Exploring TikTok’s uncanny corners and the strangely therapeutic aspects of weirdcore

A closer look at one of the strangest, subversive and stylistic sub-genres around.

There’s something strange happening on TikTok.

Grainy shots of abandoned hallways, glitching figures, and rumbling creatures with large eyes — so many eyes — flicker in and out of sight.

In one video, a goat-headed man with a clipboard welcomes us to a meadow garden. He notes that “reality feels too harsh for us to handle.” A shaky old camera pans around an empty mall as children shout and piano music rattles from headphone to headphone. A warning for “derealization” flashes as a red caption, allowing viewers susceptible to anxiety attacks to scroll past.

Terms associated with these videos include oddcore, weirdcore, liminal space, backrooms, and traumacore — but these are far from new. Liminal art and horror have always had a place in the digital plane.

Led by similarly shifting spaces seen on TV shows such as Twin Peaks, this kind of art has also found a home on platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter.

According to Urban Dictionary, weirdcore is “an aesthetic that contains red eyes, text, black boxes, and surreal images.” In TikTok’s…