Brain rot

NOT SAFE FOR BRAIN The article you are looking at may not be brain safe! If your mind or personality notice this article, claim that it was spam and blame a virus. Otherwise, continue to read it until you spork out your own frontal lobes.

When a victim of brain rot has died, this is what his brain looks like. He's one of the lucky ones.

Brain rot, as defined by the utter wingnuts at Wiktionary, is "any form of media content that is deemed to hold little artistic value or negatively impact those who consume it". Besides being a pretty great name for a death metal band, yes, that is exactly what brain rot means. Slop that mentally deteriorates any single braincell you have left on the internet, mindbogglingly stupid lowest-of-the-low that has found its way slithering in the already deep, dark, and damp orifices of the hellholes known as YouTube, TikTok, and really just any social media platform. Usually short-form content, which tries to grab your attention span (and hopefully shorten it) with flashy visuals and multiple things happening at once cause overstimulation and destroying of the brain. Brain rot also has its way with slang too, with slang words such as skibidi and rizz being labeled as such. Surprisingly, this term is so big that it was voted Oxford Word of the Year, so ... How the hell did this happen?

Origin and usage

The term "brain rot" has been synonymous with the world's stupidest generations (thus far) Generation Alpha and Generation Z. Sadly, when preschoolers have nothing to do at home and bisexual left-wing activists need a break from all that cancelling, they scroll endlessly on short-form content and fall victim to an absolute shattering of the psyche. The term was originally used by philosopher and rare white abolitionist Henry David Thoreau. In 1854, he said that brain rot was "society's tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort". Although definitely not close, we applaud Thoreau, since he wholeheartedly knew that this evil came from society, and yes, it does.

First wave of brain rot

See also: Major League Gaming

Example of first-wave brain rot. Notice how present brain rot maintains the themes of flashy colors and nonsense memes, although first-wave is edgier.

The first wave of brain rot (also known as "proto-brainrot") is kinda like the first wave of black metal, in the way that it is sorta not black metal. It has qualities of it, yes, but it doesn't have the church burning, or in this case, the short-form quality. In fact, two minutes is a stomach-churning sight to a brainrotted person, and as such they will vehemently dismiss it. MLG videos such as the one to your left are cited to as the precursor to all brain rot, and lasted from 2013 to 2017. Funnily enough, one year later in 2018 would prove to be the best year for brain rot, as TikTok would merge with Musical.ly and explode in popularity, later becoming the main shipper of brain rot along with YouTube Shorts. Despite that, the brain rot scene was shockingly empty around this time (unless you count surreal memes such as E), until finally in 2020 ...

Among Us

The first signs of second wave brain rot, now known to us as just "brain rot" came as the spread of Among Us happened. Sure, it was made in 2018, but it didn't pick up until late 2020 while we were all locked in our homes. Slowly and surely, we realized we were locked for a purpose, as places to live became asylums as soon as people got hooked on the game. Multiple memes spawned – so many that I can't even begin to describe them in this article – yet they were technically not "brain rot" and more just internet stupidity. Brain rot happened as soon as the "things that look like Among Us" trend happened, and it all went to shit.

I am slowly going insane 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 switch ... insane going slowly am I 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 switch ...

Things that look like Among Us

The reason why this is a sign of "brain rot" is because people were so immersed in internet culture that they saw everything from Champion to trash cans as Among Us and were yelling like caveman at the sight of it. A key part of brain rot is that you're so sucked into it you can't get out of it and that is precisely what happened in this trend. Yes, you are demented if you see Among Us in anime girls' eyes when they cry. Please see a psychiatrist.

Second wave of brain rot

Quandale Dingle

Quandale Dingle is when brain rot was almost fully fleshed out. Finally we have switched to short-form content with flashy visuals and multiple things happening at once. Don't you feel like you're dying when you see all these flashing images juxtaposed with that goofy ahh voice? We are now in second wave brain rot, which isn't actually real brain rot in the modern sense yet, but way closer than MLG and all that jazz.

"Alright, so, if MLG wasn't brain rot, and the Among Us and Quandale Dingle stuff isn't, where does brain rot officially begin?" you might be asking. Well, there's one more aspect I haven't taught you yet, or maybe just something you were anticipating for.

Elsagate

Mickey deserved it anyway ...

Here's the big one. Elsagate was this bizarre category of YouTube Kids content that were highly inappropriate and featured characters such as Mickey Mouse, Peppa Pig, but most importantly, Elsa and Spiderman. Think about this, you're a low-budget Chinese animation studio that probably profits off of 11-year-olds. What the hell are you supposed to do? You look to the west. Children are getting tablets to shut up. Perfect meat. Now, I don't know why the hell they were so sexual, bloody, and scatological, maybe that's what China likes. Who knows.

Elsagate left a gigantic scar on YouTube and the internet as a whole, as strict child protection laws were put onto the platform like COPPA, annoyingly messing with YouTubers who weren't marketed towards kids, and letting even worse stuff slip by. You haven't seen the worst of those Vietnam sweatshops YouTube, because when you fight against them, they come raging back like tigers ...

Brain rot vs. sludge content

Before we go on to third-wave brain rot, which is the brain rot we all know, I think I should tell you people the difference between brain rot and another type of short-form content, sludge content. The main difference between both of these content categories is that while brain rot is targeted towards children, sludge content is targeted towards teens and young adults. Sludge content, in spite of the fact that it has split screens and tries its hardest to be addicted, usually have videos in the middle stolen from comedy skits on the same platform or television shows such as Family Guy or The Simpsons. The two overlap by on the bottom usually having Subway Surfers gameplay, carpet cleaning, or hydraulic press shenanigans. And now, without further delay, third-wave brain rot.

Yep. We're up to here.

Third-wave brain rot

Third-wave brain rot (which is definitely not a term I made up just now) is real brain rot, as in third-wave ska is ... You know what, don't answer that. We are now in the age of gyatt, rizz, Ohio, Grimace Shake, mewing and sigma. With the combined powers of the erratic sensibilities of Quandale Dingle and Among Us content with the predatory practices of Elsagate, you finally the get the brain rot we all know and loathe. You know your cousin that has Cheetos fingers all the time and has a big IPad and won't stop scrolling (and the adults don't have the guts to do shit) on YouTube? His brain is basically gone at this point. He is now a zombie. Gone are the days of using mindless brostep and trap songs to act cool, and gone are the days of anything even being close to eliciting humor, these are content farms which dominate the algorithm with the sole reason of making money.

Proposed threat to humanity

I literally can't think of a caption. This is reality. Where did we go wrong?

People have proposed that brain rot may be the "end all, be all" to humanity. Imagine that these people are now going to be our soldiers, our workforce, and most alarmingly, our congressman. Will trans children laws be struck down because of a unanimous binge‑watch of all Andrew Tate content? Probably. Plumber rates will go down due to people being scared that heads will pop out of the water and start singing. The delightful Wizard of Oz will be horribly twisted into The Rizzard, and they may cast Kai Cenat as the scarecrow. What kind of nostalgic gain is there to the times that these half-dead kids live in? Probably nothing. But like most nostalgia trends, it'll be thought of with all the good times staying and the bad times cut out. I mean, how did Gen X have good times back then?

Fourth-wave brain rot?

With the rise of AI on the horizon, fourth-wave brain rot seems likely. However, people have stopped and have reasonably said that, well, how do you even go higher from here? It might seem weird to say that we might never get worser than this. With TikTok now going-to-be banned and a crackdown on most of brain rot and its horrible tactics, we might be able to control it and end it, probably just like the covid that may or may not have had something to do with this. The scar is undeniably big, but maybe we can get through it together to save our kids from this ... thing. Look, this usually isn't something an Uncyclopedia article would do, but we need to do something about this. Protect ourselves from this plain n' simple slop. Ladies, gentlemen, and menaces to society, we must band together and protect the next generation from letting humanity down. Please.

Or maybe I should stop yapping tbh