As a casual listener, as in "found it by chance when it was a thing", i'll say nightcore was better than vaporwave on virtue that uploading to youtube gave it a less "branding" type of treatment than entire dork musicians making it their Brand to think they reinvented chopped and screwed but with city pop and 80s american pop music. Like I don't think the teens and young adults looking up "anime pics" on zerochan were trying to build it the way the vaporwavers did. But Im a filthy casual so I wouldn't know