always more of a hashtag than a music genre--gets its comeuppance as a straight-faced vehicle for commerce. That's just where we're at now.