Digital culture has allowed a multiplicity of identity types to flourish and express themselves.
While identity-seeking is one of the core pursuits of any youth culture, for Gen Z, identity is a journey, not a destination. This generation has grown up creating their identities for online spaces, where identity is transient by design. YouTube is an ideal platform for people to learn how to adopt and adapt aesthetics they’re interested in.
“For people who want to explore, watching a video is going to give them a fuller picture than anything else,” says Brennan. Video guides instruct people on how to pull all the elements of an aesthetic together to create the intended vibe.
“In a video, you can see a creator go through their Y2K look,” says Brennan. “Or ‘here’s what I do when I’m vaporwave.’” Here’s the growth of just aesthetic guides, the chart below depicting views of videos related to key aesthetics with “guide,” “tutorial,” or “how to” in the title. These could be videos, for example, that’d appear in searches for “Guides to Cottagecore Aesthetic.”
YouTube also allows people to create and explore endless variations of an aesthetic in a way previous generations never could.
“This particular cycle is about hyper-niche identity creation,” says Brennan. “It allows people to go more narrow. Say you’re a jock — are you a volleyball jock? Or a basketball jock? And it’s happening at a deeper level, bleeding into all aspects of life.”
That can be seen in the different categories that aesthetic videos can be organized into. Craft videos, for example, help people endow their physical environments with visual traits of their preferred aesthetic. Gaming videos follow the same idea, with examples of how to modify a game’s environment to match an aesthetic.
There’s one more fascinating aspect of aesthetics online, and that’s the fact that unlike much of internet culture, the culture of aesthetics skews heavily female. This is especially poignant in the way older aesthetics are reclaimed, reinterpreted and repurposed.
“In the ’90s, grunge was a very specific thing: Nirvana, jeans, plaid,” says Brennan. “But on Tumblr in the 2010s and now on platforms like YouTube, it took on its own meaning in primarily feminine-led communities. For grunge, girls in 2014 saw like one black-and-white image, and said, ‘Yes, I’m going to build my entire life off of this.’ They are making their own meaning of the word.”
Ultimately, the variability of aesthetics may be the biggest reason for its Gen Z-fueled rise. In online culture, you can adopt and abandon identities as quickly as you can start a new Instagram account. And the sheer amount of aesthetics being created and explored means a teen has a good shot at finding a way to say, “This is who I feel I am right now.”
As Brennan puts it: “If you feel good by saying you want to live a Goblincore life because that’s what you identify with, I’m glad there’s a word to articulate it.”
To further explore the world of aesthetics rising on YouTube, have a look at some creators who exemplify the forms:
1) Cottagecore:
Image Source: Youtube Blog
2) Dark Academia:
Image Source: Youtube Blog
3) Royaltycore:
Image Source: Youtube Blog
4) Y2K:
Image Source: Youtube Blog
5) Dreamcore:
Image Source: Youtube Blog
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