What Is "Brainrot"? The Social Media Trend Explained

The word "brainrot" has been around the web for a while, but in recent years it seems to be popping up in mainstream internet culture, So you're likely to see someone use the word in a comment on social media, or to hear references to brainrot in videos or in articles. So let's do the opposite of brainrot, and learn you something new.

What Does “Brainrot” Mean?

The term brainrot has a few connotations, but mainly there are two related uses for it. First, brainrot is a dazed state of mind you get from spending too much time online, and particularly engaging with inane content. So, in some ways, it's related to the concept of "doomscrolling." For example, you might say "I got brainrot from too much doomscrolling."

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The other way to apply the term is to content itself. While you can get brainrot from obsessively consuming any sort of content, some types of internet content are more effective than others. A lot of content on social media platforms could be considered brainrot, and is mainly things that have zero artistic, educational, or even entertainment value. Think "skibidi toilet" or those clips of TV shows with a screeching electronic soundtrack with footage of an unrelated video game spliced in. If you start watching that stuff, you might get brainrot.

Origins of Brainrot

As far as I can tell, brainrot as a term was largely incubated on TikTok—that cultural chaos engine that's always spewing another strange trend into the mainstream spotlight.

Different sources I could find differ on when the term first entered the lexicon, but it seems that the mid to late 2000s was when the word first appeared, with its popular usage slowly increasing over the years, and really taking off with TikTok and its intense brand of viral brainrot.

How Brainrot Is Used in Online Communities

As with most things on the web, brainrot discussions generally split netizens into two camps: those who say the other is making or consuming brainrot, and those who think they're just out of touch. There's certainly a degree of generation gap at work here, but there's definitely a much larger quantity of brainrot content online now than ever.

Brainrot exists for various reasons, but as things stand today, it's mainly a way to engage people with low-effort content in order to drive impressions, which are of course linked to financial gain. As for what the people who spend their time watching brainrot content—who can say? Perhaps it's a mental fidget toy, a way to kill time. Some people might get a nice hit of brain chemicals from a laugh, or the pure stimulation of bright colors and noises.

As for the effects of brainrot content, the general idea is that people develop poor attention spans and memory, and have a harder time concentrating if they spend a lot of time consuming low-quality internet content. As is usually the case, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of conclusive scientific research on the topic, but there are papers that indicate internet content can change how we think or that we can become less capable of focusing, thanks to the endless stream of distracting jangling keys on the internet.

The Future of Brainrot and Internet Slang

Like any memetic, viral cultural trend, brainrot content will leave a lasting mark on our language in the future. The term and the phenomenon are mostly associated with Generations Z and Alpha, but you only have to spend a few minutes watching people gormlessly commenting on terrible AI-generated images to know that any generation can be sucked into the rabbit hole that is brainrot.