Weirdcore is just one of a few Internet aesthetics popularized during the early 2020s pandemic-era. Like other recently trending movements, it was spearheaded primarily by Gen Z on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Discord. The movement, which is closely aligned with Dreamcore and Traumacore, is characterized by images that embrace both the chaos and absurdity of Dadaism and the dream-like qualities of Surrealism. However, Weirdcore has a few novel features of its own that make it distinct from similar or previous artistic movements.
Weirdcore images are rarely consumed in isolation, rather, they are often interpolated in video compilations that include music. The music usually borrows from the pantheon of lo-fi, noise, ambient or hypnogogic pop. For the sake of this article, I will primarily focus on outlining the visual and thematic characteristics found in Weirdcore images.
Early Aughts Motifs
Reverberating across our culture is the return to the fashion and media zeitgeist of the 2000s. Weirdcore is no exception. It too, has been affected by the renewed interest in aughties-era aesthetics, primarily through its inclusion of blurry, low resolution imagery of the Pre-Recession Internet. Many Weirdcore images feature the intentional inclusion of amateur effects, MS Paint-style figures, and digital compression artifacts.
Weirdcore settings often evoke that of the Windows XP desktop wallpaper, officially known as Bliss. Empty home interiors seem as though they were pulled from shopping catalogs or real estate postings, or taken directly on a disposable camera. This imagery often makes one feel as if they wandered too far into a Lowes and found a strange void lying just beyond the astroturf and vinyl siding. All of it evokes a time before the era of Retail Apocalypse and Dead Malls came upon us.
Nostalgia & Spoiled Innocence
Closely linked to the early aughts imagery in Weirdcore is, of course, the sense of nostalgia. Just as every generation prior, Gen Z idealizes the era of the 2000s because they associate it with their childhood, a time of innocence. The Internet, too, reflected an optimism during this period as well. It was an era before our culture really grappled with the idea that the Internet could be a force of harm. Concerns about unscrupulous people or the psychological effects of frequent Internet usage had yet to make the headlines. It was before we could articulate the nature of those seedy underbellies that lurked just behind our comprehension. Indeed, the Internet was still very much a Wild West.
Because of this brief ethos of lawlessness, many Gen Z’ers, including myself, were given unfettered access to the Internet by our parents from a young age. A part of the appeal of the emotion of nostalgia is the yearning for the return of our youth, when the Internet was a force of pure intention, before we were involuntarily exposed to the violence and pornography contained therein and the inevitable anxiety that the age of excess information would bring us.
Vague Familiarity, Anemoia, & Déjà Vu
Settings in Weirdcore images always seem vaguely familiar, though one may have a difficult time pinpointing an exact memory. Time and space meld together so convincingly in these images, one sometimes cannot tell them apart from a dream. The quality of the images are curated in such a way as to feel almost recognizable, though lacking in detail and context. The scenes share many similarities to experiences we’ve had or incorporate slight alterations to environments we were once accustomed to. This causes feelings of anemoia, coined by author John Koenig, for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a book that gives words to feelings that have yet to be named. Anemoia is defined as a “nostalgia for a time you’ve never known”.
This may be because Weirdcore images always evoke certain schemas; a children’s birthday party, a backyard in the summer. Sometimes they take place in singular rooms; a carpeted bedroom, a long hallway, a dark basement. We are able to easily place ourselves in these environments like video game characters by virtue of them being devoid of interpersonal signifiers. The essence that these images give is like seeing the inside of a friend’s house for the first time as a kid, and reckoning with it as a sort of alternative reality only marginally different than our own.
Anonymity
The vague familiarity of Weirdcore only exacerbates its inherent spirit of anonymity. Look to the lower corners or the fringes of a Weirdcore image and you will likely not find a signature or watermark. It is not uncommon for the reference to an image’s creator almost entirely removed. In the age of technocratic commodification, the absence of personal data is tantamount to sin. This, once again, beckons to the return of 2000s Internet culture where anonymity wasn’t just common, it was actively encouraged. It is difficult even now to imagine there was a time where we weren’t pressured to reveal every detail about ourselves online.
Much like the other suffix core movements in recent years, Weirdcore is both a Internet meme and an art form all at once. Part of the appeal of these aesthetic movements is that they are individuated, yet depersonalized. We are given the freedom to engage with them without fully committing to a value system, an ideology, or a subculture. Many would dismiss this as superficial, though I think it indicates a profound acceptance that our personal identity and perceived sense of self is no less of a facade than anything else. It may be possible that our generation no longer values the subjective concept of “authenticity” as a reliable means of gauging culture. In other words, if the mask is inevitable, why not wear it as one sees fit?
Hypnagogia, Confusion, & Disorientation
Perhaps the lingering aftertaste of Weirdcore is that of confusion and disorientation. Because the images are consistently stripped of their context, they possess the perplexing aspects of a hypnagogic state of consciousness. There is an inherent mystification and obscurity to the impossible worlds within Weirdcore. Every apparent or implied space is a figment, retrieved somewhere between dreams and the bulk of memory. Finding one’s bearings here is a Sisyphean task. Yet, one cannot help but to find meaningful interpretation in an otherwise chaotic and unintelligible world.
Becoming more comfortable with that state of uncertainty is the primary objective of Weirdcore. Our perception has no choice but to be altered amidst these erratic images. Our attention is transfixed regardless. The irreconcilability of these worlds is more alluring than places of comfort. Exposing oneself to our own voluntary delirium antithetically grants us clearer insights into ourselves.
Derealization & Depersonalization
A Weirdcore image can easily be thought of as a digital simulation of both derealization and depersonalization in the viewer. The visual elements to the images are reflective of the dissonance between the observer’s internal sense and the external world. The distant unreality of a Weirdcore image leaves us questioning our sense of self and our place in the world. The mind and body connection is severed, and we no longer feel in control of our own bodies. The real world seems fictional and distorted, no different than a daydream in our sleepless heads. These experiences can lead to the sense of ego death and a spiraling existential crisis.
Degradation of Memory
Though many believe our memories are sacred, they are just as fragile and impressionable as clay. Weirdcore not only contains a plethora of nostalgic references and vaguely familiar places, it’s seemingly bent on altering and vandalizing our own memories. This sense of deterioration gives us anxiety about growing older, and never quite being able to capture that same limitless curiosity and fascination we had as children. A memory can give us a sense of calm just as easily as fear. We mistakenly believe our memories are safe from external forces, but they can be tainted and defaced just like anything else in the physical world.
Incomplete & Ominous Text
One of the most defining features of a Weirdcore image is the inclusion of incomplete and ominous text. In this case, less is more. The cryptic text evokes a partial or non-linear narrative, almost as if it were a page ripped from hypertext fiction. It begs to be deciphered, though they aren’t generous enough to give you any clues. In the loose, interpretive narratives of Weirdcore, there are no beginnings and endings, you are immediately plopped into an inconceivable moment with only one’s schematic intuition of the surroundings.
The power of this format lies in mere implication, which grants it the illusion of interactivity. This perhaps challenges one’s own primordial desire to clearly foresee or control the course of action in difficult or unfathomably compromising situations, an option given to us by default in most other forms of interactive media. Sometimes, a disembodied voice may address the viewer directly, breaking the fourth wall. These texts often instill a foreboding sense of dread in the viewer, especially if paired with unsettling music. The outcome or intention of the statements are usually not revealed, leaving the viewer perpetually dissatisfied, seeking an unquenchable closure.
Ambiguous Fates & Fear of the Unknown
The lack of context and deliberate visual and semantic obscurity leave the viewer wrestling with their own or another’s ambiguous fate. This is intrinsically dreadful, as the fear of the unknown is fundamental to us all. It’s also reminiscent of the modern age, as we find ourselves straddled between the equal possibilities of technological singularity and ecological collapse.
Unpredictability gives us a great sense of discomfort, no matter what is at stake. It sends us into a state of hyper vigilance. As our brain grapples with the idea that anything is possible, whatever occurs next might be intrinsically opposed to our existence. Weirdcore images keep us on our toes, an anticipatory state of mind that we have become ever familiar with. It may be strange to consider that an entirely digital art movement appeals to our most primal sense of survival using relatively sparse environments. Yet, it is through that suggestive power that allows us to create digital simulations of conditions that evoke fight, flight, or freeze reactions.
Lack of Morality
Ambiguous fates only further Weirdcore’s inherent neutrality, and that may be why we struggle to identify with its elements. Unlike many other memes, Weirdcore images are not didactic. It does not cross moral, ethical, or identity lines, it only presents an experience to the viewer. There’s no heroes or villains to be found here, only the depths of one’s own madness. Internet memes are powerful because of their ability to transmit information and ideas with little consequence to the source. Yet, Weirdcore images, a artform born entirely by the Internet, lack the clear intention and interpretability associated with many other art movements.
Dread & Comfort
Weirdcore images evoke both the conflicting sense of dread and comfort. Here, there are terrors lurking in seemingly innocuous environments. Cushioned memories give way to the presence of mythological beasts. One’s initial perceptions are made more horrific through the powers of suggestion. A looming, unseen danger is just out of view. We cannot name or even begin to imagine the thing that seeks us. Morphological errors impress upon nightmares and shadows grow darker in quaint and peaceful settings. Among the obscurities, only one thing is clear: The casual menace is palpable.
Angelic & Otherworldly Beings
Some Weirdcore images contain angel-like figures or otherworldly beings with outlandish proportions. These artistic depictions are only further conducive to the hypnagogic sequences found throughout Weirdcore. Some of the figures are akin to biblically accurate angels and sleep paralysis demons. These eccentric and odd creatures have generated a pseudo-lore of Weirdcore, with some even reappearing in multiple images. Perhaps the most compelling aspect about this is that artists are able to create their own characters and insert them into the grander scheme of the artform, changing and altering its course.
Alienation & PreFab Suburban Hellscapes
Commonly found in Weirdcore images are the unsettling symmetries of suburbia. The cookie cutter facades, the labyrinthine pathways, the bright palisades, the infinite expanses of lawn. There’s a recursive befuddlement to suburbia, it is easy to get lost when everything looks the same. Suburbia occupies a bleakness and a mundanity that evoke a sense of alienation. It gives us a paradoxical sense of ordinariness and timelessness. The idyllic patterns of suburbia fail to belie the burgeoning loneliness of its inhabitants. The jarring juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial allows us to remain uneasy throughout our sensory experience.
Liminal Spaces & Impossible Objects
Weirdcore images often include liminal spaces, physical thresholds between two destinations. A waiting room, a door, a stairwell, an airport, a hallway, a street; these are all boundaries that serve as exits and entries to places unknown. They exist between the here and then, between yesterday and tomorrow. A liminal space evokes a kind of mundane horror, especially when empty. A liminal space can be a crossroads of decision, inflection and ultimatum.
Impossible objects are visual illusions with shapes, patterns, and figures that can only feasibly exist on paper. In the world of Weirdcore, these strange geometries actualize themselves literally. If the mind can imagine it, then it might as well be true.
Kenopsia & Kenophobia
Kenopsia was also coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He defines it as “the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet”. These kinds of places include “a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds”. They are “emotional afterimages” that indicate how essential the presence of humans is to the function and maintenance of manmade systems. A place, in the absence of the context of human influence, is an empty space without much purpose or intention. Empty places feel like headstones of humanity, remnants that never fail to keep ghosts.
In kenopsia, an office no longer serves as a hub of human will, but a brief construction of lath and plaster that will succumb to the forces of nature in due time. In some way, it’s a future-tense mourning of the apocalypse, a reflection of our fear of lost ingenuity and productivity. We are reminded that the ultimate fate of all things will never align with their intended, original purpose. It also evokes kenophobia, the fear of empty spaces, which is unnatural on Earth but common throughout the Universe. Our very lives hinge on the ornately complex synergy of nature, and empty spaces remind us of the lifeless void to which we came from.
Scoptophobia & Fear of Being Seen
One of Weirdcore’s most distinctive elements is the presence of disembodied eyes or pupils. The eye is an inherently strange organ, it is paradoxical in nature. It is both revealing and concealing, lucid and mysterious, delicate and prepotent. It’s no wonder that the fear of being seen or watched, also known as scoptophobia, is a common motif in Weirdcore images. The eyes can tell a story, they carry years of grief in a single glance, and signify our every fear and desire. They are a powerful void, absorbing all kinds of light, without emitting much of their own. The visual has a way of dominating our perception unlike our other innate senses. Many people have an abstruse fear of being perceived by others, or a fear over the lack of control we have over other people’s independent perceptions of us. These anxieties have only intensified as we confront the startling lack of privacy in the digital age and the publicization of private life.
Conclusion
Weirdcore wouldn’t exist if not for the unique circumstances brought on by Internet culture. It’s an art movement that aligns perfectly with the social and psychological concerns of our youth. Still, it’s questionable whether or not the elements of Weirdcore will reverberate into future art movements or even materialize in other mediums, like film and literature. For now, the greater cultural significance of Weirdcore has yet to be realized by many. 𖦹↯