Hopecore Might Be The Internet’s Cry For Help

I am perched on my sofa, back hunched, scrolling TikTok, deep in my daily doomscrolling session. I have a complex relationship with this app, believing it to be both terrible and brilliant, a paradoxical belief that has caused me to exhibit contrasting behaviours towards it. I delete it off my phone for months at a time, insistent that I will never need it again, then redownload it on the spur of the moment and gawk at it for hours each day. Currently, it is very much back, and I am sucked back into the madness of the For You page, in which my brain tries to process influencer marketing interspersed with footage of the atrocities in Gaza, jumping from one emotion to the next at breakneck speed, as if this format is completely normal. I feel exhausted by the autoplay, the algorithm, and the sheer volume of it all, an endless list of content that I could hypothetically watch forever.

During this particular scroll, a strange caption to an otherwise unassuming meme grabs my attention. It’s an oasis of positivity in an otherwise harsh desert. It reads, “the horrors persist, but so do I.” I flick through the slideshow of photos to find more optimistic content: photos of sunsets, fields of flowers, ocean vistas, all captioned with hopeful takes on the complexities of life. “Lovely things come and go, but they come” and “I consider my best friend proof that the universe is conspiring in my favour” are just some of the examples I come across, sparking small fires of joy in my otherwise jaded brain.

I glance at the description of the video and find the tag ‘#hopecore’ waiting for me at the bottom left of my screen. I am pleasantly surprised to find a whole world of content spreading the same hopeful messages, ranging from old Tumblr posts of positive reflections on common struggles we face, clips of strangers being kind to children, to advice shared by those in therapy. One clip that appears more than once is a video of Amy Winehouse winning a Grammy award presented to her by her idol, Tony Bennett. The expression of genuine amazement on her face is powerful, a sentiment echoed in the comments in internet speak: “such a renaissance painting,” one reads. I decide this is one corner of TikTok for me.

After spending some time digging into the hashtag, there are several factors that contribute to the millions of likes that Hopecore gains. Hopefulness is an important part of life, a useful coping mechanism and a mindset that enables us to see opportunities that would otherwise be missed. There are several quotes that I feel best encapsulate the appeal Hopecore holds. Below are a few that sum up this pleasant, and completely necessary, corner of the internet.