When we first introduced this column, we promised you’d be armed with new terms to impress the younger netizens who peruse the same internet as you. However, all the slang Scrolling in the Deep covers actually fall under one umbrella term you may or may not be familiar with: Brainrot.
We’ve shared explainers on “Mewing,” “Mogged,” and most recently, “Cooked.” But if you already knew all these terms beforehand, I have some unfortunate news: You definitely have brainrot—and there’s no saving you.
Brainrot—or brain rot—is simply another way to say you’re “chronically online”: Your screen time is sky high, you know all the TikTok trends, and most importantly, you can wield Gen Z lingo as if you’re a digital native. In other words, you participate in all the things that “rot your brain,” according to internet users. Fellow millennials can compare it to the ubiquitous “it be that damn phone” catchphrase that plagued their childhood.
Just like most of their slang, the way Gen Alpha/Z uses brainrot depends on the context. The term can be used to playfully refer to one’s own cognitive decline, or to insult someone for spending too much time online and not enough time touching grass.
If you come across someone who can’t stop saying “skibidi toilet,” or quoting viral TikTok sounds like, “Show me to me Rachel,” chances are they have a terminal case of brainrot. I myself realized I had complete brainrot when I tried to fast-forward my friend’s storytime. Reader, they were talking to me in real life.
Speaking from personal experience, one can get brainrot by simply being too online. Whether you intentionally subject yourself to TikTok trends or have memes thrust upon you by simply being an avid internet user, brainrot chooses you, not the other way around.
It needs to be said, however, that brainrot is often seen as the worst-case scenario for our psyches. Many have argued that being brain rotten is mutually exclusive with having basic empathy.
Opinion pieces have been penned on how TikTok and the internet have desensitized us to the harrowing historical events we are living through. Take for instance just last week, when an assassination attempt on the former president gave rise to satirical memes. Or when Queen Elizabeth died, huge X accounts dubbed the day one of “the best in Twitter history.” Regardless of how you may feel about either event, it’s safe to say the internet has “rotted our brains” into coping by spewing online speak: Memes and slang.
Gen Alpha isn’t unscathed, either. Take this Redditor, who claimed that after confiding in a friend about his near-death experience, he was met with brainrot speak. “Bro might be cooked, ngl,” was the friend’s response to him almost drowning. Understandably, the poster was upset by this friend’s lighthearted response to the traumatizing experience.
There are other types of brainrot, and they can be used as labels within fandoms. For example, a Bridgerton fan account might have the username “Polin brainrot” to signify that most of their posts will be about the fictional relationship between the characters Colin and Penelope. Similarly, a House of the Dragon page that tweets exclusively about the HBO show might describe themselves as having “HotD brainrot,” and so on.
The most important question, at least to those who want to no longer be chronically online, is can you get rid of brainrot? I myself have not found a way out, but that comes with the job.
Others, however, have found ways to escape by abandoning the media industry, deleting all their social media accounts, or simply going outside.
But the FOMO might be too much for some who yearn to have the condition metastasize in their heads. As one X user admitted last week, “I just want to say that I missed the ENTIRE assassination because I was at my local community garden helping seniors prune peach trees, I WAS LITERALLY TOUCHING GRASS which just goes to show you that you should never log off not even for a second.”
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