Brain Rot. It figures.
You know me. I love words. The Dictionary is one of the books I most admire on the planet. I think whoever thought of the concept was brilliant. Dictionaries help all of us.
But, each year, the publishers of these specific books find it necessary to choose a word or phrase from the national discourse to be its Word of the Year. For 2024, Oxford University Press—the publisher behind the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary, made such a choice.
Their selection is a popular condemnation for consuming low-quality information. The unofficial mental health diagnosis is dubbed brain rot.
So here it is. The OED has defined brain rot (sometimes collapsed to brainrot) as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”
In other words, one can suffer from brain rot by marathoning endless conspiracy theory videos. Oh. And. The videos themselves can be labeled brain rot. Getting sucked into the whole online junk world is brain rot.
Our good pals over at the New York Times has had much to say about brain rot. For instance, they said: “signs of brain rot can include the increased insertion of internet slang or meme references into everyday conversation. Those who take pride in their knowledge of online culture may interpret it as a compliment. Still, it’s mostly meant to indicate someone is losing touch with reality.”
I know a lot of those people. I see them and their digital trails of popcorn memes.
So how did Oxford select brain rot? Well, they pulled it from a pile of other buzzwords. Then their editors selected six words that saw increased usage and relevance over the past year. The online use of brain rot jumped 230 percent between 2023 and 2024. Public voting was also taken into account.
Here are the other candidates for Word of the Year:
Demure: A reserved and restrained appearance
Dynamic Pricing: The act of altering costs based on real-time demand
Lore: A body of knowledge surrounding a person or subject
Romantasy: A genre-blending romance and fantasy
Slop: Pig feed, yes, but in this context, low-grade content often generated by language models
It is all brain rot if you ask me.
But, truth be told, this year’s winner is probably a good choice. I mean, it is easy to see society’s growing preoccupation with social media platforms. Again and again. We can see how our virtual lives are evolving. Let’s face it. The internet culture is permeating so much of who we are and what we talk about. It is everywhere and in everything.
Besides. There was a lot of brain rot in the results of the 2024 election.
Yep. Word of the Year, this brain rot thing.
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“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
— George Carlin
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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen Hawking
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“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
— Margaret Atwood
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“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
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It is rotting. That thing in some heads.
