Femcelcore

To me, the femcelcore content is reminiscent of the sad-girl Tumblr aesthetic from 2014 just rebranded.

Similarly, the iteration of ‘femcelcore’ on TikTok that we analyse, unlike the ‘traditional’ femcel, appears to be sarcastic, ironic and funny, and the use of memes only underscores this affective orientation: ‘Femcels are screaming into the void, but laughing while they do so’ (Bergeron-Stokes, 2023).

At the intersection of femcelcore and heteropessimism is a hard kernel of defiance. The femcel is unapologetically toxic. She is not concerned with bettering herself.