A Reflection on a Dopamine Desperate Generation.

Alas, we’re here again. The pangs of boredom had begun during the library session

(granted its early but we committed to locking in this year), as had the throwaway

commitments to limiting screen time usage, motivational TedTalks about how easy it

is to learn everything in 5 minutes, the insistence that cold showers do actually

have benefits (they don’t they just make you shiver), discipline, consistency etc etc.

We all have the right to unchecked optimism every once in a while. Alas we’re back

in the sunken place, that cesspit of congealed, sticky dopamine: TikTok.

We’ve all been there, I like to think, we’re all gluttons when it comes to this thing, this

all you can eat buffet of 10 second hits, each more egregious than the last, trance-

like in our acquiescence. But something interesting has begun to shoot out of the

algorithm. Ok maybe not ‘interesting’, but it makes me curious. The

#corecore/nichetok phenomenon (really?) constitutes a tying together of seemingly

disparate cultural references in an absurd, sometimes jovial, often hopeless

combination of photos and videos often set to obscure music or commentary. It is an

attempt, I believe, to convey in some form the absurdity of our human condition,

more particularly our generations condition, and the irony of the escape we seek

while remaining encapsulated, sedated, compressed within the confines of this shell:

namely, the doom scroll.

The genre has its origins in the work of Adam Curtis whose documentary film making

undertakes the cerebral exercise of explaining the operation of power in modern

societies, more particularly how this power has been drained from the old elites and

is now concentrated in the hands of corporations, bankers, technocrats, and

dictators (other interpretations are available). His work progresses haphazardly

along the boundaries of conspiracy theory although it is more the style of his

filmmaking, its aesthetic, that captures the essence of #corecore. It is the fusion of

images from across the cultural spectrum, the embedded contradictory nature of

which poses questions, ironically approximates a narrative. What makes this thing

relevant? Why is it funny? What is it about a cat travelling on an automatic hoover, a

man dancing in the rain, stills from a Tarkovsky picture, interview footage of Colonel

Gaddafi, set to Boards of Canada’s ‘Aquarius’; in which realm are we now?

I think that this speaks more pertinently to the prevailing discourse of doom that

surrounds our generation and the means which we have of escaping. We are the

first generation to have simultaneously witnessed both the birth of ChatGPT and the

rapid melting of the ice caps. We have grown up with access to social media from a

fairly young age, and yet we are old enough to recognise that this wasn’t always how

things were. We have seen this thing germinate, this parasite squirm its way into our

collective consciousness, the synaptic clefts of our culture. The fetishisation of the

individual, the pursuit of esteem, coolness, difference but difference commodified,

appropriated by pop culture, projected through this insular prism, this black mirror

deity. We now operate in what might be something like Bentham’s conception of the

Panopticon. An all-seeing eye for whom we perform and mimic but can never really

escape or conceive of an alternative. The revolution, as Gil Scott-Heron imagines,

will not be televised, neither will it take place in hearts and minds, it will be

live-streamed, devoured as content while someone intermittently promotes the use of

Ozempic.

#Corecore, then, at least recognises this absurd reality. And maybe it is this

recognition, if fleeting, between scrolls, that we live in a world of contradiction:

beauty, grotesque greed, joy, nausea, conflict, all the time strapped to a screen,

haemorrhaging data, which is funny, never mind dark. It is a reminder of where we

have been, what we constitute as a species, histories, traumas, comedies

intertwined in shortform. Where does the genre (if we can call it that) go from here?

Who knows? Maybe it becomes increasingly siloed as most things do online,

increasingly curated to entertain different audiences, different niches. Equally, it

might be time to uninstall, unplug, we’ve gone too far down this rabbit hole,

maybe it’s time to go outside for a bit.