Oxford's Word of the Year: 'Brain Rot' (bbc.com) 54
"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."
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."
Re:Ah, now I get it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ah, now I get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's yet another one of the hundreds of oddities of the English language, which is a result of pidgin becoming creole, and then becoming an actual language. The rules surrounding compound words are complicated enough that most native speakers don't even know how to use them correctly. But this is in fact a compound word, and the reason for that is even dumber than you probably think:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/gen... [purdue.edu]
I think whoever wrote this pretty well nails it:
https://www.stcloudstate.edu/w... [stcloudstate.edu]
See the example for "eye shadow" given in rule three. In other words, the dictionary itself is what decides that it's a non-hyphenated compound word. Yet another reason why English dictionaries by necessity have to be living dictionaries. Realistically, you'd probably be just as correct calling it "brainrot" or "brain-rot" as "brain rot" because it has a particular meaning that "brain" and "rot" don't have on their own, much like "eye shadow". But because at least "a" dictionary uses it non-hyphenated, then it is a de-facto single word.
We really just make shit up as we go. Note that "inalienable" and "unalienable" were being debated not all that long after shakespear's tombstone was engraved, and look how they spelled everything. Chances are if you've never written English, then you've never heard of a spelling bee either.
Re:Ah, now I get it. (Score:4, Informative)
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The footer on the PDF says this:
The Write Place - 2010
Revised by Nichole Held
Adapted from Jane Strauss: www.GrammarBook.com
So I assume the original author is Jane Strauss.
That site is actually interesting: www.GrammarBook.com
Re:Ah, now I get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally speaking, for the purposes of a dictionary, it's a word when the short phrase has a distinct meaning that can't be trivially inferred from that specific combination of words. In your example, eye shadow, knowing what eye and shadow mean on their own, wouldn't make the meaning of eye shadow obvious.
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Look who's talking.
And the real question is why didn't Doctorow take credit for this term too?
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And the real question is why didn't Doctorow take credit for this term too?
'cause he hasn't written a book about brain rot... yet.
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Nah, arguing politics just tends to become more appealing with advancing age. If I had to take a guess, it's either because you were promised some fantastic future that didn't happen, or the changing world seems scary and you long for simpler times. Ironically, my partner's 9-year-old nephew launched into a rant at his family's Thanksgiving dinner about how he hates AI, so I guess you're never too young to feel the world is changing too quickly.
"Brain rot" is not one word (Score:2)
"Brain rot" is not one word.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I see bullcrap like this.
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"Editor" doesn't mean anything any more. See /. editors.
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It's one word if we remove the space! Brainrot or bust.
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Re:"Brain rot" is not one word (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Brain rot" is not one word (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Re:"Brain rot" is not one word (Score:5, Informative)
No they aren't. There are no dogs in a hot dog, and it remains a hot dog when it's cold. By creating a compound word (open or hyphenated) it takes on a different meaning than each word would individually.
By the way "gaslighting" is a single word, not a compound word. It's not written with space or hyphen. Please learn the language you are trying to use.
Re:"Brain rot" is not one word (Score:4, Funny)
There are no dogs in a hot dog, and it remains a hot dog when it's cold.
And for some truly bizarre reason, hot cocoa ice cream is a thing. [target.com] It's basically just Rocky Road ice cream, without the nuts. Which is also another quirk of naming things, since there's no actual rocks or pieces of road in the ice cream.
English just be like that sometimes.
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There are no dogs in a hot dog,
You hope.
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Those are still two words. Stop gas lighting every one.
I think some people may have missed a joke there.
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Hahah, no. It is not one word.
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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]
Thanks to D. Trump. (Score:2)
This word, "Brain rot" got wide acceptance thanks to D. Trump.
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Word /word, wo'd rec., E. U.S./ n. One or two or more of word expressing a thought. Sometimesfoundwithmultiple spacesinbetween. A Phrase.
--Oxfourd
My money was on sane washing (Score:2)
Re:My money was on sane washing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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Exhaustion and Dominance media theory (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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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.
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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!)
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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
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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.
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
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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
Brain Rot (Score:3)
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.
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Demand and Offer (Score:2)
"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.
This entire discussion (Score:3)
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Enshitification of Oxford? (Score:2)
Clearly, enshitification is a far better word.
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That was word of the year last year.
Generation Deflection (Score:2)
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
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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
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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
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In the real world, it's much more helpful to look for a solution. Who cares how we got here, let's get out.
Prior art (Score:1)
I prefer the Aussie dictionary's word of the year (Score:2)
"Enshitification".