As an avid TikTok scroller and Instagram Reels watcher, I get sucked into hours of mindless entertainment everyday, with short yet meaningless videos fueling my daily dose of “brain rot.”
Naturally, I’ve laughed at the “Skibidi Toilet” memes. I will also admit that there was a time when I caught myself relying on the depressed “Wojak” meme and the crying black guy meme to explain the different feelings I felt from watching two movies. I simply couldn’t pinpoint my exact emotional responses with proper adjectives and intelligible sentences. At one point, my dad overheard me on the phone with my friend using phrases along the lines of “let me cook” and “bro thought he ate,” which he immediately deemed unintelligent and nonsensical.
But looking back at those interactions and reflecting on my daily vocabulary, it has occurred to me how our generation’s chronic online consumption of “brain rot” content has reached an indescribably embarrassing and dangerous state.
“Brain rot” can be vaguely defined as low-value internet content and the apparent decline in one’s cognitive abilities due to media over-consumption. This content can range anywhere from Instagram Reels to TikTok videos to YouTube Shorts, and one of its many symptoms is seen in one’s constant or seemingly uncontrollable reference to internet slangs and memes.
While saying “she ate and left no crumbs” is undeniably more fun and exciting than simply saying "she did amazing," the larger concern is that an overreliance on internet slang has left some of us unable to express ourselves without using Generation Z terminology as a crutch. Not only does our heavy usage of media slang simply make our generation appear less articulate, it also erodes our ability to maintain intelligent conversations and formality when necessary.
Additionally, this “brain rot” culture has created social disconnects in everyday interactions, not just between Gen Z and older generations but even with our own peers. It often feels like we can't fully communicate or even understand what our peers are saying without a working knowledge of terms like “cooked,” “rizz” or “sigma.” This reliance on slang reflects poorly on Gen Z, suggesting that these made-up phrases have become the defining trait of our generation and highlighting how far our intellectual standards for social interactions have dropped.
Even worse, this sense of unseriousness, created as a result of our collective overindulgence in relentless online content, has infiltrated the realm of politics and national security.
For example, the comparison of Vice President Kamala Harris to the Charli XCX album “Brat” has taken the internet by storm and unexpectedly become a tool to boost Harris’ campaign. Some young adults have expressed that they have only engaged with Harris’ proposed policies after the tweet “kamala IS brat” got their attention. While it is not fair to dismiss the pragmatic benefits of these tweets in advancing Harris’ presidential campaign, these phenomena spark the question: Why should we only be motivated to engage an issue as serious as voting through pop media? And what does this reveal about our values, priorities and the depth of our intellect? For those of us who view politics seriously, this integration of pop culture and media slang can feel as though it undermines our ability to understand politics. Frankly, it suggests that we don’t even need to strive to build the intellectual capacity necessary to grasp the policy agendas and initiatives political candidates present, as people can now be easily swayed by messages like “kamala IS brat.”
Similarly, last month, NATO posted a brat themed picture of “peace,” with the caption “Summer might be over, but the goal for peace remains.” The gravity of a concept like peace should not be trivialized and reduced to a parody of a pop song album cover like brat, especially as an official message put forth by an intergovernmental military alliance representing 32 nations on their shared commitment to transnational security. This is a prime example of how even critical diplomatic issues have become unserious. It is finally time to start drawing the boundary between politics and pop media to preserve formality.
While social media is inalienable to us, and I don’t envision everyone to be able to stop consuming short, entertaining videos or instantly stop making pop culture references, the first step is to recognize and confront the uncomfortable reality: Our intellect, whether in social interactions or in politics, may actually suffer a decline from chronic media usage. After all, maybe our parents are right — it really is that damn phone.
