About

30core, also known as 30theory, refers to a "-core" video genre prevalent on TikTok. Similar to Pinkcore, editors within the genre mostly piece together "shooter" video game footage and shitposts, predominantly using fade-to-white transitions and non-hip-hop audios. Also, a common part of 30core videos is a person saying the TikToker's account name such as Bludlung or Ballincat43, among others. The 30core trend started in 2023.

Origin

30core started with a video posted by TikToker^[1] @bludlung on June 8th, 2023. The video started with a man saying "Shout out to bludlung," and used videos of Semetary and Black Ops gameplay, as well as the Pluh sound effect. Over the course of two months, the video gained roughly 1.4 million plays and 264,500 likes (shown below).

Spread

On June 10th and 11th, 2023, posted two more videos to TikTok^[2][3] with the hashtags #30core and #30theory. One video used a Bladee song (shown below, left) and the other used the Pinegrove Shuffle song "Need 2" by Pinegrove (shown below, right). The latter of which gained over 2.1 million plays and 412,500 likes in one month.

Going into late June and early July 2023, other editors on TikTok started to pick up on the visual aesthetics of 30core videos. In turn, many joined the hashtag, making similar videos as Bludlung. For instance, one of the first copycats was TikToker^[4] @pluhbruh, whose first video, which heavily featured the rapper Joeyy, was posted on July 10th, 2023, gained roughly 62,900 plays and 6,100 likes in one month (shown below, left).

On July 13th, 2023, TikToker^[5] @ballincaat43 posted their first 30core video. Similarly to Bludlung, their video featured a guy saying their username. It received roughly 3.5 million plays and 744,200 likes in one month (shown below, right).

By August 11th, 2023, #30core^[6] had amassed over 110.5 million views on TikTok.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References