💞 The #corecore signal, Snap shows identity, and Trend Cycles
What matters this week for Gen Z: getting deep with #corecore, the divergence of social media, and the value of a trend in 2023.
Hi again! Seems like our format from last week resonated - so we’re back with what really matters for this week about Gen Z.
1. ARe you for real? Snap and signals of social divergence
Snap launched its new ad campaign called Wait’ll You See This, a very direct display of how Snap wants people to think about its product.
The ad is all about using Snap’s AR features to see the world in a more interesting way; using different AR lenses to experience the world in any way you can imagine it.
A little over a year ago, conversations on Snap looked very different. As TikTok stole Gen Z’s screen time, Snap, YouTube and Instagram panicked. Snap focused on Spotlight, encouraging people to create and post videos on their platform. YouTube was launched Shorts and Instagram launched Reels.
For the past 2 years, it has very much felt as if every social platform was converging.
Yet with the entrance of BeReal, hard-hitting layoffs and a poor economic environment, each social platform has had to ask itself a very, very difficult question: what are we?
The entire landscape of social media is having an identity crisis.
Snap’s new campaign is a signal - a creative display of Snap’s attempt to differentiate - and diverge.
We saw Snap’s screen time drop hard for Gen Z in 2022 - down 38% year over year, and with pickups and notifications down significantly too. And not only is screen time dropping, but their momentum is too. #snap views on TikTok have been decelerating slowly but surely over the last 6 months.
While the data certainly shows us signs of decreased usage, maybe that’s not necessarily…bad?
Perhaps it is the leading indicator of social media’s divergence. Where the way to survive in 2023 is no longer to imitate, it is to differentiate.
2. What really is a trend in 2023? “Trendflation”, Trend Cycles, and Trend Reporting
After recent reporting that TikTok employees can decide what goes viral, we began to see much more discussion on the true value of a trend. Day One’s recent Predictionary wrote about “Trendflation”, which they’ve defined as “the exponential rise in mass manufactured “trends” met with decreased cultural value and/or impact”. And in today’s META Trending Report: 2023 from Matt Klein, he writes:
As professional thinkers, it’s easy to look down on culture and snicker at QAnon believers.
But we’re lost in this chaos too.
Pursuing answers along with the rest, we obsess over another compass: trends.
Friend, we’re all conspirators.
As we hope to make sense of trends, the essential question becomes what is truly a meaningful signal, and what is just noise. As the time it takes for a trend to start and end gets shorter and shorter, we are faced with more trends, more often, for shorter durations. We see this most blatantly in fashion (see The Fashion Frontier) - and we see its consequence as a seemingly unstoppable force; the dominance of fast fashion.
The frequency of trends in culture today is incomparably high.
We often get this question from brands and agencies - how do we keep up?
And yet keeping up is futile - for in the time it takes to prepare and launch, the trend has already died.
Keeping up with Gen Z and culture today requires us to think again. To think differently about what trends mean, to re-assess our processes, and to think about how we can not just keep up, but stay ahead.
3. #corecore - and why it matters for our future.
Ironically, a trend! #corecore has been trending on TikTok for over a month now; it has been defined as “meme poems” on Mashable, and is an aesthetic of roughly edited clips compiled into videos that draw out deeper, “core” experiences and emotions. Here’s a link to watch as many #corecores as you’d like.
While the trend may die out by the time you finish this article, there is something deeper about #corecore that really matters to our team at dcdx.
#corecore has its roots in anti-industrialism and anti-capitalism. This video, one of the most-liked on the hashtag, conveys these anti-industrial and anti-capitalistic emotions well:
A great article from VICE on #corecore shares a quote from Kieran Press-Reynolds, a digital culture reporter that captures the perceived intention behind these videos:
I think it was satirising our internet culture, capturing that feeling of it just being too much - when you want to just delete your social media, throw your phone in a lake and go live in a hut in the wilderness, you know?
Kieran goes on to say:
It’s about trying to wake people up to realise they should find a lifestyle that doesn’t consist of consuming.
From that same VICE article, they go on to quote a Ph.D. student on internet aesthetics saying: “The corecore videos have a sheen of smoothness and detachment, but it's like people are screaming underneath”.
Yet what is so fascinating, and sad, about #corecore is the irony of the whole matter.
One TikTok user described this irony perfectly, saying in response to this video:
“We dont lack examples of how bad capitalism is, we lack the means to analyze them. Corecore is just a compilation of consequences of capitalism”
#corecore videos turned from outlets of frustration on the capitalistic world we are consumed by, to participation in the capitalistic culture by sharing these anti-capitalistic videos as part of a trend.
The #corecore trend is an attempt by young people to get out of the seemingly inescapable black hole that is capitalism.
It is a scream, a cry for help from our country’s youth, an expression of anger and frustration with no outlet besides the one thing causing that very frustration itself.
Some people have called #corecore dangerous - an easy entry point that can spiral into depression and loneliness.
I believe this is a signal.
#corecore very well may be the critical point for Gen Z - the point at which the endless cycles of consumption fueled by capitalism may see a shift in the balance of power.
A shift from the corporation to the consumer.
A rejection of our trajectory.
And a shift towards a more human future.