Y’all Don’t Know What Brain Rot Is, And I Think We Should Talk About That.

Let me cut to the chase: everyone on the planet has heard some variation of the word brain rot. The word was even first coined back in 1854, so she’s been around for a while. Though, whether you’ve heard the term or not, I’m going to be completely honest: I truly think the term has lost all meaning and I am entirely blaming it on 2020-2021 TikTok. 

Upon a quick google search (which seems to be a foreign concept nowadays), the definition of “brain rot” is, “the perceived decline in mental or intellectual state that results from consuming too much online content”. I myself have been on the internet for most of my life. As a result of a shitty cheap tablet, Wattpad, unrestricted access because my parents weren’t paying attention, and God, I became immersed in online content that has completely destroyed my brain chemistry. I don’t consume any form of media anymore without having to integrate it into my everyday life for a brief period of time. And with Covid and isolating, where our only form of communication was through the media, it turned into a very dark period of my life. 

We have reduced brain rot to a selection of words and a feeling equivalent to 🤪 this emoji. It coincides with the “I’m just a girl” epidemic or reducing trauma and signs of severe mental illness to feeling “silly”. From applying to colleges, to exams, homework, even having to withdraw from a class because my brain rot prevented me from doing what I needed to do, I can confidently say that society fails to recognize the underlying issue with brain rot. It’s an addiction to the internet covered up by two words that sound quite silly when put together. It’s a method to distract us from reality and the bad things in our lives. I’m no medical professional, but I lived it. 

I think rather than feeding into brain rot, we should try and learn to recognize it and manage it. Brain rot can be associated with this idea of the third space, which is a sociolinguistic theory that explores how people create a sense of identity and community through language. A big part of brain rot is creating a sense of community through a commonality. There’s no issue with that! But as we know, it goes deeper than that. One could argue that fandom culture is a form of brain rot, and with the third space theory, a community with their own kind of language and space to thrive and be a part of. But it’s not a physical space, so we resort to the internet to find these people and that sense of belonging. Thus, we get addicted to the internet because we crave that safe haven we found. And maybe by helping people 1. Recognize that it can be a serious issue and not a joke, and 2. Showing them other ways to handle it (without being a professional of course) we can work on knowing how to recognize it before it happens? Honestly, there is nothing wrong with having a space to feel connected to others, it’s a problem when that space can cloud up your brain to the point of all functionality lost. People pass it off as, “Oh, go touch grass or something,” but how can I find the grass when my mind is a literal Walmart parking lot??

In conclusion, I’m still gonna be out here indulging in my brain rot, no doubt about it, but it’s about learning to be better at managing how it can take over my life. We all deserve better! Love yourself!!! Break free!!