Seapunk, a Web Joke With Music, Has Its Moment Albert Redwine is a producer. "SHOUT out to Tumblr," said Zombelle, a blue-haired singer who performed last weekend at an unnamed warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The concert was billed as the city's first Seapunk Alien Disco Indie Rave, but only a handful of the 20-somethings clutching cans of Budweiser seemed to know precisely what "seapunk" even meant. A look around the graffiti-lashed venue offered clues: T-shirts plastered with pixilated sharks, raised neon glow-sticks, several mops of hair dyed blue and green. Sprouting from the digital petri dish of social networking, seapunk is a whimsical style that mashes together cartoonish aquatic themes, rave culture and a nostalgia for "90s Internet imagery. The iconography, which exists almost entirely online, includes clip art of dolphins jumping through pyramids, aquamarine-haired mermaids with SpongeBob T-shirts, and psychedelic orbs flying over computer-generated waves. Like LOLcats and pedobear, it is an inside Web joke that feeds off its own ridiculousness. "Micro-genres dovetail perfectly with online media's thirst for novelty," said Mark Richardson, an editor at Pitchfork, a music Web site. I also think there's an overriding awareness of the absurdity involved that is part of the appeal. Started online last year by a tiny sect of social media geeks, seapunk gathered momentum as it echoed on Twitter, Facebook and especially Tumblr. It has occasionally surfaced, in the real world, with seapunk-themed parties and bands, but the real joy remains in tagging and sharing the trippy nautical images. According to a D.J. in Brooklyn who goes by the Twitter handle Lil Internet, he coined the term "seapunk" last June after having a surreal dream, which he tweeted about: "Seapunk leather jacket with barnacles where the studs used to be." His friends added a hashtag to "seapunk," and a trend was born, like Aphrodite from the foam. "The surprising thing is that it really was cohesive," Lil Internet said by iChat; he declined to use his legal name, saying he is now known solely by his Twitter handle. He also described seapunk's vibe as "Venice Beach Acid Rave 1995," and cited surf-wear logos, yin-yang symbols and round holographic sunglasses as part of its look. Seapunk has also given rise to a tiny music sub-genre, although the "punk" element would not be recognized by Joey Ramone. The spacey electronic dance music borrows from Witch House, Chiptune, Drum & Bass and southern rap. Some tracks remix songs from R&B acts like Beyoncé and Aaliyah. Despite their subculture status, seapunkers insist that their sensibility has been appropriated by the mainstream, or at least leeched by celebrity stylists. There's no concrete evidence of piracy, but pop culture has indeed seen recent splashes of aquamarine: Nicki Minaj painted her skin blue for a Vogue shoot; Katy Perry wore a turquoise bob; a Google Image search of "seapunk" pulls up a photo of Lady Gaga with a neon blue wig. "No one will actually credit it to us," said Zombelle, who lives in Chicago and said her offstage name is Shan Beaste. There are people who work for Lady Gaga that are in my circle of friends. Azealia Banks, a rapper from Harlem, is the rare notable who has publicly praised seapunk: she wore green hair, name-checked the genre on Twitter and has described herself as a mermaid. But Ms. Beaste dissed Ms. Banks, too. "Mermaids are vicious harpies who lure sailors to their death," she said, scorn cresting in her voice. As with any online trend, seapunk is probably fleeting. Chino Amobi, an artist from Richmond, Va., who makes electronic music under the name Diamond Black Hearted Boy, has already shifted from seapunk to slimepunk. "It's the toxic waste of 2012," he said. On March 9, Mr. Amobi will hold a slimepunk rave in Brooklyn during the Arts Not Fair. It's going to be the saddest rave you've ever been to.