Stylogeny combining Internet Ugly × Weirdcore

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Style combination · Contrasts

Internet Ugly × Weirdcore

Both caption a crude found picture, but white Impact capitals ask for a laugh and a crowd to copy them; one small red lowercase line asks whether you are lost. Decide which the caption is for before choosing the picture.

From the research on Weirdcore & Dreamcore

Mix them and make something Internet Ugly Weirdcore

TOGETHERTOGETHERTOGETHERInternet Ugly × Weirdcore2003 · 2019
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Internet Ugly, their arrangement from Weirdcore, the finish from Weirdcore. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

01

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Weirdcore & Dreamcore

Type from Internet Ugly
Colour from Internet Ugly
Form from Internet Ugly
Composition from Weirdcore
Surface from Weirdcore

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Internet Ugly

Together

Anton, standing in for Impact (Geoffrey Lee, Stephenson Blake, 1965), set white with a black outline

Text · Weirdcore

An internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister. Found or low-quality snapshots of empty, half-familiar places (playgrounds, classrooms, malls, corridors) are crudely edited: disembodied eyes in clouds or darkness, faceless figures in doorways, and short captions such as 'nothing is real' in red or inside black voids. The aim is anemoia, a nostalgia for places one never knew, turned into unease and the feeling of being watched.

Instrument Sans; Weirdcore used Short captions in out-of-place red text ('are you lost?', 'nothing is real'), typed in whatever plain default face the editing app offers and dropped onto the photograph and White text inside black rectangular voids pasted over the picture, the void heightening the message

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Internet Ugly, with a counter-accent from Weirdcore. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Weirdcore & Dreamcore

  • #ffffff ground · 36%
  • #000000 ink · 14%
  • #00a2e8 accent · 18%
  • #ff0000 accent · 14%
  • #ff7f27 accent · 10%
  • #cfc07a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #000000;
  --accent-1: #00a2e8;
  --accent-2: #ff0000;
  --accent-3: #ff7f27;
  --accent-4: #cfc07a;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Instrument Sans", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular: Most meme templates are photographs of real people, often children, or licensed stock. Success Kid is Laney Griner's son: the photo has been licensed to advertisers, and in January 2020 she sent a cease-and-desist letter to a congressman whose fundraising campaign used it without permission. Distracted Boyfriend is microstock, and its photographer says use without a proper licence is not allowed. License a template or make a new picture for commercial or political work. Check what a format means now: some characters that spread through 4chan were taken up as hate symbols (the ADL listed Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie's 2005 Boy's Club character, in 2016, while noting that most uses are not hateful). Reaction images of Black people posted by non-Black users and brands read as digital blackface (Lauren Michele Jackson, Teen Vogue, 2017), and deep-fried memes came out of Black Twitter, so credit where formats come from. When brands and campaigns borrow a format, its makers often protest or drop it (Douglas).

Weirdcore & Dreamcore: Weirdcore's found snapshots are other people's photographs, often of real homes, schools and playgrounds (the Backrooms photo was a real shop interior in Wisconsin, identified only in 2024): shoot or license your own places, and leave identifiable children and private interiors out. Its makers describe it as built to unsettle, from 'existentialism and derealization' (Nylon, 2021) to an 'aesthetic that can cause a panic attack' (a @unttochable video quoted by i-D, 2021), so take care before aiming it at children or using it near mental-health subjects, and keep video cuts to three or fewer flashes a second (WCAG 2.3.1).

04

The two styles

2003–present · Global / networked, North America Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular A deliberately amateur image dialect of forums, imageboards and social feeds, named 'Internet Ugly' by Nick Douglas in 2014. Figures are drawn with a mouse in MS Paint, photos are found and crudely pasted together, and captions shout in white Impact capitals with a black outline, top and bottom, or in Comic Sans. Re-saving and 'deep-frying' wear the pixels down. The joke's setup and punchline are the layout, and every template is made for a crowd to copy; some are clean stock photos that only the labels make a meme. A grainy image shows an empty swing set on a muddy grassy playground bordered by houses and a chain-link fence. An enormous eye appears among pink clouds in the blue sky and is reflected in a foreground puddle, with small red text reading “still here.” 2019–present · Global / networked Weirdcore & Dreamcore An internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister. Found or low-quality snapshots of empty, half-familiar places (playgrounds, classrooms, malls, corridors) are crudely edited: disembodied eyes in clouds or darkness, faceless figures in doorways, and short captions such as 'nothing is real' in red or inside black voids. The aim is anemoia, a nostalgia for places one never knew, turned into unease and the feeling of being watched.

05

More combinations

With Internet Ugly

All 18 combinations with Internet Ugly

With Weirdcore

All 11 combinations with Weirdcore

Every style combination