It’s Giving… Core: Why Gen Z Needs to Label Every Feeling

I literally opened Pinterest the other day and saw:

• Nostalgia core

• Tomato girl summer

• Sad beige aesthetic

• Fairy grunge

And I had a mini identity crisis because I was like wait, am I strawberry milk core or ghost core?? Who am I?

It is 2023, and everything, I mean everything, is a vibe, a core, an aesthetic. But here is a deeper question: Why do we NEED to define every micro-feeling or phase with a label?

Turns out, there is psychology behind our “core” obsession.

Let’s start with cognitive closure, a psychological need to make things certain and organized. Our brains hate ambiguity. So when we feel complex emotions or go through new experiences, we crave neat labels to understand them.

Saying “I’m feeling weirdly sad but dreamy and kind of longing for a time I never lived in” sounds messy.

Saying “I’m in my cottagecore soft girl era”?

Boom. Instant clarity.

Also, assigning a “core” to your mood makes it feel less lonely. If there’s a whole aesthetic around your feeling, then you are not weird, just part of a community. It is like finding your people in a world full of chaos.

This is where social identity theory kicks in, we build our identity based on the groups (or cores) we belong to. Whether that’s dark academia, clean girl, or glitchpunk, it gives us a sense of self in an overwhelming, over-stimulated world.

I remember last December, I was not just tired. I was “burnout-core in a frosty grayscale filter with lo-fi playing.”

And weirdly? That label helped me cope.

So yeah, maybe the “core-ification” of everything seems silly. But it is actually how Gen Z is emotionally surviving in an overstimulated internet jungle.

Every aesthetic, every label, every micro-trend it is a small rebellion against chaos. A way of saying, “This is who I am. Or at least who I feel like today.”

Because in a world where we’re told to be everything…

Sometimes, naming your vibe is the only way to stay sane.