BEYOND DENMARK? –
Dec. 1, 2024 – Brain rot is defined as the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging, you spending hours scrolling mindlessly on Instagram reels and TikTok? If so, you might be suffering from brain rot, which has become the Oxford word of the year.
It is a term that captures concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. he first recorded use of brain rot dates much before the creation of the internet – it was written down in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden.
He criticises society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas and how this is part of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort.
It leads him to ask: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
The word initially gained traction on social media among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities, but it’s now being used in the mainstream as a way to describe low-quality, low-value content found on social media…
