It's Called an "Era," I Think: Chasing the Trend Cycle Until I Can't Find Myself

I consider myself a pretty off-line person, I'm always late to trends, however I'm not immune to them, I don't become a different person based on a 30 seconds video, but I get a little thorn in my side saying "did you see how that looked, maybe we should buy it or we should do it", and it keeps nagging until I replace it or force myself to take it out. I'm in my mid 20s, I have an idea of who I am, but the constant overexposure of different lifestyles gets to a point where I don't know if what I want came from me or if it came from something I watched and became part of my unconscious.

That led me into a brief panic, but it made realize that I'm categorizing myself into a "core". Am I dark academia, cottagecore, grandmacore or something else, I've been shoving myself into a core, mixing them yes, but nonetheless finding a tag that describe me. When I was younger this tags used to be long-lasting, I remember being an "otaku" (it started as a bullying term, but I took it as a fundamental term of my personality), and I was an otaku for years, it never wavered because I was sure that I was going to be one forever, I still watch anime, read manga and listen to J-pop, all the things that gave the otaku tag, however now it's more used nerdcore, animecore or something related to a core, and I've seen people adopting a nerdcore aesthetic for a week and then getting tired of it and moving to the next core. I'm not sure how I feel about all of this, I just feel like we are losing a key part of socialization, belonging a to a group it's fundamental for a rich socialization experience and we are losing it because we just want to be trendy.

The problem is in the Machinery of the "-Core", these platforms have figured out a cheat code for human identity. They’ve realized that who we are can be reduced to a mood board, packaged with a suffix like "-core," and sold back to us on a six-week subscription model.

Real subcultures used to take work. I remember my brother was really into the punk subculture, for him It wasn't just a look,it was a local scene, a sound, a set of ethics, and a reason to spend years hanging out in dingy basements or independent bookshops with people who shared his frustration with the world. he had to earn it, build it, and live it. Even now, in his late 30s he still has a lot of punk in him.

In the modern time the algorithm does the curating for us, stripping away everything that made those subcultures meaningful in the first place:

Visual Tokenization: The algorithm takes something like Cottagecore—which started as a genuine, if naive, desire to escape the digital grind and romanticize simple living—and boils it down to a visual checklist: a mushroom, a loaf of sourdough, a linen dress, and a rustic basket.

Instant Commercialization: The moment that visual cluster gets traction, fast-fashion brands replicate the look in cheap polyester. Within two weeks, a complex social response to modern burnout becomes an Amazon storefront starter pack.

Contextual Erasure: The people, the history, the politics, and the actual community vanish. You're left with the crust of the pie being passed off as the whole dessert.

Because there’s no underlying community holding these trends together, we become "aesthetic tourists." We don't join a movement; we just try on a costume. We buy the clothes, curate the room, make the videos, and perform the identity without ever actually living it. This take us into a cycle of rotational Micro-Trends, we do a continuous Performance and our Identity becomes fragmented and burnout

And because we’re not connected to any real values or community, we get bored incredibly fast. The aesthetic has a built-in shelf life. Once a look achieves total saturation and everyone's algorithm is serving it up, it loses its novelty. The feed senses engagement dropping, drops thats "era," and surfaces the next shiny thing.

This constant churn forces us into a loop of fast-fashion identity. Instead of asking "What do I actually care about?" or "What kind of person am I becoming?", the subconscious question becomes "What micro-aesthetic am I projecting this month?" I've stopped living in my room and start treating it like a set piece for a video.

What scares me is what happens underneath all these layers. When you strip away the tags, who is actually left? My sense of self sometimes feels like a collage of other people's Pinterest boards, constantly updating to the latest patch notes. It’s fun to play dress-up, but it's impossible to build a real life, with deep friendships, genuine skills, and lasting values, on a foundation of six-week micro-trends

Copying my brother's punk spirit I think most rebellious thing any of us can do right now is to slow down: we have to Invest in hobbies, books, and communities that require time, effort, and actual presence (not the trend of buying and never using, actual hobbies that we can do and not just consume. Refuse to fit into a neat, algorithmically named box. we can like 1970s design, study heavy psychology, listen to punk, and collect teacups without needing a platform to package it into a single "-core." and, the most important in my head, pick things you care about and stick with them over years rather than weeks.

I'm tired of chasing the next "era" of myself. I don't want an algorithm to hand me a curated lifestyle anymore, I just want to take the time to figure out who I am when the screen turns off.