A few days ago, I came across an advertisement on social media. It shows a case similar to that of Bluetooth headphones, from which a very small, white or black object is removed. It has three buttons: down, up, pause. It is used, I discover a little later in the commercial, to remotely control the videos that appear on TikTok.

There is a rather strong image that closes the sponsored content: a boy leaning sideways on his pillow, his smartphone standing, the remote control to scroll through one video after another. For completeness of information, this object exists and is also quite sold: on Amazon you can find different types, the best-selling one has just under 700 reviews.

Brain rot, what does the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year mean

I thought a lot about this advert when I discovered the choice of the Oxford Dictionary, which selected brain rot – in Italian literally ‘rotten brain’ – as the word of the year. The term signals a different way of looking at the digital world, which has been increasingly present in recent years: concern for the consequences deriving from the use of social media and the consumption of content. Oxford defines it as “the alleged degradation of a person’s mental or intellectual state, particularly through excessive consumption of trivial or unstimulating online content.”

The first attestation of brain rot dates back to 1854, in the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. The philosopher uses it to criticize the decline of intellectual commitment and the predilection for simplistic ideas. The meaning isn’t that different today. The term is used to indicate both the cause and the effect of a phenomenon: on the one hand, it describes the low quality and low value content present on social media and the internet; on the other hand, it refers to the perceived negative impacts that the consumption of these types of materials can have on individuals and society.

The term is widely used in the context of digital culture. Often used in an ironic or self-deprecating way by online communities, it is associated with specific contents such as the viral series Skibidi Toilet by Alexey Gerasimov, featuring humanoid toilets, or the memes created by users of the series only in Ohio, which make fun of bizarre episodes related to that state. These phenomena have contributed to the birth of a real “brain rot language”, with expressions such as skibidi (which indicates something absurd) and Ohio (which denotes embarrassing or strange situations).

In an article published last June in the New York Times, pediatrician Michael Rich, founder of the Digital Wellness Lab, explains that his patients use the term brain rot to describe what happens when you spend too much time online, to the point of shifting your own awareness almost entirely in the digital space. This leads to filtering reality through what has been published and what could be published, to the detriment of the experience in physical space.

Rich points out that many of his patients consider brain rot almost a symbol of pride. Some even go so far as to compete over who can clock up the most hours in front of the screen, similar to how people compete for high scores in video games. They treat it with irony, recognizing that obsessive internet use has consequences, but not enough to push them to reduce their time online.

“Even if they experience the effects of brain rot, they don’t see it as a good enough reason to move away from it,” notes Dr. Rich.

The issues to be addressed: the design of platforms and the societies we inhabit

Net of the moral panic, the choice of Oxford allows us to reflect on two central points.

First, the way the platforms are designed. Because brain rot, understood as that feeling of not being able to control one’s actions on social media, is a characteristic, not a side effect. In other words: platforms are built to increase the chances of you becoming addicted to them. The goal is always the same: increase dwell times and earn more through advertising sales.

On the other hand, the continuous need to escape, to deal with a reality that more and more people have difficulty relating to.

There is a parallel, which is sometimes made, which can be useful for understanding this process: it is the one with gambling. Both of these systems are designed to trap users in some sort of way machine area. This state, defined by anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, describes a condition of immersion in which the user’s action merges perfectly with the device’s response, dissolving the perception of self.

The zone is a kind of relationship between man and machine. A relationship in which players almost inevitably end up losing money: the system is built to ensure that the house always wins. For Schüll, at the root of addiction is a profound feeling of lack of control in a world dominated by unpredictability. Often, this feeling is fueled by traumatic experiences such as bereavement, abandonment or violence. And so, players seek refuge and self-annihilation within the ‘zone’, that almost hypnotic condition created by slot machines.

Richard Seymour, in a book from some time ago called The Twittering Machinedelves into the parallel: social media attracts us not for what they offer, but for what they allow us to avoid. “The toxicity of Twitter (of social media in general) – he writes – is bearable only because it seems less worse than the alternatives.”