December 3, 2024
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Why ‘Brain Rot’ is the 2024 Word of the Year
The phrase “brain rot” increased 230 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to officials. Oxford English Dictionary
“Brain rot” is the official Word of the Year for 2024, according to the organization Oxford English Dictionarys publisher, Oxford University Press. Here’s how that august English chronicler defines the phrase: brain rot is “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” due to the “excessive consumption” of trivial material – especially things found on the Internet.
Because brain rot is a symptom of scrolling through nonsense memes sludge content. It’s a feeling of faculties suffocated by too many AI-generated photos; see the awesome images that are popular on Facebook Jesus fused with crustaceans.
Of course, the term does not describe it literal decomposition, which occurs rapidly in most dead human brains (although, curiously, not all). “‘Rotten Brain’ speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time,” Casper Grathwohl, Chair of Oxford Languages. he said in the press release. “I think it’s a fitting next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology.”
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The frequency of use of the expression increased by 230 percent between 2023 and 2024, the lexicographer says, and it has been particularly common on TikTok this year. It beat five other words du jour, curated by Oxford linguists and submitted to a public vote, where 37,000 people participated. (Another word chosen was “slop”, which describes low-quality images and text produced by large language models.)
Notably, the expression most likely used by those who consume or produce most of the content accused of brain rot. Gen Z and Gen Alpha have taken to the phrase easily, Grathwohl notes, with a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware attitude. It’s a joke, but it may have some teeth: 2024 was also marked by significant concern about the harms of mental health and internet use. In June, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels on social media platforms.
Sure, brain rot has been with us for years. Before the internet, it was television the great brain rot of his time. And Oxford has found the expression in its earliest recorded use WaldenAn 1854 book by proto-hippie Henry David Thoreau. “While England endeavors to cure the potato rot,” wrote Thoreau, “will no effort be made to cure the brain rot, which is far more extensive and fatal?” Our distractions may change, but our worries and complaints about them are juvenile.
