On Twitter today, it's all laser grids, stars, shiny purple, and chrome. Everyone's become obsessed with an '80s text generator that's basically the visual equivalent of the Drive soundtrack.
— ep 3 in pinned tweet (@foucault_45) October 5, 2016
See?
Oh great, @mikesterling linked to an image generator. #dentalplan pic.twitter.com/wIyUtX5Csd
— A͜͞͏.͜͏̕ ̴̨͏̀K̷oford (@apelad) October 5, 2016
It's a retro cousin to the "aesthetics" design movement that goes with Vaporwave music and Tumblr—which also loves grids and purple hues, albeit softer, more "chill" ones.
There are hundreds of these messages floating around, and many of them are abjectly weird, kind of funny, or just references to other memes.
— CAFE (@cafedotcom) October 5, 2016
— CALL ON MONDAY (@PREMIUMPONCHO) October 5, 2016
— yehoak on jan. 28th (@yehoak) October 5, 2016
"Max you have this whole hour to invest in improve your job skills"
"Okay." pic.twitter.com/AzJM0bh3VQ— YOU GOT THAT WRONG (@NotFaulty) October 5, 2016
I tried. pic.twitter.com/fNjpJRIS0n
— BooDoo (@BooDooPerson) October 5, 2016
mate some advice for ya @dril pic.twitter.com/W0fvmYYgLN
— marben (@bonerman_inc) October 5, 2016
.@Wendys #RIPTom pic.twitter.com/1ER4rLSigN
— Howard Whosman (@FanSince09) October 5, 2016
— brian feldman (@bafeldman) October 5, 2016
— YOU GOT THAT WRONG (@NotFaulty) October 5, 2016
— Ed Jefferson (@edjeff) October 5, 2016
folks pic.twitter.com/yFnnOJcawk
— chris (@BassoonJokes) October 5, 2016
— Howard Whosman (@FanSince09) October 5, 2016
— Bob Loss ☭ (@AlmightyBoob) October 5, 2016
@FanSince09 pic.twitter.com/WzYOvLmGnn
— Derek Li 🇨🇦 (@derekdli) October 5, 2016
.@pattymo pic.twitter.com/F5CBfSkGAD
— Howard Whosman (@FanSince09) October 5, 2016
So, yeah, that's happening. It's happening to the point that people are already sick of it, and it will soon die of overexposure. In fact, it may have died before it ever got big. This tweet is from June:
the cutoff for doing lasergrid horizons with a shiny metal top text and a neon graffiti subtitle is tomorrow night so get yours in everybody
— DOCFUTURE (@topherflorence) June 14, 2016
But if you feel like living out your neon-and-chrome retrowave dreams, just go ahead and do you.
— Christine Love (@christinelove) October 5, 2016
I'm glad you asked!
https://t.co/yfwrEBaYOo pic.twitter.com/kq4SMnEjAJ
— A͜͞͏.͜͏̕ ̴̨͏̀K̷oford (@apelad) October 5, 2016
There you go. And if you get bored of this one, the same website is a deep, timesucking rathole of stylized text designs.
But as a reminder, if you look around on that site... pic.twitter.com/Ytt058LH53
— Rogue Mike Sterling (@mikesterling) October 5, 2016
So far, none of them has the popular appeal of '80s neon graffiti, but if the Stranger Things title graphic generator proved anything, it's... that people love a vintage Stephen King vibe.
— leon (@leyawn) October 5, 2016
But if it proved anything else, it's that text generators as a form of expression are alive and well, and their meme possibilities are far from exhausted.






