It’s not a secret that our generation has fallen in love with the addictive scroll of shortform content. However, gone are the days of dances to annoyingly catchy pop tunes, instead replaced by infinitely more niche references and in-jokes designed to trap viewers into an addictive sense of community. To avoid sounding like the disapproving uncle at the dinner table, I’ll say that I am equally as guilty for saying I’m sitting down for five minutes (atleast an hour) of “TikTok time” when really, there are better things to do.
The phenomenon that is short form content is not a new thing. Quickfire comedy has been a form of easily accessible and digestible media since the beginning of time, there’s no real harm in it, and the societal guilt placed upon the consumption of it is probably a product of the mentality that anything online means anti-social and disconnected from reality.
The stigma around online content is largely generational – with Gen Z and millennials being the most accepting of online content as ‘real’ content, the trend of generational stigmatisation of content continues past this though. “Brainrot” is a term mostly associated with Gen Alpha (those born between 2010-2025) and the seemingly nonsensical content that has been created for and popularised by them.
The term is perhaps best encapsulated by the “Skibidi Toilet”, described on Wikipedia as a series that “follows a war between human-headed toilets and humanoid characters with electronic devices for heads”, the series has garnered a huge audience amongst Gen Alpha with The Washington Post calling it “the biggest online phenomenon of the year”.
The series, as unsettling and hectic as it is, is not purely a Gen Alpha phenomenon, and in that regard, neither is brainrot. I, unfortunately, remember enjoying videos equally, if not more strange and nonsensical like “MLG Tellitubbies”, and “Scottish Harry Potter”.
There are however genuine concerns surrounding brainrot content, largely from parents and teachers. Claims that children are displaying shorter attention spans is attributed to the rise of highly addictive (more so because of pure stimulation rather than engaging content) short-form content on platforms like Tiktok and Instagram Reels. More generally, there is a widespread view that the quality of online media has suffered a steep decline with the main priority being to keep an audience scrolling through mind-numbing content rather than to engage them directly for the duration of a video, series, or movie. While there has been an unprecedented rise in short-form content, there tends to be an overgeneralisation that it's all empty space filled with low-effort content, ignoring the thoughtful media that is still being created on these platforms just because it is is a more simplistic format.
Much of the modern brainrot content is described as disturbing and inappropriate for its target audience, children, and young teens, while also being pretty shoddy in quality. This moral panic, however, is no more applicable than it was when used to argue against children watching Dr Who, playing Minecraft, or listening to rock music. Just like older generations when they ridiculed the content Gen Z consumed, we are now perpetuating the same distrust of media we do not understand.
Writing in The Guardian, Alex McKinnon sums this up saying: “a new moral panic over how the internet is poisoning children’s brains. I feel as though there’s one of these every few months?”.
The 2020’s are not the first decade to see children's content with dark undertones. Fairytales, the epitome of children's media, are a prime example of this. If someone described a story where two children are abandoned in a dark forest by their starving parents, only to be abducted by a stepmother (or witch depending on the version) who plans to eat the children after baking them in its oven but before this could happen the children are able to kill the stepmother by baking her in her own oven, what age rating would you think it would receive?
Instead, Hansel and Grettle is a literary and children's classic, because at the end of the day, storytelling is more than just content. The “lessons” we are taught to look for in children's stories, lessons like ‘stranger danger’, the importance of teamwork and the need for initiative can turn the darker undertones of many of these stories into subtle guides for children's mailable minds.
While from an outsider perspective, much of what we would consider brainrot is nonsensical gibberish, for those engrossed in its storyline and lore, there is a surprisingly well-built world, just like that of Minecraft, Star Wars, even the BBC classic In The Night Garden. Steph Harmon explains her reaction to watching the series in the same Guardian article saying: “There’s a clear narrative arc developing and there are plot twists, betrayals, humour, killer action scenes and a couple of moments where I probably felt more than I’m supposed to.”
This calls into question the bias behind the term brainrot. In my eyes, as someone who growing up loved all three of the aforementioned fantasy worlds, the only distinction between the works of Mojang, Lucasfilms and the BBC is exactly that, they are made by companies with entire teams behind them. Brainrot content on TikTok, YouTube and in general the internet is looked down upon as a waste of time, whether it's because its largely consumed on mobile phones, or because its generally built by just one person, generally with very little equipment, funding and often times limited filmography, editing and graphic design skills, children love an engaging story, more so than many appreciate.
So, despite the production quality, or medium used, if the creators of brainrot can create a storyline that captures the imagination of the youth, why shouldn’t they get sucked into that world?
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