In Praise of Brain Rot
It was Oxford’s word of the year in 2024, and of course I’ve heard it and used it a million times before. My kiddo recently asked “Mom, what’s your Gen X equivalent of brain rot?”, and I’ll admit I was a little stumped. When I asked for examples of it that weren’t specific to folks my age, I got “Skibidi Toilet” and “6-7”, neither of which I fully understand. I asked for a “modern” definition of brain rot and got, “You know, random, meaningless stuff that just gets tossed around on social media. Did you guys even have that kind of thing before the internet?”
“Yes, we had that kind of thing before the internet!” I insisted, but it still took me a minute to recall examples from days of yore. Here’s what I eventually came up with:
· A whole lot of strange toys. I’m still not sure what a Popple is supposed to be, or what prompted someone to invent Flubber.
· Video game characters. Was Pac-Man supposed to be anything in particular, or Qbert, or Digger?
· The slime-related antics from “You Can’t Do That On Television”
· A handful of really bizarre Monty Python skits I committed to memory
· That beer commercial that prompted us to stick out our tongues and yell “Wasssssuuuuuup!”
As it turns out, there was no shortage of brain rot in the 80s. We were generation “whatever”, after all. There weren’t the same quick delivery mechanisms, the same AI- generated slop, but we still had plenty that made our parents wonder what the heck we were talking about. We made our own nonsense, just like the generations before us made their own fun.
So, I started thinking about brain rot in general, past and present. What is its intended (or accidental) purpose? What’s its general function? Why is it so prominent with younger generations at the moment, so readily named and recognized, maybe even to the extent that it’s a point of pride?
When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you’re an existentialist, everything looks like… I’m pretty convinced that Gen Z brain rot is just the latest label for the absurd. Albert Camus, who didn’t live to experience our culture of random, weird cultural phenomena, spoke at length about what it is like to live with an awareness that the world around us is devoid of inherent meaning, that things only have the sense that we ascribe to them. Making the world make sense, for Camus, was a full-time, ongoing occupation, and it couldn’t be done with aid from institutions, traditions, or authority figures. Hence his fascination with Sisyphus, and his hope that we mortals might even one day be happy in this task, repeatedly pushing the boulder up the hill.
Odd dudes popping out of commodes, peculiar sequences of numbers, sigma, mewing…it’s all just part of our kids learning to be comfortable with things not making sense. The fact that everyone 18 and under is so keenly aware of brain rot is because their world and their reality is more keenly and immediately absurd than ours was. Finding meaning in this timeline is undoubtedly different than it was 30 years ago, most likely much more challenging, when all the usual rules and touchstones seem to be put through the shredder.
What’s even more interesting is waiting to see what comes next for Gen Z. As Gen X got older, our version of brain rot morphed into grunge, emo, goth and alternative culture. As we grew, we dealt with the absurd by going darker. Maybe the hipster movement was the millennial counterpoint to the absurdity of their childhoods.
I’m genuinely curious about what Gen Z brain rot will evolve into. I don’t think they, as collective, are irreparably damaged or lost. They aren’t terminally vapid and silly. They are, on the contrary, working through some stuff, just as we worked through our stuff. If anything, their extensive and ever-expanding library of brain rot is an indication that they’re capable of sitting comfortably alongside absurdity, even finding joy and amusement in it. All of this will be essential to them navigating and surviving whatever mayhem comes next. It’s kind of what Camus hoped for his boulder-pushing muse, isn’t it? Just as we grew into other versions of the absurd, Gen Z won’t stay in nonsensical, short-form, doom-scrolly mode forever, or if they do, they’ll learn to make the best of it. Anyone who can come up with slop like that on the fly, who can play with it, critique it, and communicate it is likely also capable of immense creativity and resourcefulness.
Maybe, one day, they’ll even be able to explain 6-7.