7 min 04 sec: app reading time
December 11, 2024
BRAIN ROT
Dear Friend:
Why ‘Brain Rot’ Is 2024’s Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year?
At first, I was surprised, but the more I thought about it, the more I understood why the choice was made!
"Brain rot" is the deterioration of a person’s mental or emotional state resulting from the "overconsumption" of trivial material—especially stuff found on the Internet and media. (YouTube and social media). "Brain rot" is the equivalent of an overweight body fed by junk food with all due respect to obesity caused in some cases by hormonal issues.
"Brain rot" has come to mean a symptom of mindless scrolling through nonsense memes and sludge content that feels like "brain content."
"Brain rot" is the sensation of faculties warmly smothered by one too many AI-generated pictures or a brain bombarded by repetitive sentences. You can see the off-putting depictions, popular on Facebook, of Jesus fused with crustaceans. Just creative nonsense.
The term doesn’t describe literal decomposition, which happens rapidly to most dead human brains.
"'Brain rot' speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life and how we are using our free time," Oxford Languages president Casper Grathwohl said in a press release. "It feels like the rightful next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology."
The expression’s usage frequency spiked 230 percent between 2023 and 2024, the dictionary-maker says, and it was especially common this year on TikTok. It beat out five other words du jour curated by Oxford’s linguists and submitted for public voting, in which 37,000 people participated. (Another shortlisted word was “slop,” which describes the low-quality images and text churned out by large language models.)
Let me describe three sources of "brain rot." Whenever we research any social phenomenon, we aim to detect causation.
1) Social Media and media in general
Notably, the expression is most used by the people who consume or produce most of the content blamed for brain rot. Gen Z and Gen Alpha have readily adopted the phrase, Grathwohl notes, with an attitude both tongue-in-cheek and self-aware. It’s a joke, but it may have some teeth: 2024 was also a year of pronounced concerns about mental health harms and Internet use.
In June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels on social media platforms.
To be sure, "brain rot" has been with us for years. Before the Internet, television was the "brain rot" of its epoch.
2) Distraction
Oxford has traced the expression to its first recorded use in Walden, the 1854 book by proto-hippie Henry David Thoreau. "While England endeavours to cure the potato rot," Thoreau wrote, "will not any endeavor to cure the brain rot—which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"
Another form of "brain rot" common these days is a power we don't associate with hierarchy, authority, role, wealth, celebrity, or even vitality. It's the power of distraction! We have yet to tap into this "negative power" because we don't experience it as power. Yet, it's as deadly to mental health as cigarette smoke to the lungs. It's toxic. I could list many examples.
Distraction helps us cope with the deadly presence of something we have no desire to undertake!
Thoreau caught the pulse of "brain rot" in 1854.
Cultural "brain rot" is partly caused by mindless distractions, such as aberrant behaviors that get attention, confusion, exaggerated information, agitation with no rhyme or reason, bewilderment, and, in some cases, dystopian scenarios.
"Brain rot" happens when we cease to exercise our choices and surrender to distraction. We give up value for distraction!
3) Purposeless entertainment
Consistently choosing "entertainment" over "purpose" creates a shallow state of mind that is unable to deal with the real issues of life. According to social studies, Americans spend a large conglomerate of leisure time aimlessly in a 24-hour period. In fact, it's second to sleeping, which at least serves a purpose.
Entertainment has a place, but a culture of purposeless entertainment and distraction will inevitably lead to "brain rot"!
It's like living with the illusion of many friends, acquaintances, and family members you meet at parties while the only thing you have in common is what I call "chit-chat." Like, "How're you doing? What's new? Blah, blah, blah..." According to recent social surveys, 50% of people in the US reveal they live quiet, lonely lives regardless of job and social acquaintances.
You can "entertain" someone for hours by showing interest in their "stuff" or sharing your own "stuff" and not connecting emotionally.
In a culture where "brain rot" is the new normal, driven by AI, social media, political propaganda, distraction, and non-connective encounters, I call on you and myself to consider nurturing our brains with meaning.
Let me give you a few ideas to get going.
1) Practice silence.
Silence is the least practiced language of the inner self. "I've begun to realize that you can listen to Silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own." ― Chaim Potok, American author, novelist, playwright, editor, and rabbi. ("The Chosen")
2) Practice mindfulness, meditation and prayer
Mindfulness is a type of meditation that involves being aware of your current thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without judgment. It suggests that the mind is fully attending to what’s happening now, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through.
Mindfulness might seem trivial, except for the annoying fact that we so often veer from the matter at hand and miss the present moment. Our mind takes flight, we lose touch with our body, and pretty soon, we’re engrossed in obsessive thoughts about something that just happened or fretting about the future. And that makes us anxious, causes stress, it affects our bodies in countless ways. I have found mindfulness to be an oasis of rest in the midst of the issues I deal with by choice or by default.
By practicing mindfulness, meditation, and prayer, you can experience "manifestations" of God's presence in your life now. Manifesting isn't about getting; it's about allowing and becoming vulnerable. As soon as you let go of control, the way you imagine God to be wired by religious constructs, you open yourself up to the God who journeys with you now. Suddenly, you become a magnet for the presence of God. Not because God wasn't available before you practiced mindfulness but because you were not ready for an intimate relationship with God.
Mindfulness helps me to make sense of the issues I face in my life. I long for coherence and a sense of wholeness beyond what I experience in the now, even when I embrace paradoxes, uncertainty and unknown scenarios.
3) Practice gratefulness in your mind. Scientific research shows that gratefulness is not an emotion but a choice. When you choose gratefulness above happiness and distraction, you will experience joy from within!
4) Practice vulnerability. Most people experience buried shame or the fear of being open and looking weird. Practice the uncomfortable discipline of vulnerability. This may mean not having to impress someone else with a story of something that makes you look cool and composed.
"We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow. It is a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them—we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare."― Brené Brown, "The Gifts of Imperfection" (2010)
5) Practice compassion and grace instead of giving in to reactivity and impulse.
The guy who cut in front of you on the freeway may have needed more money to fix his turning light. Perhaps he was on his way to work. I say a prayer and give him distance gracefully! To me, compassion is more than a feeling.
6) Read an actual book instead of spending endless hours watching videos from people who act like experts, but they are not.
"Deep reading for me means the luxury of long stretches of uninterrupted time with my books and the freedom of circling and underlining and scribbling in the margins. It's also the richness of reflection and privilege of focus to forge my own understandings and ideas." -- Maya Smart, writer, parent educator and early literacy advocate. Her book "Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to Help Your Child" shows that the literary crisis of our culture starts at home.
7) Ask self about your purpose in life.
Write it down. Be specific in defining values and endeavors. Outline areas where your purpose is being drained and wasted. I call those areas "purpose leakages." Avoid complicated schemes.
Social science research points out that people who hold on to a purpose tend to live more fulfilled lives, have healthier relationships, and live longer in many cases. Though there is a time for everything in life, even in retirement, you can re-design your purpose around meaning for the time you have left on this earth.
Notice that the seven suggestions I am sharing with you are "action steps" to keep your mind expanding and self-rinsing itself from the "brain rot" that befalls when you become obsessed with irrelevant pursuits.
I propose that all these "expanding" states of mind take time and energy until they become your natural way of connecting with yourself, God, and the people around you. You can progressively become free from the infestation of the "brain rot" that pollutes the culture.
I will finish with the words of the apostle Paul as he framed them in his theology of the "Christ" as a manifestation of God's presence then and for us now:
"So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective." (Colossians 3:1,2- TM)
When I let politics, overwhelming concerns, distractions, and personal issues take over my mind, I lose perspective. I lose sight of the God who wants to renew me and protect me from "brain rot" and the emptiness of life.
With you on your journey!
Pastor Harold
