Tedcore

Tedcore is a charitable way to describe what I’d call self-help circle jerk. This article about the phenomenon is brilliant. I’ll quote the intro but recommend reading the whole thing:

You are a victim. A person of anxious experience, navigating a minefield of shame triggers. Research suggests that people with your attachment style are predisposed to dissociating. Some experts believe this very sentence could re-traumatize you. It’s not your fault, of course. You just need to reframe your narrative.

This is the language of a coalescing sub-genre of self-help books that combine the comforting yet impenetrable vocabulary of modern therapy with pseudoscientific grand theories on human behavior… These are the new bourgeois bibles – foundational texts for a generation of yuppies adrift.

These books peddle feel-good Marvel movie versions of philosophy that don’t challenge our conceptions, but validate our feelings, often backing up their circular logic with dubious “research” and “experts”.

Working in tech, I know a lot of people who are all in on the Tedcore thing, constantly talking about trauma, despite coming from some idyllic American suburb or whatever. And I find it increasingly difficult to have even simple conversations with Tedcorians.