Nobody Here: The Story of Vaporwave (2026) is a long time coming. Fully funded on Indiegogo in 2020, COVID-19 would significantly delay its release until 4.20 (of course) of this year. Granted I wasn't a backer—I recently found this gem—but the film was worth the wait. It is exceptional.
Most major vapor players (vaporeons?) are covered here from inception to present day, though present day is a bit muddled. The film concludes with COVID shutting down the then novel IRL vapor shows and forcing the microgenre back to the digital underground.
A focus of this climax is questioning whether vaporwave is dead. A scene can never really die if people are still producing and listening, but I do appreciate the film's consideration of an aging fanbase and the thought that newer generations might dissect their own media and analyze it through a vaporwave lens, as the entire genre seems to question the viability of permanent media. Will that lens be drenched in neon pallettes and CRT filters? Perhaps not. But that's the beauty of this microgenre, isn't it? It's fleeting, which makes the capitalistic tendency of many of its creators to release limited runs of physical media comical. But that's part of the point, isn't it? Or is it?
Maybe that's the true beauty of vaporwave: something with memeistic tendencies can be taken so seriously and yet not seriously at all. By definition, vaporwave is hard to pin down, and that's what makes this film a great watch. If you have little knowledge of this internet microgenre, it will be difficult for you to walk away without a piqued interest. If you've followed it from the beginning, it's a comprehensive celebration of the art.
Incidentally, I watched this back-to-back with Hacking at Leaves (2024), a film covering a disparate subculture under similar COVID circumstances. With this knowledge, you understand why some of the interviews are filmed remotely with lower quality than studio interviews. Instead of just presenting these lo-fi recordings alongside the polished ones, they are woven into each film's aesthetic. Because Hacking at Leaves focuses heavily on DIY hacker culture, framing these interviews inside a CRT (as if played via a no-label VHS tape) makes perfect sense, so the viewer doesn't question why some interviewees are recording themselves inside their car. Same goes for Nobody Here. You don't question why some creators look like they've filmed a quick YouTube vlog and others sit in high-definition on a neon-splattered chair. All of it fits the feel without hiding COVID's impact on the scene or the filming of the movie itself.
Vaporwave felt like it sprang from nothing. And considering how much vapor content is widely and freely available, it is easy to overlook the exisitence of a coalition of people trading and defining technique based on each other's work. Nobody Here illustrates how a dying internet culture sparked a form that comments on its own destruction. Vaporwave is the result of like-minded creatives in small internet chatrooms—safely pocketed away from the clutches of forthcoming social media algorithms—hacking away at something beautiful. This films helps you grasp how much these creators love each other. It makes even some of the laughably hyperbolic sentiments presented in the film endearing: "The greatest fucking musical revolution that's ever happened." Not hardly. But vaporwave is deeply meaningful to many people, myself included, and it's the type of outsider art that does not thrive in our current social media hellscape. It's underground DIY shit, and it's beautiful.
Shortly before the film released, I passed on ordering tickets to i2k.live, a two-day vaporwave music festival. I'd watched virtual vaporwave festivals a few years ago, and they excited me enough to load up the ol' Plex server with a ton of vapor, but I didn't envision a physical vaporwave event as something enjoyable. The footage in Nobody Here sold me on the fun, though, and I snagged a ticket to day two: 10 hours of vapor. If a film can do that, what more incentive do you need to watch it?
Check it out on YouTube: