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The most powerful TikTok trend we have
Every day we are confronted with a succession of new TikTok micro-trends: a phenomenon that falls as quickly as it rises. The cycle churns so fast they essentially have no meaning.
Video: TikTok | ki11ix
In 2022 alone, there’s been:
balletcore,
bimbo reclamation,
clean girl,
clowncore,
coastal grandmother,
cottagecore,
coquette aesthetic,
dark academia,
fairycore,
goblincore,
indie sleaze,
night luxe,
normcore,
regencycore,
twee,
etc.
Video: TikTok | jassome
But what does it all mean? Are they aesthetic trends, or subcultures? Mindsets, or vibes? Perhaps it’s just people having a laff on the internet.
Video: TikTok | bxrbiegirlxoxo
Throughout history, subcultures have emerged consistently - we’ve had punk, hardcore, mods, hippies, goths, New Romantics, ravers, scene kids, hipsters and emos. All attached to an ideology, representative of a cultural resistance to dominant society.
Video: TikTok | kelley.heyer
These TikTok-bred micro-trends cycle so fast it’s hard to extract any true meaning from them.
As social media decentralises culture there’s no longer a mainstream to oppose — and these movements feel empty.
Dick Hebdige,
All aspects of culture possess a semiotic value… Our task becomes to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code on the glossy surfaces of style, to trace them out as ‘maps of meaning’.
In Subculture: The Meaning of Style
Video: TikTok | cassandravoelker
“
Are we having a spiritual awakening though?
Video: TikTok | Angela Mariano
Micro-trends are more spiritually akin to absurdist internet humour than any meaningful subculture. It’s an attempt to give language to core ideas, essences, and the vibes of existing — and capture it.
Video: TikTok | Rose Kelso
'Feral girl' is the closest we’ve had to a TikTok trend rooted in an ideology — however ironic.
A rejection of the wellness movement, it asks us to find comfort in ignoring pressures to be presentable at all times.
FERAL
GIRLS
When everything is accessible, ride-and-dying by a subculture or alternative identity no longer has the allure it once did. There’s still currency in being in the know, being someone who ‘gets it.’
Cultural co-existence
For Gen Z, there are infinite identities and micro-cultures — that co-exist and stay in their lane — to try on and play around with. There is room for the clean girls, the feral girls, the whimsical girls, and the twee girls.
Video: TikTok | Kiko Moon
WORDS: Geordie GrayPRODUCER: Bianca Farmakis
																		

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/web-stories/free/the-australian/how-tiktok-microtrends-made-everything-meaningless