A new brand of AI slop is spreading across social media – and while it might look like nonsense, there’s nothing to stop it delivering harmful messages to young minds
An AI-generated image of Tung Tung Tung Sahur and Ballerina Cappuccina, two of the characters in the Italian brainrot craze
Spend any time talking to a child with a smartphone and you will hear about “Italian brainrot”, the latest meme sweeping social media. If you can’t even begin to imagine what that means, you’re part of the problem. Children are exposed to a constantly evolving online culture that the adults in their lives don’t understand. It only gets worse with generative AI.
“Brainrot” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year last year. It refers to low-quality, unchallenging and nonsensical content with a negative impact on users’ mental state. It is content with no meaning that tends towards the absurd. It can refer to anything: meme, a video, an audio file. It can also refer more broadly to the damaging effects of social media, particularly doomscrolling.
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