The Core Core Essay
There’s something interesting happening on TikTok right now; a new genre borne from fragments of movies, music, clip
[Montage of Corecore]
If you’ve ever spent significant time on TikTok, you’ve probably come across a video like this;
Emotional music overlayed over videos of Ryan Gosling or Jake Gyllenhaal, maybe Brad Pitt’s character from fight club. Scenes from office spaces. Memetic images flashing in front of your eyes. It’s overstimulating, emotional, frenetic, lonely, and maybe the first truly Gen-Z art form;
This is core core.
It might start with a monologue; a podcast guest talking about loneliness; a movie character talking about a breakup; in the background there’s music, often melancholic; the music continues and we’re somewhere else; a new video pops up; almost collage; viral videos, podcast clips, confessionals, stock footage, sunsets, rain, time lapse, sports wins and losses;
Viewed cynically, core core might seem like the inevitable outcome of 21st century digital storytelling — it doesn’t create it remixes, it’s unpolished, immediate, erratic; it shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.
Core core eschews narrative, it rejects characters or plot in the favor of theme. And the theme is isolation.
There’s a reason that the trend has connected with so many people [Show the millions of views it has]. It feels almost like a meta commentary on the doomscroll itself. For a generation that watches 25 second clips of young Sheldon and 911 lone star state between thirst traps and footages of wars, it’s easy to see how this collage of memetic imagery connects so deeply with young people.
The dichotomy between the interconnected non-stop world at your fingertips and you the viewer, watching it alone late at night on your phone feels powerful.
Maybe that’s why Blade Runner 2049 is such a frequent flyer in these videos; not only for the stunning visuals, but the juxtaposition of the futurism of the setting and the isolation of the character feels very timely for a generation that is overstimulated and undersexed;
There’s almost a language to the trend. The same movies come up over and over. Because even if you haven’t seen [this] or [this] or [this]; you can see this image and understands what it’s invoking.
When the dominant Gen-Z language is a mix of irony and absurdism (see #nichetok), maybe it makes sense that the only way Gen-Z is able to communicate these feelings is with video and images from other’s. Collage is less vulnerable than looking out and saying I’m looking for something.
And maybe that’s why there doesn’t seem to be any specific creator at the forefront of the style. Its raw, emotional montages effectively invoke its themes of isolation and loneliness without the need to bring in the individual. The real stars of the trend seem to be the creators whose occasional vulnerability has led to their frequent inclusions in the trend. Bobby Lee, or Theo Vonn.
Reductively, you could say that there’s no artistry to core core; it’s a simple concept. Mashup some sad people and some sad music, and you can hack it. But is there no artistry to collage? What is the point of art but to evoke feeling? Even if it’s with others work?
In David Shield’s reality hunger he says “the point of every artistic movement in history is to smuggle more of what the author thinks is reality” into a piece. Clearly there’s a zeitgeist that’s been tapped into here; a feeling of loneliness and isolation elicited by the digital age that has yet to be captured by traditional media.
Even if core-core doesn’t appeal to you, it feels indicative of things to come. Core-core itself may induce sadness, but it’s part of a larger trend; hope core — where you find optimistic music atop videos of dogs seeing their owners for the first time in months, and high school kickers making the game winning field goal — evokes a completely different feeling while using the same techniques. Or there’s core-cores distant cousin, the motivational videos that feature Dave Goggins monologues and videos of people pushing themselves to the human limit. It’s a new form of expression purely for the digital age
Short form video is the dominant entertainment of the day, and yet it’s still in its infancy. It wasn’t til 80 years after the advent of television that we got Breaking Bad. 20,000 years after the first painting did we get Starry Night. Nobody even talked in film for decades after the mediums advent. It’s easy to miss the broader artistic trends happening online when the breadth and pace of the content we consume is as breakneck as it is; but I think it’s time to start taking the creations of the digital age seriously. And core core may just be the start.
