Hopecore

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Hopecore is an aesthetic and philosophy based on hope and humanity. It focuses on the human condition and the special everyday interactions with nature, other humans, and even inanimate objects. Hopecore is not necessarily religious but it definitely is spiritual and commonly accompanied by a strong sense of sonder.

Hopecore reminds us that life is beautiful and fragile.

Elements[]

Hopecore doesn't have a visual section as it is a philosophical aesthetic, but there are certain elements commonly seen in hopecore.

Everyday human kindness
- Children
- Helping old people
- Friendship and Family
Appreciating nature
Appreciating human craft
Cooking hearty food
Objects of personal value
Art
Motivational phrases

Concepts[]

There are five main concepts to keep in mind when talking about hopecore:

Hope: Hope can function as a coping strategy: it allows you to focus on something positive even in times when everything seems negative, and it motivates you to ‘see the bright side’ of the situation. This helps you identify opportunities –however small– which may otherwise go unnoticed. It can also give you a boost in confidence, courage, and ambition. Hence, hope functions as a requisite to survive and thrive: hopeful people are quicker to recover from illness, and when someone ‘loses all hope’, they no longer want to live. This emotion is, however, relatively resilient (‘hope dies last’).^[1]

Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you'll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. (via the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).^[2]

Yūgen: Usually translated as “mysterious profundity.” It refers to the beauty that we can feel sense into an object, even though the beauty doesn’t exist in the literal sense of the word and cannot be seen directly. Yūgen is a sense not to enjoy the superficial beauty of an object, which is in front of our eyes but to enhance the beauty more impressive by imagining its latent beauty.^[3]

Humanity: It is a virtue linked with basic ethics of altruism derived from the human condition. It also symbolises human love and compassion towards each other.^[4]

Melancholy: It is not rage or bitterness; it is a noble species of sadness that arises when we are properly open to the idea that suffering and disappointment are at the heart of human experience. It is not a disorder that needs to be cured; it is a tender-hearted, calm, dispassionate acknowledgement of how much agony we will inevitably have to travel through.^[5]

Other less defined, yet just as important, concepts are little joys, random acts of kindness, the act of creation and existence.

"To refuel and replenish ourselves in a life-giving way, we need to embrace life's little joys. To be curious about the way the sunlight dances through the trees, or why the little finch is singing so loudly. We need to notice the sky at dawn, the little bud that has flowered, and the girl on the bike with her ponytails flying in the breeze, because these moments are power foods for the human soul." — Homaira Kabir, The Overlooked Benefits of Little Joys

On TikTok[]

Hopecore has found its way into TikTok in the form of short videos comprised of emotional clips from movies, interviews and victories from sports or entertainment events (such as the Emmys or the Oscars), less commonly nature timelapses. These videos are accompanied by motivational music (very commonly My Way by Frank Sinatra) in the background.

Web weaving[]

Web weaving (often hyphenated to "web-weaving") is - along with the fanmix, the moodboard, and specific music - a genre of transformative works of art, endemic to the internet blogging website tumblr. A web weaving is any combination of images (such as of famous paintings), captured still images from film or television, prose quotes, song lyrics, lines of poetry, and excerpts from film scripts, which have a theme in common, or a unifying set of symbols, and which are presented together in a sequence to be enjoyed as a coherent single work of art.^[6]

They are often meant to evoke either a sense of tenderness and hope or melancholy and sorrow, all emotions essential to hopecore.

Media[]

Movies[]

American Beauty
American Honey
Life of Pi
Miffy and Friends
Peanut Butter Falcon
Swiss Army Man

TV Shows[]

Mob Psycho 100

Video games[]

Earthbound
Katamari Damacy
Undertale

Music[]

There is no one genre of music for hopecore, what's most important is the topics. The main topics being friendship, the beauty of life and love. Hopecore's aesthetics, however, are best suited to genres like Sunshine Pop, a pop subgenre that emphasizes appreciation for the beauty of the world.

Artists[]

Playlists[]

Resources[]

Blogs

Gallery[]

References[]

Rizvic, S. (2023, June 5). How gen Z tiktokers replaced doom scrolling with #Hopecore. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-gen-z-tiktokers-replaced-doom-scrolling-with-hopecore

Rodriguez-Garcia, K. (2023, March 19). “hopecore” is a motivational trend that reinforces false hope. https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/digital-culture/hopecore-a-positive-outlook-or-glorification-of-the-american-dream/

[1] ttps://emotiontypology.com/positive_emotion/hope/

[2] ttps://www.holstee.com/blogs/mindful-matter/sonder

[3] ttps://nomurakakejiku.com/lesson_lineup/yuugen

[4] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanity_(virtue)

[5] ttps://www.theschooloflife.com/article/in-praise-of-melancholy/

[6] ttps://everything2.com/title/web+weaving

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