The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: 'Brain Rot'

Young people are all over the map this week. On the negative side: a lot of kids are giving themselves brain rot. Others are falling for age-old internet "follow train" schemes. On the positive side, some kids are making great music, and even little babies are helping their families get free trips to expensive resorts by being adorable.

What is “brain rot?”

Use of the phrase "brain rot" (or "brainrot") is taking off among young people. Here's what it means: "brain rot" is a derogatory slang term that describes the dumbing down that supposedly comes from spending too much time online. It's subtly different from a phrase like "chronically online" because it describes spending time online in a specific way: consuming so many memes and catchphrases that you become unable to communicate with others. It's often used as a shorthand way of saying "You are so far inside your own bubble that you don't realize how weird you're being."

Simple enough, right? But on a meta level, "brain rot" also described creating and posting intentionally meaningless memes that evoke the feeling people get from not understanding brain-rotted content. Or maybe it's to trick people into thinking there is a meaning they don't understand. For example, this meme with a picture of Donald Trump labeled "N*ggas call me 'The Sandwich'" accompanied by a clip of Bryan Cranston in a barbershop quartet dancing on Saturday Night Live set to a plaintive guitar soundtrack. It's a little like some contemporary art from the 1990s: It has an identifiable form that is traditionally used to comment on the human condition in some way, and it has elements that seem like they could be "saying something," but it's been purposefully created to mean nothing—any interpretation that extends beyond the thing itself comes from you, not the art/meme. (At least, I think that's what's happening here.)

If that isn't enough brain rot for you, you can dig into the comment section on the Trump/Cranston meme. It's packed with thousands of non sequitur internet-only slang comments like "Sigma!" "I munted to this," and "Honey I mogged the kids." The commenters (I think?) seem to be mocking people with brain rot, but to know enough about all this crap to bother commenting indicates an even deeper level of brain rot. It's like one of those jokes where hardly anyone understands the punchline, and if you do, the joke is on you.

TikTokers' doomed campaign to pay off each others' debts with clicks

A movement is growing on TikTok where creators are trying to help each other pay debts through clicks, likes, and comments. TikTok's content reward program requires accounts to have at least 10,000 followers and supposedly pays about $1 per 10,000 views, so TikTokers are trying to meet the requirements by posting videos with the phrase "We Are Paying Off Each Other's Debts" and a description of how much money they need and why. There are nearly 16 million posts using this one "pay each other's debts" hashtag alone. Sadly, none of these people are likely to have their debts paid.

Trying to get enough people to look at your content so it turns into money isn't new on the Internet. It's kind of what everyone has always done. But "follow me and I'll follow you" or "follow train" schemes have been tried on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and any other platform that gives out money based on engagement, and have never been successful.

While it sounds like a good idea, TikTok (I assume) doesn't want to be overrun with videos of people begging for follows; it's not compelling content like this video of strawberries covered in chocolate, and followers that are following you so you follow them aren't going to engage with your content in a way that TikTok likes. TikTok's algorithm will adjust. The word "follow" or "please follow" isn't used in these videos because that will already de-weight your content, and tweaking the algorithm to quarantine videos that say "we are paying each other's debts" or similar phrase has probably already happened. In classic pyramid-scheme style, the only people who might see a payoff are the accounts that did it first. Like this video where TikToker Isaiah Snyder says he could save his childhood home if he gets 400 million views. He's got 10,000,000 views already—a $10,000 payday. Latecomers are doomed, though, and will learn the bitter lesson that there are no get-rich-quick schemes; there are only get-not-rich-slowly schemes.

Irish middle school children release the song of the summer

You know who doesn't have to beg for follows and views? Members of the Kabin Crew and Lisdoonvarna Crew. This gaggle of Irish artists between the ages of 9 and 14 recently released "The Spark," a banger of a drum-and-bass track that's going viral on X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and everywhere else. The video was created by Rhyme Island, a "youth rap initiative" to promote Cruinniú na nÓg, Europe's day of creativity for young people, But you don't have to listen to it because it's "for a good cause" and you don't have to qualify it by saying "It's a good song, for a song made by kids." It's a legit jam. Or maybe I'm crazy. But still, it captures something essential about the energy and fearlessness of youth and made me bob my head and feel happy for a few minutes. Those accents are the best.

Viral video of the week: Fully Conscious Baby

The first baby to go viral on the Internet was Dancing Baby, a piece of CGI that became a worldwide meme in 1996, before the word "meme" was widely used. The newest viral baby is "fully conscious baby," star of a strangely compelling eight-second TikTok video. In it, the baby's aunt, TikToker Stefanie O’Brien, asks her nieces, "Who wants to go to the Four Seasons Orlando?" Fully Conscious Baby seems to consider the question for a moment, then raises her tiny hand and says "me!" in a way that seems way too advanced for her age. The video racked up tens of millions of views, inspired tons of response videos where users filled in Fully Conscious Baby's thoughts, and just generally delighted everyone. Most importantly, the Four Seasons Orlando gave this (no doubt already wealthy) family a trip to their resort. Everyone seemed to have a nice time.