Muristek
Since this term was created we have had goblincore, and even Covidcore. But this year has brought the worst iteration ...
Remember normcore? Back in 2014, a far more innocent time, a bunch of friends coined the term as tongue-in-cheek social commentary. It was supposed to describe a “post-authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness”. A journalist got wind of the word and published a piece describing the trend in rather more user-friendly terms – ie all the cool kids are wearing sensible shoes and dressing like Jerry Seinfeld. Suddenly, normcore was everywhere. New York magazine declared Pope Francis “our normcore Pope”. Vogue crowned the Duchess of Cambridge “the Duchess of Normcore”. Nobody seemed to really care what normcore actually meant; they just liked saying it. For good reason: it’s a strangely satisfying word.
Normcore eventually faded from the headlines but it didn’t entirely disappear. “-core” became the new “-gate”: irresistible linguistic Lego that you could attach to almost anything. Cottagecore had a moment. So did Regencycore, warcore, gorpcore, pearlcore, Covidcore, goblincore and mushroomcore. Blimey.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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