’Brain rot‘ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024
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Trivial / unchallenging is not the problem, in my opinion. Sometimes it's good to relax and give yourself a break. Staring at the wall and letting your mind wander is trivial and unchallenging, but it's not going to rot your brain.
The problem is overstimulating shortform content that wrecks your attention span.
But I don't believe super-longform content is necessarily the solution, either. If you force yourself to think about the same thing for too long, it effectively becomes work, and generates the same sort of mental fatigue. That's sort of pointless if you're trying to relax and recover.
I think it's best to aim for a sweet spot of "unchallenging and also understimulating".
> I think it's best to aim for a sweet spot of "unchallenging and also understimulating".
Press 'X' for Doubt.
I also used to learn languages for fun but I figured out really quickly that I like linguistics more than languages so I can be a real smart ass about grammar in various languages but couldn’t order a beer in most of them.
I get really annoyed and in a really bad mood if I just watched a movie after work and went to bed. Or just hung out with people. I don’t feel like I got that itch taken care of if I don’t get an hour or so at night for the side projects.
Oh and none of this is monetized. I can and do drop projects as soon as they get boring.
In addition, traditionally, men tend to rely on their partner for non-professional social networking. The percentage of people who live with a spouse or partner seems to be decreasing, so men are becoming more responsible for maintaining their own circle of friends.
This requires effort. It's not like when you're 18 and you just naturally hang out, you have to put work into maintaining friendships and finding ways to meet. You have to plan things and invite people. You also have to make new friends as old ones disappear from your life over time. This is difficult, it requires conscious effort.
I didn't realize that for a long time, and the longer I didn't do it, the harder it became to reestablish old friendships and make new ones. But it's absolutely possible to do it, if you put in the effort.
And it's very worthwhile. It's much more enjoyable and fulfilling and relaxing to cook with somebody, go for a walk, or play Mario Kart in person, than to scroll Instagram or play an online shooter.
However both introversion and the hedgehog's dilemma can complicate this presumption. I think I'd rather say that most people would prefer hanging out with others in some fashion where they are safe from constant drama .. but the reality is that getting along with other people — including close friends and perhaps especially family members — takes a lot of effort and emotional labor.
With our current ubercapitalist society (definitely in the US but it affects the rest of the globe as well) and poor social understanding of mental health, many of us simply lack the resources to constantly expend said emotional labor and connections often fall away as a result.
Thus the mass of terminally online people.
Counterpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA0PwmQMVG8
For real. Sometimes, I think that the binary nature of language, things are either good or bad, there is no single word to describe n-shape dose responses except in aphorisms like "too much of a good thing", means that it's too easy to autopilot into thing A is either good for you, or bad for you. One beer with friends is good for you but ten is not. The optimal amount is somewhere between (it's slightly less than 2).
There's a study from 2012 linking social media usage to reduced academic performance and a lowered attention span [1]. A recent study has shown that excessive TikTok use in particular is linked to short-term memory deterioration [2]. I assume this is a somewhat trendy field of research in psychology, so you can likely find more studies, should you want to.
[1]: Paul, Baker et al (2012): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
[2]: Sha, Dong (2021): https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/16/8820
i also personally struggle a bit with older movies (80s/early 90s) because they tend to have a slower pace and i instinctively want to start multitasking every time there's a lull in the action. i actually watched die hard for the first time last night and found it kinda slow and boring despite it being one of the most iconic action movies of all time.
there may or may not be a scientific study to suggest it can happen (although i assume there is) but based on my own experiences i am 100% certain that it is happening.
Oh man! If you think that is slow, don't go further back in time...
But you want a taste of slow, here is some inspiration, courtesy of "Once Upon a Time in the West":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QML28YQBvyc
> and [I] instinctively want to start multitasking every time there's a lull in the action.
That's your cue for an attention problem right there. For the fun of it, try to notice in how many other situations you might have the same tendency to look for a "multitasking" distraction.
The best example is reading a book. I end up having to reread sentences and paragraphs frequently as my mind wanders from what the words are conveying. It takes a while to get into the groove of following the thread of the writing. Spending some time in a less stimulating environment like going camping, practicing meditation, or just 'unplugging' seems to be restorative to that ability to focus. Other people have shared similar experiences with me many times as this subject comes up.
Again, my experience, but this capacity for focus applies to many things beyond just reading a book, like tackling programming problems or having a deep and nuanced conversation, effectively communicating complex ideas and being able to receive the same.
See, eg, https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/cellphones-in-theatres...
In any case, if watching a movie is the counterexample it is probably in the category of "damning with faint evidence". This is still passive media which carries on whether or not the watcher is attending. Reading a book for an hour or two is different, because the pages don't turn themselves.
People in a position to notice changes in these capabilities have noticed them.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-eli...
You mean, you can't notice that pages of a book don't turn themselves if you don't read books? ;-)
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/07/24/your-mystery-have-a...
A good litterature survey, easy to follow. Better than reading one or two isolated studies, since it does ask the crucial question of "well what is (and how do you measure) attention span anyway?"
Less rigorous but similar conclusion in video if you prefer https://youtu.be/aDfeOvUZ7Kk?feature=shared
Interestingly, he posits that the opposite is "information overload"; people who can't skim or skip things who are still exposed to too much input and break down for it. Of course, I want to believe this is a choice, you can turn off your phone and notifications, set up a system of critical notifications that cannot wait (which when you think about it is very little, or it's another person who has a problem with needing quick replies).
"Brain rot" seems to be linked with the repeated consumption of, for example, unchallenged propaganda.
It encourages people to think they made some huge insightful breakthroughs, and that they have some new undisputed understanding of reality, when in reality they just have a superficial knowledge of someone else's idea. Which sometimes is amplified by someone repeating someone else's ideas. Yet they refuse to either acknowledge or question it.
For example, unlike general perception, conspiracy theories aren't that complex, they're much simpler than reality and more entertaining - as an anecdote it's much simpler to think the moon landing was done in a Hollywood studio than to understand the endeavor taken to achieve this milestone for Humanity.
This leads to people dismissing reality in favor of fantasy, leading to algorithmic thinking, which is just a lazy cognitive process. If you challenge this, you'll be ignored or dismissed.
All for the aesthetic of being an intellectual.
This could also describe a mediocre student reading a mediocre physics textbook.
I'm not sure consumption of propaganda is qualitatively different from consumption of non-propaganda.
I think you're being too generous. It's more like a mediocre student listening to someone's take on a mediocre physics textbook and believing now that he knows how the world works.
The difference between the consumption of propaganda and non-propaganda, is related to the perception of everyday events and the consequences of it.
In your mediocre student example, his unacknowledged poor understanding of physics won't have much consequences, he can try to lecture people, and he can go about the world and unless he tries to defy laws of physics there won't be much to it - like a "flat earth believer" can have a boat ride and not fall off the earth.
Propaganda, on the other hand, changes your perception of reality and the way you interact with society and institutions. Suddenly, a normal election process is rigged because your side lost, or the normal vaccination process is now harmful to you and your peers.
"Brain rot" is when you have gangrene in the brain. Brainrot is when you have tiktok in the brain.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brain_rot
Also, OUP and others have picked a number of words of the year having spaces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_the_year
For example, "goblin mode" (2022).
There are hundreds of words in the English language that contain spaces.
The video itself isn’t necessarily brain rot content but rather a side effect of a majority of people’s short attention spans.
In some cases, the content can include relevant video content but split viewed with something irrelevant (ie, random subway surfers gameplay). It’s quite annoying and distracting for me.
Lately in slop-land I’ve also seen shorts where the creator will take an old boomer joke (one of those “and then the student stumped the teacher” kind of stories) and have an AI voice read it while the video is cuts from “satisfying animations”-genre videos.
You chose a cross-section of content that that is universally derided by the average HN user; if you're not willing to use the front facing camera you're just taking potshots at your outgroup.
It's easy to call out the kinds of low-value activities that you don't personally enjoy or partake in. It's a lot harder and more uncomfortable to see them in yourself and have some empathy and not judge others too much for their brain-off vices.
Only when I die and see the big stats board do I want to know how many hours I've wasted on Slay the Spire. And while I love it dearly I can't really delude myself that it's anything other than Candy Crush for nerds.
I've sunk 16k+ hours into WoW in my lifetime, you named perhaps the most brainrot game that has ever existed in the history of video games. It's makes Tiktok look like long form essays, doing meth instead would be considered harm reduction.
It's easy to identify when the activity is low status to your in-group. The Big Bang Theory has significant cultural importance but I bet you'd agree it's still brainrot.
Why are video games on that list then?
On the other side you have Ubisoft's genre of "brainrot" games, which on the one side will have a compelling story, but on the other will have hundreds, if not thousands of similar repeating side-activities that people can jump in and out of without needing to think too much.
And on the other other side you have story-rich games, e.g. God of War or RDR 2, which have a film-like setup and budgets to match.
The definition of brainrot is, in my mind, something that you cannot learn from and may even teach you misinformation. Hamilton’s lack of historical backing and poor narrative lead to a situation where it fails to teach you history or have an in-depth story worthy of inaccuracies. They essentially took the setting of late 18th century Boston, put a slew of modern-thinking historically-named figures in it, and wrote a simple story using those caricatures. Add in very inconsistent “hip pop” music, leaning into simpler choruses that paint in large strokes, and it’s no wonder that it achieved mass appeal. That’s simply how brainrot works. Less cognitive processing required means that its easier to digest and share. It’s also why “low culture” contains fart humor and why “high culture” contains books such as Don Quixote.
Don't worry, once you catch your breath there's also a version for Spider-Man 2 which is somehow even funnier
'Brain rot', in the context of this slang term, can be considered one word.
Despite that you can technically split 'Brain rot' into 'brain' and 'rot' (which are both words), 'brain rot' isn't actually the sum of its parts and has a more idiomatic meaning than just 'brain' + 'rot'.
Calling something “AI slop” is describing it like food scraps for pigs. Cheap, distasteful, mass produced.
I'm liking the word "slop" more and more!
No TV (or phone/computer) in the house, to safeguard my monkey brain from hijacking my time
But then I recall his suicide (albeit unrelated to stimulation) and think, maybe there’s a happy middle
However, while I’m no language person, I have wallowed in unicode enough times to recognize that the “rules” of language are so wild and varying and riddled with exceptions that basically anything is possible.
From what I can tell, they should have spelled it brain-rot.
So the shopping festival after thanksgiving should be called "black-friday"?
I would say this is a prime example, yes.
It'll win at the end. Hitting that spacebar is effort.
> If the joining of the words or signs is orthographically represented with a hyphen, the result is a hyphenated compound (e.g., must-have, hunter-gatherer). If they are joined without an intervening space, it is a closed compound (e.g., footpath, blackbird). If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator), then the result – at least in English – may be an open compound.
FWIW, there are plenty of languages that don't use any spaces at all in their writing (Japanese, Chinese, Thai), and the use of spacing is quite fluid even in English. Is it a cellphone or a cell phone?
Symbols that contain space separated word are enclosed in ||, |this is a symbol|, that while the naked space is still the symbol separator token.
Now if we can just remove all other punctuation for s-expressions we'd finally have the start of a language fit for the digital age.
That said, you may not like this answer, but ultimately whatever's in the official dictionary (now known as Collins Scrabble Words / CSW) is what goes. "mein" as in "chow mein" is not valid (nor is "chowmein"), but "lomein" and "wonton" are.
What this implies is that a space being used between two tokens doesn't actually make it two words. You can still consider that to be one word.
(Also, if you wanna go even more meta, there isn't even a widely agreed upon definition for what a word even is in linguistics!)
To be even more precise, there are several competing definitions of what "word" should mean that don't always agree. E.g. if you go by the criterion "word" = lexeme (dictionary unit), then something like "kick the bucket" would be a "word".
No, because then how do you define a word?
I suspect grammar has another term(!?) for the concept you're looking for.
Maybe. Possibly. Too much internet for me, too.
It shows that as a society we are quickly recognising the damage it can do and are creating cultural pressures against it.
There you have it, all "words of the year 2024" in one sentence [1],[2]. Enjoy.
[1] https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/29/the-economists-...
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/26/enshittifica...
Yeah sure there's concern but it's only about what the other side is consuming. We're not applying the concern holistically and probably won't be able to because that would mean threatening the companies that host said brain rot and we just can't have the shareholders mad.
Basically same as Nobel disease / nobelitis, but applied to wealthy (often tech) billionaires. Where after a certain amount of success in a quite narrow field, they start to push broad and wide-reaching ideas, which go far, far beyond their expertise.
I'm not going to name names, but there are plenty of such billionaires out there, some getting far too much media time. Some even showing signs of advanced brain rot due to the media they consume.
So I would definitely not put him in the same category as most other billionaires.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/false-claim-bill-gates...
The person that first made me wonder about all this was Clive Palmer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer
"Prince has been living in Prince-world for a number of years now" (possibly misphrasing of a sentence from Kevin Smith's recollection of his experience working for Prince).
Sycophantitis. For which the treatment is a Messianectomy.
It's sort of like chesterton's fence + branding + fashion + stupid optimization giving us dystopian product design that any normal engineer understands is stupid.
There are lots of examples of this:
- remote controls with terrible play pause skip buttons, but big oversized dedicated buttons for some product they want you to use.
- cars with no dashboard, no dedicated buttons, no turn signal stalks and everything on the touchscreen
- laptops with no ports and terrible flat, unsculpted keyboards.
- phones with no dedicated buttons, or buttons you can only dedicate to payment systems
I'm sure there are tons more of these.
if COVID19 taught us anything is that 'experts' have no clue what they are talking about
It’s like arguing that ‘experts’ in IT have no clue what they are doing because of a mistake made by IBM failing to deliver a government contract.