In the last few months, Tik Tok and Instagram have seen a surge of new content under the term, Corecore. At its base, it is the over-romanticization of a single idea or topic. The most popular topics surrounding this trend seem to be: relationships, being single, depression, and any other topic users can think up. It’s comprised of a myriad of videos that use instrumental music to evoke emotions.
Comments on these videos can vary between people relating their personal life to the video and jokingly saying they wish they had never seen the video. The videos depict a picture-perfect life, other times it can show how cruel or beautiful the world is. The topics are boundless and viewers are sad that they don’t lead a perfect life.

Lauren Hall, a UGA junior, has seen plenty of these videos, and is disgusted by them. “The main subject of Corecore that I see is on relationships,” Hall explains. She says, “Over-romanticizing honestly hurts relationships, because these videos show how perfect it could be if you find the right person.” Hall says relationships shouldn’t be perfect, but these types of videos don’t support that view.
These types of videos harken back to what was known as “YouTube poop” videos according to Jake Langston.
“I’ve seen these ‘corecore’ videos where it’s just people screaming. I like screaming randomly too, but what’s the point of putting that on social media?” – Jake Langston, a UGA junior majoring in finance.

There are subsets of this trend including, #nichetok and #pinkcore. Nichetok is composed of videos directed towards fandoms of certain media like books or movies through a series of random video clips with music overlaid on it. Pinkcore is a just a random dump of anything and everything that lasts 15-30 seconds.
Langston saw videos of Corecore starting in December of last year. “When I first saw these videos, they really had no meaning. They still really don’t in my opinion, but I’ve seen the ones about nature, being single, or in a relationship,” he said confused.
Over-romanticizing a single idea can be a little dangerous by skewing one’s perception of the topic. These videos seem to not hold any significance and is a fast-passing trend.