Namecore is the trend that unifies all trends

In short, with democratized access, the web became more saturated than ever before, and as consumers, we began to spend more and more time trying to sort through it all. In a state of analysis paralysis, how do we disaggregate signal from noise?

This problem of overabundance is why I wrote my piece last year. As consumption of digital media increas... See more

Thanks to the Internet, products across categories are now more susceptible to trends than to individual preferences. It’s easy to blame algorithms for the sameness of our taste choices, but the real culprit is us. Humans use social signals to quickly orient themselves in the world. On a daily basis, we actively classify one another by lifestyle, v

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The proliferation of “-core” style nicknames reminds me of what Kaitlyn Tiffany described as a staple of digital life, dating back to MySpace, Tumblr, and BuzzFeed quizzes: the urge to identify with esoteric aesthetic subcultures such as “cottagecore” and “romantic academia” and “pastel goth” because you want to locate your niche and belong somewhe... See more

It’s an attempt at repackaging ideas, attitudes, and aesthetics into identifiable trends — something that can be capitalized on for attention or profit, comprehended, and widely consumed by a mass audience.