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Oxford's Word of the Year: 'Brain Rot' (bbc.com) 75

"Are you spending hours scrolling mindlessly on Instagram reels and TikTok?" asks the BBC. "If so, you might be suffering from brain rot, which has become the Oxford word of the year." It is a term that captures concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The word's usage saw an increase of 230% in its frequency from 2023 to 2024. Psychologist and Oxford University Professor, Andrew Przybylski says the popularity of the word is a "symptom of the time we're living in". Brain rot beat five other shortlisted words including demure, Romantasy and dynamic pricing... [And "slop".]

The first recorded use of brain rot dates much before the creation of the internet — it was written down in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden. He criticises society's tendency to devalue complex ideas and how this is part of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort. It leads him to ask: "While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot — which prevails so much more widely and fatally?" The word initially gained traction on social media among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities, but it's now being used in the mainstream as a way to describe low-quality, low-value content found on social media.

Prof Przybylski says "there's no evidence of brain rot actually being a thing. Instead it describes our dissatisfaction with the online world and it's a word that we can use to bundle our anxieties that we have around social media."

The New York Times points out that Oxford's past "word of the year" selections included "podcast" and "selfie" [Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Languages, the company's dictionary division] noted the finalists were heavy on old-fashioned words that young people had repurposed in semi-ironic ways — the linguistic equivalent, he said, of "bell-bottoms coming back into fashion...."

"Slop" has undergone a similar update. There was a spike of more than 300 percent over the past year in references not to pig feed, but to "art, writing or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic or inaccurate," according to Oxford. Like "brain rot," it "represents the underbelly of today's linguistic churn," Grathwohl said. "There's a sense that we are drowning in mediocre experiences as digital lives get clogged."

Oxford's Word of the Year: 'Brain Rot'

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  • by kriston ( 7886 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @07:27PM (#64984139) Homepage Journal

    "Brain rot" is not one word.

    I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see bullcrap like this.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Editor" doesn't mean anything any more. See /. editors.

    • It's one word if we remove the space! Brainrot or bust.

    • Go easy on them. They're suffering from brain-rot.
    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @08:06PM (#64984201) Journal
      I appreciate and support your effort to be technically correct, but in this case it's technically an open compound word [grammarly.com]. Like hot dog, or contact lens.
      • by mea_culpa ( 145339 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @09:11PM (#64984295)

        I appreciate and support your effort to be technically correct, but in this case it's technically an open compound word [grammarly.com]. Like hot dog, or contact lens.

        Those are still two words. Stop gas lighting every one.

      • by kriston ( 7886 )

        Hahah, no. It is not one word.

      • I appreciate your effort to be pedantic, but no I don't.
        • I understand, it is extremely painful for you to realize you are wrong.

          That pain is called "cognitive bias."
      • I appreciate and support your effort to be technically correct, but in this case it's technically an open compound word [grammarly.com]. Like hot dog, or contact lens.

        Yeah, I don't care who came up with the term "open compound word"; they're wrong. It's a noun phrase. It was a noun phrase before some one made up this stupid oxymoron, and it's still a noun phrase. Was there something wrong or lacking with "noun phrase"? No. Does a word have spaces in it? No.End of debate.

        • Yeah, I don't care who came up with the term "open compound word"; they're wrong. It's a noun phrase.

          And your expertise on English grammar is what, high school? You were unaware of the existence of something like an "open compound word", yet you angrily declare to the world that you are correct on a topic you just learned about?

          Quick tip: if you get emotional about abstract grammatical constructions, you're probably wrong.

          • Yeah, I don't care who came up with the term "open compound word"; they're wrong. It's a noun phrase.

            And your expertise on English grammar is what, high school? You were unaware of the existence of something like an "open compound word", yet you angrily declare to the world that you are correct on a topic you just learned about? Quick tip: if you get emotional about abstract grammatical constructions, you're probably wrong.

            You misunderstand me. I am not expressing my expertise; I am expressing my opinion. You got the anger part correct, though; I do get emotional about stupid constructs that damage the language. So yes: It is my opinion that anyone who believes that a noun phrase can be called an "open compound word" is wrong. Dead wrong.They should find something else that is perfectly well sorted out to fuck up. It is simply that I am quite convinced that my opinion is correct.

            • You got the anger part correct, though; I do get emotional about stupid constructs that damage the language.

              You get angry because you are ignorant. You are ignorant because you don't know what an "open compound word" is.

              You are ignorant because you refuse to learn. Do you really think an open compound word is a new thing?

              You are angry and ignorant.

    • But how often is it used as two words? To me it seems separating the words is actually incorrect Oxford pedantry.

      https://trends.google.com/tren... [google.com]

    • This word, "Brain rot" got wide acceptance thanks to D. Trump.

    • Word /word, wo'd rec., E. U.S./ n. One or two or more of word expressing a thought. Sometimesfoundwithmultiple spacesinbetween. A Phrase.

      --Oxfourd

  • Which I think had a hell of a lot more impact on our lives than brain rot. Hell brain rot is a really old phrase. We used to say it about TV when I was a kid and I'm old as dirt.
    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @08:47PM (#64984255) Homepage

      Can confirm. [getyarn.io]

      I distinctly remember there being some big to-do about "V-chips" being mandated in TVs, because television used to be the old bogeyman which was destroying young minds. TV was also the subject of an Oompa Loompa song (along with one about childhood obesity, ironically enough).

      It's always something new that's supposedly going to ruin the next generation, and the fears always end up being overblown. Comic books, rock music, television, video games - social media is just the latest on the list. Hell, good old fashioned books are sometimes still seen as subversive things in certain red states that haven't quite caught up with the times.

      The idea that an idea is a dangerous thing, is a dangerous thing.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'd have picked slop. AI slop has flooded our culture, changed the nature of journalism, and is currently the subject of multiple legal actions.

    • Yeah, and TV was a lot worse than youtube/tiktok/whatever is now.
  • by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Sunday December 01, 2024 @08:16PM (#64984227)

    Although the social media isn't that much different from how people were glued to the boob tube a generation ago, theory on how this is different.

    Ye olden days of television were pretty much defined by limited selection, so you basically became habituated to crap.

    But now there is a long tail of of high quality media available for free, so why do people seek out crap?

    I think they are too mentally exhausted after sorting through all spin and chatter in their lives to engage with thoughtful media. TicTok is a symptom, not a cause.

    Of course people could always disconnect, but after a generation of atrophied social skills, there isn't much capacity beyond Idiocracy.

    And Thoreau could be pretty simplistic himself (but beautiful prose).

    • Low-brow entertainment can still be quite humorous. I was browsing FB's short format videos earlier and saw some moron attempting to start a small hand-cranked diesel engine which he'd failed to initially secure. It went about as well as you'd expect, with the engine bouncing and sliding all over in protest of his futile attempts to start it.

      The comments were comedy gold.

    • Although the social media isn't that much different from how people were glued to the boob tube a generation ago

      I'm sorry but WHAT? Either you don't remember television or you don't remember social media. There's an entire world of difference in quality between the best of social media and the worst of television.

      Either that or your TV was permanently switched to those cable channels that were included in your bundle but no one ever asked for (praise Jesus!)

    • I think they are too mentally exhausted after sorting through all spin and chatter in their lives to engage with thoughtful media. TicTok is a symptom, not a cause.

      Tik Tok is only a symptom? What the hell do you think is driving the spin and chatter train that never stops scrolling shit?

      Here me out, but maybe..just MAYBE selling lies for profit, wasn’t a good thing. Teaching kids that acceptable deception, and labeling it as “marketing”, wasn’t a good thing. You raise a generation of deceivers that come home exhausted from a world now full of normalized lies and deception living in a reality where truth and fact is still very necessary.

      And t

      • ... where truth and fact ...

        Where there's been money, there's been deception, or "marketing". Where there's sex, there's been dishonesty. The world hasn't changed much. What's changed is people can be anonymous fuck-wads and can be plugged-in 24/7 to the drivel and toxic messages. People refuse to disconnect and spend time on themselves. There is even a name for one of the symptoms: FoMO.

        ... how bad dating and relationships ...

        It's always been difficult to measure the activities of teenagers but I rarely see mixed-sex groups, now. That may mean teenagers spend less t

    • Although the social media isn't that much different from how people were glued to the boob tube a generation ago, theory on how this is different.

      Ye olden days of television were pretty much defined by limited selection, so you basically became habituated to crap.

      But now there is a long tail of of high quality media available for free, so why do people seek out crap?

      I think they are too mentally exhausted after sorting through all spin and chatter in their lives to engage with thoughtful media. TicTok is a symptom, not a cause.

      Of course people could always disconnect, but after a generation of atrophied social skills, there isn't much capacity beyond Idiocracy.

      And Thoreau could be pretty simplistic himself (but beautiful prose).

      Social skills have been trained out of us. The big media producers have convinced us all that our neighbors are the enemy, and interaction with them will damn our children to abuse, our pets to being tortured and eaten, and ourselves to the horrible sin of being introduced to differing ideas. And as we all know now, differing ideas are a direct path to sexual deviancy and murder.

      We've been told the world is a much more dangerous place than we grew up in, and too many of us believe it. We're mentally exhaust

  • by John Allsup ( 987 ) <slashdot@nospam.chalisque.net> on Sunday December 01, 2024 @10:06PM (#64984335) Homepage Journal

    A good modern example of 'Brain Rot' is the loss of capacity to count to two, thus
    confusing one word with two words and being incapable of discerning a single
    word from a multitude of them.

  • "There's a sense that we are drowning in mediocre experiences as digital lives get clogged"
    Whoever says that is just getting what they're asking for.
    When I find for good quality content I usually find it. When I don't find, I just stop and avoid to consume crappy content.
    Well, at least not under the sight of the Great Algorithm. When I occasionally want to watch some BS content (i.e. memes) just to unwind a little, I use anonymous tabs.

  • by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Monday December 02, 2024 @03:12AM (#64984535)
    This entire discussion exemplifies cerebroputrefaction.
    • I see what you did there...! Alas, not likely the next word of the year candidate, the average brain can't cope with so many syllables in a single word due to brain rot. Sorry, cerebroputrefaction...
  • Clearly, enshitification is a far better word.

  • Prof Przybylski says "there's no evidence of brain rot actually being a thing. Instead it describes our dissatisfaction with the online world and it's a word that we can use to bundle our anxieties that we have around social media."

    Translation: There is plenty of evidence of the very human that has the brain to rot, is in fact not developing in the right direction. But we’re gonna blame the ubiquitous “internet” for the lack of self control and any harm that may have been caused by a brain being addicted and not functioning properly.

    It’s not the alcoholics fault. No. We need to blame the alcohol instead, right?

    And guns kill people. Not the broken mind pulling the trigger on psychotropic drugs, right?

    My defi

    • Guns do kill people. It doesn't take a mind, broken or otherwise, for the gun to go off. Most gun injuries are by accident. Guns don't take drugs, psychotropic or otherwise, so that's spurious and irrelevant.

      Note that the professor does not blame the internet, as you claim. He says the word bundles anxieties around social media. He does not say that social media are to blame or that the users are blameless, just that brain rot is not a medical condition of the brain itself. The word does not describe

      • Guns do kill people. It doesn't take a mind, broken or otherwise, for the gun to go off.

        No, guns don't just spontaneously go off. Some guns have had design flaws that caused them to go off occasionally when dropped or otherwise mishandled, but there's still a human involved.

        Most gun injuries are by accident.

        No, that's not true. According to the US CDC [cdc.gov], in 2022, "More than seven out of every 10 medically treated firearm injuries are from firearm-related assaults." "Assaults" means intentional, not accidental. (Note that "gun injuries" might or might not include fatal injuries, nonfatal injuries, and suicide.)

        And, just to be

      • Guns do kill people. It doesn't take a mind, broken or otherwise, for the gun to go off. Most gun injuries are by accident. Guns don't take drugs, psychotropic or otherwise, so that's spurious and irrelevant.

        And now for some fact and truth. Sadly, MOST gun “injuries”, are due to SUICIDE. That would imply a not-healthy brain pulling that trigger, and accounts for over 65% of all gun deaths in America. Has for a decade or two now. Lies and deception have made you believe otherwise.

        Accidents do happen. Remove the actual evil intent and self harm deaths, and you end up with a rounding error in the big picture of 300+ million citizens and 400+ million guns. The pathetic part about this argument, i

        • Accidents do happen.

          QED

          Really? We “needed” that clarity?

          Obviously. You didn't understand what he meant, and other people will misunderstand in different ways.

          Professor might be shocked

          You might be shocked that he wasn't talking to himself when he clarified what the word means. He didn't clarify it to himself, you know. He clarified it for your benefit.

          I already explained

          Nobody asked.

    • In general, looking for "blame" is not very helpful. It's fine in a court of law when you need to know who to punish.

      In the real world, it's much more helpful to look for a solution. Who cares how we got here, let's get out.
  • Binge watching reruns of Gilligan's Island and Brady Bunch after school ...
  • Oxford's top self-referential word is a phrase.

  • Slashdot has confirmed this: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

  • One result:
    Gen Z and their potential difficulties with reading and comprehending longer texts in books...

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