The Out-of-Touch Adults’ Guide to Children’s Culture: “Brain Rot”
Young people are everywhere this week. On the other hand, many children corrupt their brains. Others succumb to age-old internet schemes to “follow the train.” On the plus side, some kids make great music, and even little kids help their families get free trips to expensive resorts by being adorable.
What is “brain rot”?
Among young people, the phrase “brain rot” (or “brain rot”) is increasingly used. Here’s what it means: Brain rot is a derogatory slang term that describes the dullness that supposedly comes from spending too much time on the Internet. It’s a little different from a phrase like “always online” because it describes spending time online in a certain way: consuming so many memes and catchphrases that you become unable to communicate with others. It’s often used as a shorthand way of saying, “You’re so far inside your bubble that you don’t realize how strange you’re being.”
Simple enough, right? But on a meta level, “brain rot” also means creating and posting intentionally meaningless memes that make people feel like they don’t understand the content, “brain rot.” Or maybe it’s meant to make people think there is a meaning they don’t understand. For example, this meme of Donald Trump with the caption “Niggas call me ‘Sandwich'” is accompanied by a clip of Bryan Cranston in a barbershop quartet dancing on Saturday Night Live to a plaintive guitar soundtrack. It’s a bit like contemporary art from the 1990s: it has a recognizable form that is traditionally used to comment on the human condition in some way or another, and it has elements that seem to “say something” but were created intentionally. mean nothing – any interpretation that goes beyond the thing itself comes from you, not from the art/meme. (At least I think that’s what’s going on here.)
If that’s not enough for you, you can dig into the comments section of the Trump/Cranston meme. It’s filled with thousands of meaningless internet-only slang comments such as “Sigma!” “I did it” and “Honey, I robbed the children.” The commentators (I think?) seem to be making fun of people with brain rot, but the fact that they know enough about all this nonsense to comment indicates an even deeper level of brain rot. It’s like one of those jokes where almost no one gets the punch line, and if you do, then the joke is on you.
TikTokers’ Doomed Campaign to Pay Off Each Other’s Debts with Clicks
There’s a growing movement on TikTok where creators are trying to help each other pay off their debts through clicks, likes and comments. TikTok’s content rewards program requires accounts to have at least 10,000 followers and supposedly pays around $1 per 10,000 views, so TikTokers try to meet the requirements by posting videos with the phrase “We pay off each other’s debts” and a description of the amount. they need money and why. There are about 16 million posts with this hashtag “pay each other’s debts” alone. Unfortunately, none of these people will likely get their debts paid off.
Trying to get enough people to watch your content and turn it into money is nothing new on the Internet. It’s kind of like what everyone has always done. But “follow me and I’ll follow you” or “follow the train” schemes have been tried on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and every other platform that gives out money based on engagement, and have never succeeded.
While this sounds like a good idea, TikTok (I guess) doesn’t want to be inundated with videos of people asking to subscribe; it’s not as engaging content as this chocolate covered strawberries video , and the followers who follow you so you follow them won’t engage with your content in the way TikTok likes. The TikTok algorithm will be adjusted. The words “subscribe” or “please subscribe” are not used in these videos because it already reduces the weight of your content, and setting up an algorithm to quarantine videos that say “we pay each other’s debts” or a similar phrase has probably already been implemented. It happened. In a classic pyramid scheme, the only people who can see the winnings are the accounts that did so first. Like this video where TikToker Isaiah Snyder says he can save his childhood home if he gets 400 million views. He already has 10,000,000 views – a salary of $10,000. However, latecomers are doomed and will learn a bitter lesson: there are no get-rich-quick schemes; There are only “don’t get rich slowly” schemes.
Irish schoolchildren release song of summer
You know who doesn’t need to ask for subscriptions and views? Cabin and crew members of Lisdoonvarna. This group of Irish artists aged 9 to 14 recently released ” The Spark”, a stunning drum and bass track that has gone viral on X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and everywhere else. The video was created by Rhyme Island, a “youth rap initiative” to promote Cruinniú na nÓg, the European Day of Creativity for Youth. But you don’t have to listen to it because it’s “for a good cause” and you don’t need to qualify it by saying, “It’s a good song written by kids.” This is a real jam. Or maybe I’m crazy. But it nonetheless captures something important about the energy and fearlessness of youth and made me shake my head and feel happy for a few minutes. These accents are the best .
Viral video of the week: A child is fully conscious
The first baby to go viral on the Internet was the “Dancing Baby”, a piece of computer graphics that became a worldwide meme in 1996, before the word “meme” was widely used. The newest viral baby is the “fully conscious baby,” the star of a surprisingly compelling eight-second TikTok video . In it, the child’s aunt, TikToker Stephanie O’Brien, asks her nieces, “Who wants to go to the Four Seasons Orlando?” The child, fully conscious, appears to consider the question for a moment, then raises his tiny hand and says, “I am!” in a way that seems too advanced for her age. The video received tens of millions of views, inspired a ton of response videos in which users expressed the thoughts of Fully Conscious Baby , and just generally delighted everyone. Most importantly, the Four Seasons Orlando gave this (no doubt already wealthy) family a trip to their resort. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.