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.