Comedy as a response to modernization around the turn of the century produced many interesting, diverse schools of thought as Michael North suggests in Machine-age Comedy. Chiefly among them, he notes the efforts of surrealists and Dadaists, which I find fascinating as that movement’s aesthetics are finding a resurgence in the latest generation of creatives.
I mentioned last week that there is more experimental content on TikTok now, which has taken the form of slideshows and edited content made up of newsreel and other footage spliced together. These are lumped together in what users are calling “Corecore,” a name which folds in on itself to look reflexively on the trends produced by overconsumption of packaged aesthetics derived from music genres (“hardcore” evolving into any number of aesthetics including cottagecore, goblincore, dreamcore, etc.).
Corecore is mainly an outlet of frustration and despondence at the oversaturation of the creator’s life with meaningless media or depressing news cycles, but they can often be made comically absurd in their spontaneity and repetition of clips. In this way, I believe they recreate what North suggests the original turn-of-the-century comics were responding to. As he says, “…regularity, pushed to the extremes needed by an industrialized economy, produces its own kind of craziness, a zany, Dadaistic kind of humor that could only be produced by machines,” and Corecore acknowledges this in relation to our consumption of media via social media.[1] By overexaggerating the speed at which we consume media through clips lasting barely a second, and heightening the stakes of every single piece of content within these videos, Corecore produces a depressing yet oddly comic portrayal of our post-modern world.
Some comedic examples:
@blitzman27 BLEHH :p I’m NOT going to dance :p you can’t make me !!! :p #fyp#pinkcoree#corecore #csgo#edgebug
@ducky796 The two weeks of Minecraft every year hits different #breakingbad #walterwhite #jessepinkman #moistcr1tikal #heisenberg #minecraft #nether #netherfortress #meme #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #fypシ
♬ Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin & Richard Wess And His Orchestra
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRpQ59Jc/
^ This is supposed to be a slideshow of comedic text posts ^
Some dramatic examples:
@nichelovercore
This one uses solely clips from films:
@astralluv_ My first nichetok post! (Heavy inspired by @wiiireee) #corecore #nichetok #real
EDIT: Upon further inspection, a majority of the comedic versions of this trend feature cats. Not sure why this is, but I would hazard a guess that it has some kind of link to early meme culture (“I Can Haz Cheezburger” and other such memes) but I could be completely off. Also interesting that the film of cats “boxing” could easily be placed in those videos without a second thought. Fascinating that we associate cats with comedy.
[1] Michael North, ”Introduction,” Machine-age Comedy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 10.
Thank you for casting light on on of my favourite TikTok trend of the past six months. They are similar to NicheToks, which my timeline was similarly flooded. Nichetoks involve seemingly unrelated clips of sports highlights and sitcom or popculture gags which were similar, as you describe, lumped together. I find these trends to be an almost weaponisation of audience expectations, they are usually strenuously linked whilst forcing the audience to find the link by using established techniques of montage.