If scrolling the feed of your social accounts you have come across one Blue Nike Shoes Shark that sings «Losse off»Or in a war plane with the Crocodrillo head intent on bombing surreal scenarios, you ended up in one of the strangest and most overwhelming viral trends of the moment, theItalian Brain Rot. This new trend that depopulated on Tiktok does not arise from a film, a TV series or a musical catchphrase, but from a series of video content generated in part with the help of generative artificial intelligencein which absurd characters – like “Bombardiro Crocodilo” or “Capuchin dancer” – They move on psychedelic backgrounds while a synthetic voice recites phrases without logical sense. The result? Pure meme nonsense which mix irony, surreal and, sometimes, politically incorrect provocations by redesigning the aesthetic of contemporary meme. But what really is the Italian Brain Rot? Why is he conquering millions of users, even outside the Italian borders?
What is meant by Italian Brain Rot
The term “Brain Rot”literally “Cerebral rot”is one slang By now widespread among the very young, used to describe those contents which, although devoid of quality or apparent meaning, become irresistibly engaging and addictive. Not surprisingly, the Oxford University Press He chose “Brain Rot” as a word of the year 2024, a sign of how much this form of sensory overload has become an integral part of the daily digital experience. In this trail the Italian Brain Rot is placed, an Italian version of the phenomenon generated with the AI, characterized by the use of Nursery rhymes in Italian combined with images of grotesque characters and one deliberately inconsistent narration.
One of the first videos to have defined the aesthetics of this trend was “Tensaller Spelled”in which an anthropomorphic shark, fitting blue sneakers, recites verses accompanied by an audio generated by artificial intelligence. That video, initially uploaded to Tiktok from the profile @ezburger401 (then banned from the platform), kicked off an avalanche of imitations and re -elaborations, until they reach dizzying numbers: beyond 3 billion global views. The main characters are surreal mixtures of objects, animals and cultural stereotypes: there is “Bombardiro Crocodilo “a hybrid between military jet and crocodile; “Capuchin dancer”half dancer and half coffee cup; “Tung Tung Tung Sahurtotemic figure with a club, inspired by the stick used in Indonesia to wake the faithful during Ramadan. In short, you will have understood it … the contents that fall within the phenomenon of the Italian Brain Rot are united by their being hilarious.
These memes, however, are not only “strange”: sometimes they touch or exceed the border of bad taste. The original audio of “Tlalerlero Levers”, for example, includes blasphemous expressions that affect multiple religions, while “Bombardiro Crocodilo” is associated with real geopolitical conflicts, such as the one in Gaza. This has aroused debates on the satirical intentionality of the phenomenon: are it social criticism disguised as absurdity or only provocation for itself? The answer is not univocal, but many observers speak of “post-irony”, a type of humor that moves beyond traditional sarcasm, deliberately confusing sincerity and fiction. In other words, The sense of the Italian Brain Rot could really be in its total lack of meaning.
It is interesting to note that this wave does not have clearly Italian origins, despite the language and aesthetics can suggest it. One of the most famous videos, “Cappuccina dancer”, was conceived by a young Romanian creator, Susanu Sava-Tudorwhich declared to New York Times to be more inspired by a mythized cinematographic vision of Italy than to the cultural reality of our country. Also the platform Know Your Memeworld authority on the cataloging of viral trends, does not attribute the origin of the Italian Brain Rot to a precise geographical sphere.
What is the success of the Italian Brain Rot memes
What surprises, however, is the International success of this trend: The contents have been translated, imitated and reconndered in every part of the world, from the United States to Japan. Even brands like Ryanair, Kfc And Duoling They ridden the wave by making Parodic Videos in Brain Rot style. In some cases, however, the absence of cultural filters generated slips, as in the case of the American Democratic Party, which unwittingly used an audio containing a blasphemy in one of his videos on Tiktok.
The trend penetrated so deeply in the collective imagination that they even arrive at the nursery schools: parents and teachers have reported children who repeat phrases heard in the videos, without understanding their meaning. One of the main concerns concerns the presence of these content on platforms such as YouTube Kids (The version of YouTube designed for the little ones), but where automatic filters do not always manage to recognize the really unsuitable content. YouTube has declared that it has already removed non -compliant videos and recalls that the access of minors under 14 years is allowed only under the supervision of the parents (at least in Italy).
