Doosie, has a legally embattled digital news magazine been granted its own niche aesthetic? Or am I getting this wrong? What is Crikeycore?
Alyx! Not quite. While digital media merch is obviously the pinnacle of style, Crikeycore is something else. We aren’t sure exactly what yet, but if you can imagine Americans imagining an Aussie aesthetic based on watching Bluey, you’re probably getting close.
Some time last week magicalnursekomugi, an exasperated US Tumblr user, coined the term while describing a stock image featuring fairy bread and milk. This was making a fairly earnest point about the exoticisation of Japanese and Korean culture by westerners, but well, plenty of Tumblr users were just amused and appalled by the popular Australian party snack. The post was shared nearly 14,000 times then it migrated to Twitter and Reddit. Crikeycore was born.
this post is making me insane dhgfdbdf pic.twitter.com/BrHEa1ovR2
— ✨ SEABIES ✨ (@radicalseabies) February 15, 2023
OK, I have a lot of follow-up questions, but I’m going to try to deliver them one at a time. First of all, what does Crikeycore look like? Are we talking Romance Was Born’s Iced Vovo dress? Or is it more Irwin-khaki urban safari?
The visual definition is still under construction and at the whim of the internet – it really could go in any direction. For now, think any naff Australiana Americans may have been exposed to through popular culture. Cork hats – and yes, Steve Irwin’s signature khakis – playing pass the parcel and eating Weet-Bix.
i love crikeycore https://t.co/q1nzT3PR3c pic.twitter.com/KMqz2xTC4u
— tvcoveredwalls (@tvcoveredwalls_) February 17, 2023
Adding a VB gibbet to one’s Crocs has been a proposed expression of Crikeycore, while Harry Styles doing a shoey, according to some on Twitter, is not Crikeycore (it’s just disgusting and hilarious).
This is NOT crikeycore but it IS disgusting https://t.co/c9mXzAR0Zl
— Crikeycore Scholar (@julesfurious) February 20, 2023
This is crikeycore https://t.co/XRRx2V7lMm
— Crikeycore Scholar (@julesfurious) February 20, 2023
OK, so it’s Crocodile Dundee: The Next Generation. Next big question, I read the comments under these posts. Why are people saying Australia doesn’t exist?
Oh my God, this is still a thing?! Back in 2017 a viral Facebook post from Sweden sent Australian users into an existential meltdown by claiming the country itself is an elaborate hoax and we are “all paid actors or computer-generated personas”.
Fresh twist on an old meme. I feel you. Speaking of: people are still using Tumblr?
Yes apparently they are. Tumblr, the bastion of second-wave social media weirdness that it is, has never stopped churning out “-cores”. Its peak usage year, 2014, has even spawned its own megacore, with the whole embarrassing debacle given a rinse and repeat by gen Z on TikTok (#Tumblr2014 has nearly 360m views) to form what Nylon dubbed Tumblrcore, a nostalgic take on flannel shirts and fishnets from that bygone era of … less than a decade ago.
Using Tumblr has even become part of the aesthetic. According to its chief executive, last year more than 60% of new users and nearly half of all active users were gen Z.
I’m so heartened that young weirdos still have a space on the web. Now, what about their basic peers? Has Crikeycore made it to TikTok?
While Aussiecore (as distinct from Crikeycore) is kind of a thing on TikTok, it’s mostly people being intentionally ocker, tongue-in-cheek cooking demonstrations for Nescafé and Vegemite toast and descriptions of uniquely Australian phenomena like the smell your Kmart blow heater emits the first time you turn it on for the year. Aussiecore is an Australian-on-Australian in-joke, while Crikeycore is something that’s being projected on to us, not by us.
But with mullets enjoying an oddly sincere renaissance, surely it’s only a matter of time before the global youth are unironically serving Viennettas as an after-school snack – and filming it.
And what about the Tumblr user who coined the term? Can we expect a starring role alongside Ruby the Roo in a Tourism Aus campaign any time soon?
Probably not. Already lamenting having “become an enemy of every Australian on Twitter”, they’ve said they are now living in fear of the hashtag finding its way to Instagram, from where it will surely take over the world.
Crikey!
