News Flash: 67 is dead. Still, brainrot isn't going anywhere. What does this style of content mean for the teenagers who devote their time to scrolling their life away?
News Flash: 67 is dead. The countless bus rides hearing “67! 6-7!” despite the music blasting in my ears, are over. To my disappointment, however, brainrot isn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, absurdity reigns supreme.
Brainrot, or the low-quality posts that now seem synonymous with social media, made their debut in the early 2020s, just as short-form content began to really take off. Trends like Italian Brainrot and AI-Fruit Love Island became extremely popular, with videos amassing millions of likes.
What does this new style of content mean for the teenagers who devote their time to scrolling their life away? A recent study of Gen Z users has shown that brainrot can increase a sense of community in teenagers. At face value, this might seem unremarkable: the 21st century has largely provided teenagers refuge online, with pockets of the internet to talk with people who all like the same TV shows, bands, etc. However, the sense of belonging built by sub-communities in the past is entirely different from the sense of community we feel today.
Back in the 2010s, memes actually asked something of you: you had to watch the show, read the book, understand the format. It’s not that the decade lacked weirdness; anyone who remembers no-scope edits and doge memes would agree that jokes weren’t always sophisticated. Each type of meme had a specific, predictable format, which you had to spend some time on the internet to understand. If you had never seen the classic Drew Gooden vine, would you know why this is funny?
As the algorithms on Tiktok and Instagram got scarily good at ensuring we can’t look away from our screens, the formula for “how to make memes” has shifted. As videos have gotten shorter and shorter, the attention spans of consumers have decreased dramatically. If you don’t understand a reel, or it takes too long to be funny, most people just scroll.
Today, the classic form of set-up and punchline is gone. It’s too complex for an algorithm which rewards as many people as possible being engrossed by the first 2 seconds of a video. Because of this need for immediate entertainment, memes have become more absurd. Nothing about brainrot is particularly funny, but, as one participant of the study said, “it's so stupid that you just have to laugh.”
By ensuring that the joke isn’t tied to a 50-hour TV show or trilogies that take hours to read, brainrot accounts lower the barrier to entry. You don’t need context, cultural background, or even common sense to "get it." Really, all you need is a pulse and an Instagram account. This is what makes brainrot spread at the speed of light: the moment the right video blows up, my bus is yet again filled with elementary schoolers, screaming catchphrases at the top of their lungs. And while the rest of us might not express our amusement that vocally, the entire point of brainrot is that all of us can, theoretically, find it funny. And it’s worked.
Teenagers reference brainrot in conversation and send each other reels; it’s become a group activity. Something that everyone understands, from 5-year old iPad kids like my cousins, mindlessly watching "Skibidi Toilet," to kids in senior year, who still laugh when they see “Triple T.” It creates a sense of community beyond the people around you: memes like “67” and Italian Brainrot don’t even require people to know the same language. It becomes a sort of language on its own.
And so, brainrot has accomplished its mission. Its manufactured universal appeal is what allows it to unite us. So, the next time you see a reel that fries your brain, click send and share the misery!
