This year, the Oxford dictionary word of the year is, “Brain rot.” The social media epidemic has finally achieved its total victory in the American consciousness. Not in that it has pervaded every aspect of society- though it has- not in that the use of social media has gotten out of control, but that all of these problems are acknowledged as such. “Doom scrolling” and “Brain rotting” have become deeply ingrained within the English lexicon. Despite this fact, everyone still engages in this kind of behavior.
I am occasionally guilty of this, though when I recognize it, I try to stop and do something a little more productive. TikTok, at one point or another, was a real social media app. Now it is nothing more than AI accounts posting 10 second clips of sitcoms, people screaming about unnecessary celebrity drama and Lebron James edits.
Nowadays, spending time on an app like TikTok is spending your time interacting with nothing. It is a pure waste of time and absolutely nothing else. It’s one thing when someone scrolls while eating a meal (even though reading a book or watching an actual YouTube video would be better). It’s another thing entirely when one spends hours upon hours scrolling through nothing. Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts add nothing to your life. It is simply another extension, at this point, of the AI culture, which has totally pervaded our lives today.
There is a likely possibility that only a small fraction of what one is even interacting with on the internet is even a real person. It is far more likely nowadays that we are interacting with some kind of computer. It is designed to pump out random content which has made its way into our own personalized, filtered algorithms that pump out endless content for us to consume. Another large portion of it is just trying to sell us random crap we don’t need or want.
Why are we wasting our lives, wasting our youths scrolling and looking at nothing? There has never in history been a bigger waste of time than scrolling on the internet. The biggest tragedy of all is that we acknowledge this fact- only ironically. Someone will say “I’ve been brainrotting all day” or “I just doom scrolled for two hours instead of doing my homework,” and be perfectly fine with it. It is so clear that at this point anything can be dangled in front of our faces and as long as attractive people promote it, we’ll band over backwards to integrate it into our lives.
There are few tragedies in the world more sad than seeing someone waste their potential and their brain power doing stupid, useless things that give them absolutely nothing in return. No knowledge is gained from it, no improvement to their lives is made. They are in stasis. They have achieved nothing.
