Brain Rot
Thoreau coined it in Walden in 1854: England was busy curing the potato rot, he wrote, and nobody was working on the rot of the brain. The phrase sat unused for a century and a half and then described something exactly, the feeling of a mind worn smooth by scrolling. Oxford made it word of the year in December 2024, after usage rose by 230 per cent in twelve months, and within weeks the Pope was warning about it too.
Part of Brainrot
14 moments in this segment.
- - Googling the new brainrot words. A film still of a man looking worn out, captioned with how it feels to have to look up every new brainrot word.
- - This is brainrot, 2012 to 2024. A four-tier stick-figure strip in which the same complaint, 'this is brainrot', is repeated in 2012, 2017, 2021 and 2024 while the screen being watched changes each time.
- - You have contracted Brain Rot. A life-simulation status pop-up announcing that the player has contracted Brain Rot, followed by the moodlet 'College Education has worn off'.
- - Dumb game humour, 2013 against 2023. A two-row comparison: the top row is old machinima and animation screenshots, the bottom row is a head in a toilet tagged as Gen Alpha brain rot.
- - Pure brain rot, and the same tomorrow. A thick border of laughing emoji frames the promise to offer followers pure brain rot today and the same again tomorrow.
- - Letting the brain rot for a few hours. A gaunt grey drawn face fills the frame beneath a line about just needing to let one's brain rot on Instagram for a while.
- - I know a guy with brain rot. A two-panel reaction meme: a smiling man at a laptop claims to know someone with brain rot, then asks what he had just said.
- - The sigma joke about shoes. An underwater cartoon scene in which a glowing green figure carries a scientist's face, captioned about not having worn shoes in over five thousand years. 'Sigma' is one of the slang words carried along by the brainrot vocabulary.
- - Explaining the slang to parents. A Cincinnati station's segment on Gen Alpha vocabulary, aimed at parents trying to follow what their children are saying. Broadcast months before brain rot won Oxford's word of the year.
- - Oxford makes it official. Announcement-day coverage of Oxford University Press naming brain rot its word of the year, with the publisher's own definition of what the term covers.
- - Brain rot, the 2024 word. WBZ's Jon Keller on how brain rot reached the top of Oxford University Press's shortlist, and on the habit the phrase is used to describe.
- - Diagnosing the word. An explainer released ten days after the Oxford announcement, tracing the phrase's older written life and its modern use for heavy social-media consumption.
- - Duolingo takes up the slang. The language app's mock course in Gen Alpha speech, published in August 2025. An example of the vocabulary crossing into corporate marketing.
- - The 6-7 problem. A New York station tries to explain 6-7, the numerical catchphrase that moved through schools in 2025 and largely resisted explanation.
