Online noise has rumbled through my words. Poetcore appears to be the defining aesthetic of 2026: the romanticization of longing, slow living, and personal exposition. But in a world that rewards and applauds noise, how do we find the honesty in one's work? What are the distinctions between truth and aspired recognition? Poets and writers alike have never been successful simply due to desire, but because their works expressed something disturbingly human and relatable. Noise is not relatable. Where once we could see the pitfalls of the soul and the meaning we force from tragedy in words, it seems to have been majorly replaced by AI- a step away from art and towards content. But where does that leave those who crave to see more than a product, who write with a meaning no machine can replicate?
Poetcore has its faults, but the meaning struggling to break free from the confines of the aesthetic is not wrong. In 2014, I started my first (of many) Tumblr accounts. I was transitioning into middle school and had a mildly successful wattpad account, but I discovered something so unlike what I had read in the world of half finished novels. A poetic reflection on a woman's journey of self, she compared herself to Joan of Arc, using so few words to paint a pain I did not know I felt. Try as I may, I can no longer find this piece. But it sparked me to join a community of poets, writers, and artists who - for better or worse - wanted to express themselves in a raw and honest way. They focused on quality over quantity, a large portion only putting work out when they felt they had something to say. The goal was to slow down and focus on what plagued you. To sit in an uncomfortable stillness with a version of you that you did not know, and to tear yourself open until you found the heart.
Poetcore, how I remember it, was brutal, violent, and painfully human. I believe the modern-day version still, at its heart, tries to replicate this. But the parrot cannot mimic the truth, only what it sees.
And what we saw was a push to fame. When the internet bubble exploded and small online artists in niche communities found themselves adored by the public masses, many of those who touched on authenticity began valuing quantity over quality. But is it their fault? When you are journaling and every thought or feeling becomes mere content; how can you keep track of who you are as a person? When your honesty turns to trends and your authenticity to virality? Platforms reward constant exposure, and eventually even vulnerability becomes performative. The danger lies in this: in the idea that your struggles and your passions can be mere content. They cannot. We have seen what honest writing looks like before, and once you have witnessed it, imitation no longer satisfies.
Honesty is the core of art, the ability to be vulnerable and expose the deepest parts of you. But I have written pieces destined for obscurity or anonymity. In revealing my shame, I gain the strength to retain what belongs to me. To keep a small portion of myself for my eyes only so no trend or discourse could ever make me forget who I am and what drives my work.
It is a form of survival that has existed for as long as the craft of writing has. For women especially. Madeleine de Scudéry understood what it meant to navigate authorship as a woman in a world that rarely welcomed female intellect without qualification or mediation. Sylvia Plath turned domestic isolation, grief, and fury into language that still unsettles readers because it refuses to soften itself. Mary Shelley, writing Frankenstein at eighteen after enduring repeated loss and instability, transformed fear and loneliness into something immortal. None of these women wrote because vulnerability was profitable. They wrote because expression became inseparable from survival. I choose to believe in the reader, that they can distinguish and carry a story that has sincerity versus a story that panders. Much like any other art, writing is a sanctuary for the reader as much as the writer, and if a story carries little value or sincerity for the writer, the readers will feel such an absence. Much of the Poetcore writing we see today is shaped around speed, visibility, and algorithms rather than the slow sincerity art demands. There are writers who remain true to themselves and their craft, and we see them achieve wonderful things for such bravery. But if we continue to glamorize the idea of writing for the production of products, what will remain for future generations? The real question becomes this: how should we be remembered? For me, the answer lies in the painful veracity of my art. We witnessed the wake of individuality, and it was beautiful. And still, what we crave is sincerity.
Perhaps that is what I search for when I write: not recognition, but the feeling I had as a girl staring at a woman’s forgotten poem comparing herself to Joan of Arc. A stranger reaching through a screen not to perform pain, but to confess it and to bear it. The internet buried much of that sincerity beneath noise and production, but not completely. We witnessed what sincerity looked like once. It existed in forgotten Tumblr poems, in half-anonymous confessions written at three in the morning, in stories never intended for virality. It existed in women who wrote because silence would have destroyed them. Perhaps that is what art has always been: not performance, not production, but proof of survival.
