Explaining corecore, TikTok’s newest aesthetic

Infinitely scrolling through TikTok at 2am has become a common experience for many these days.

“Okay,” you say to yourself. “It’s kind of sad, but it’s the same.” Keep scrolling to find another. And one more thing. And one more thing. All these TikToks share the same quality. Amateur-edited clips of found media, blisteringly fast editing styles, and depressing, melancholic music. They all share the same hashtag #corecore.

The #corecore hashtag and its cousin #nichtok have a combined 600 million views on social media platforms at the time of this writing. At first glance, #corecore videos look like a collage of meaningless videos leading to shared messages. But it’s corecore’s ideas and what they can (or can) express that have given rise to what some see as a true art form by his Gen Z.

What is corecore?

Corecore is TikTok’s aesthetic trend, whose name derives from the ironic use of the -core suffix. In the modern internet age, the -core suffix is ​​used to describe shared ideas of culture, genre, or aesthetic, grouping them all into one set category. of new hardcore-related subgenres that use -core as a suffix, like “emo-core”. So from its name, corecore sounds like the antithesis of the genre itself. That content can be anything, and the author can use any type of media to convey the core premise. On Know Your Meme’s corecore page, the site says, “We’re doing this trend with the -core suffix by creating a ‘core’ out of all the ‘core’ hive minds.”

Digital culture blogger Kieran Press Reynolds, who first wrote about corecore in November 2022, is a keen-eyed trend watcher who writes extensively on niche internet microgenres. He told his Mashable that corecore is inherently anti-trend and can be loosely defined as similar or dissimilar visual and audio clips of his that are intended to evoke some form of emotion.

“They are like meme poems, filled with short movie clips, music and soundbites that are often nostalgic, nihilistic or poignant,” Press-Reynolds told me via email. Told. “When I wrote about the genre in late November, most of the popular clips I saw were really enthusiastic. A 15-second montage, the intense music (Drain Gang and other internet rap) didn’t have much recognizable meaning beyond a pleasing influx of recognizable audiovisual material.”

The short-form meme montage style has been around since the early days of Youtube (remember Youtube Poop), but according to Know Your Meme, the corecore hashtag itself first appeared on Tumblr in 2020. . However, Tumblr’s corecore, especially his Twitter, exists only as a pun on the literal definition of core, created out of user frustration with the oversaturation by the concept of “core.”

By the way, Corecore is not the same as nichetok, but to many TikTok users the terms are seemingly interchangeable. To clarify, Know Your Meme states that Nichetok is an aesthetic movement primarily composed of shit posts that reference multiple fandoms, subcultures, and genres. right place Understanding TikTok trends.

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New life on TikTok

As Chase DiBenedetto wrote for Mashable, “TikTok has moved many Gen Z users to romanticize the Millennium (and Tumblr) aesthetic, from fashion to technology.” Same as YouTube Poop before it. As such, corecore is basically a fresh take on an old premise. On Twitter and Tumblr, #corecore existed as a fun jab towards oversaturated naming conventions, but with the introduction of TikTok, that aesthetic has given new life to itself.

According to Press-Reynolds and Know Your Meme, some of the first core core videos to arrive on TikTok were published around January 2021. These first of his TikTok reciprocal links found media pushing specific messages, either with anti-capitalist or environmentalist tendencies. Done right, the creators would string together clips from his 30-year-old film, interviews with unrelated actors, and random B-roll of his tour of the house in order to create a compelling impression that hints at meaning. You can, but it might just be a feeling.

“For some people, I think these videos have a kind of therapeutic effect,” Press-Reynold said. […] It masterfully captures the technological turmoil and malaise that many young people today seem to relate to. It’s like balm for a broken brain on TikTok. ”

However, the Corecore edits are not present in the binary. There are also bright meme dumps that adjoin Dada-style collage art and things like clips that mash up cats and Fortnite (also known as #pinkcore). It was family guy, blade runner 2049, Jake Gyllenhaal screaming clip, melancholic music (usually soft piano score or Aphex Twin).

That’s the interesting thing about corecore. Whether that emotion is happiness, fear of the future, or the excitement of falling in love, CoreCore’s compilation uses multimedia to speak to our common experiences. It’s what the Youtube creator describes as “a beautiful art form that fits perfectly for our generation.”

Corecore is the exact opposite of what we consider a meme. With memes, parts of film and television become detached from their original material and take on a life of their own, to the point where we don’t even know what the original context was. Individual snippets don’t make sense in a Corecore post, but when connected, the videos provide them with a shared context and thus a certain power. to create stronger associations. breaking bad Twitter memes can be provided.

Press-Reynolds says he believes corecore is a true art movement, although not in the traditional sense. “The video is simple, but it has a lot of emotional expression. If not, it expresses what it is, the ridiculous reality of vibes.”

Wasted possibility, or natural evolution?

The hashtags corecore and nichetok have reached nearly 600 million views and are becoming an increasingly popular trend on TikTok. Ironically, however, the expectation that Koa Koa could be both an art-his form and an anti-his-trend is arguably being undermined by its trendiness.

As corecore fans and critics have pointed out, one of the problems with trending trends on TikTok and social media in general is that the race to recreate content that is already trending will ultimately serve its original purpose. leading to dilution. of core core.

I don’t see how cultures can continue to divide and grow more and more decentralized without reaching some kind of impasse. People can’t keep creating cores and cores and core cores forever.

Matt Lorence points out misuse of corecore on TikTok. In the video, he says, “People take these movements with a strong political ideology, and then completely disconnect from it, turning it into a soulless, pointless aesthetic trend.” He does not know the reasons for this, but concludes that users do not want to be intellectually involved in the art they consume.

In his video themed on Koa Koa and Gen Z’s obsession with self-pity, the YouTuber known as Angle said TikTok had become a landfill for “overly self-pitying forms of content,” citing Koa Koa. have expressed disappointment about where the trend is heading. .

“Generation Z as a whole is always taking things from old ideas and modernizing them in a socially acceptable way. “My concern is more or less [corecore] Something very unique and different that belongs only to the internet babies of our time is that the very same generational habit of running things on the ground for internet points is wasted .

He went on to say that when he comes across corecore videos now, they are usually a lazy attempt to explain (using the same clips and music) the feeling that “she left and took the kids”. I’m here.

“It can start to feel like you’re scrolling listlessly,” Press-Reynolds said. “Your mind is overwhelmed by hashtags and drowning in the digital darkness of media. No, but it hits you like a limp tide,” he said. “I don’t see how cultures can continue to divide and grow more and more decentralized without reaching some kind of impasse. People can’t keep creating cores and cores and core-cores forever.”

Corecore hasn’t exactly hit the mainstream yet, but there are already huge questions about what will happen when it does. , core core video?