ARE WE POST-CORE?

November 24, 2025

GOOD AFTERNOON!

This is the POP CULTURE CHEAT SHEET, your weekly intel to fuel your water cooler conversations, delivered to your inbox every Monday. If someone forwarded you this email, be sure and subscribe here. 

LUNCH BREAK

five consumption recs for the time between meetings

  1. IT'S NUZZI PERSONAL. The Vanity Fair editor’s book debut was derailed by a compromising revelation by her ex-fiancee. 

  2. HOLY AUTEUR. God, if you’re listening, please leak the Pope’s Letterboxd.

  3. SPONGEBOB BIG GUY PANTS OKAY. The inner machinations of Ice Spice’s mind are an enigma. 

  4. SHE IS THE MOMENT. First looks at Charli xcx’s fictionalized tour documentary have hit the timeline.

  5. DOESN’T RING A (CHURCH) BELL. Surprised Kristin Bell is voicing Mary Magdalene for a Fox News Media Bible podcast? So was she.

ASK HL-Z

are we post-core?

Your hustle to the office this morning may have unwittingly been incredibly chic. You can attribute this to the latest trending aesthetic: “having a life core.” 

“Having a life core” is far less prescriptive than the ‘-core’s’ that came before; it isn’t associated with a particular color palette or rigid stylistic identity. Instead, it gestures toward something broader: the vibe that you have places to be, that you’re in demand, that you’ve cultivated a life worth rushing toward. It’s ultimately more about our cultural moment than our closets. Blasé is passé; it’s cool to care and try hard. 

Trying to compress that into a single look is tough, and that’s kind of the point. 

Ascribing a trend its ‘-core’ used to signal the beginning of the end. The moment something becomes a searchable tag, it’s primed to be overrun. The more paint-by-numbers a particular ‘-core’ is, the quicker it’ll be devoured by the algorithm, interpreted by Shein, and eventually collapse under the weight of its own ubiquity. 

Amorphous aesthetics are tougher for the algorithm to digest and commodify, giving them considerably longer shelf lives. The more nebulous “life-core” tells us effort is chic again; but more than that, it signals a cultural appetite for vibes that elude categorization.

TREND RAPPORT

viral vocab of the week 

FLOW STATE (n.) –  A state of total immersion in an activity, first popularized by wellness influencers and now co-opted facetiously by the broader culture.

ESDEEKID (proper n.) –  A masked UK rapper some are speculating to be a Timothee Chalamet side project. 

-PILLED (suffix) – Indicates intense fixation or indoctrination.

SEE YOU NEXT MONDAY!

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