The Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024 is “brain rot.” According to the dictionary, brain rot is defined as:

(n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.

The year of the Skibidi Toilet popularity explosion and the potential loss of short-form video platform TikTok for millions of Americans has proven to be the appropriate year for this phrase to take its place on the, er, throne.

What is our attention span anymore? In the 19th century, we read long form novels like War and Peace for fun. We paid attention to people who gave lengthy, rational arguments for their new discoveries and theories. Were we more enlightened then, when the printing press was at its height and there was no such thing as even television (now antiquated)? 

In 1944, Marxist critics Adorno and Horkheimer discussed this in their work on “The Culture Industry.” According to our friends A&H, 

Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed.

In the 1940s, this was just the beginning. Movies and radio were still little babies, but our A&H already knew what was up. Later,  Millennials and Gen X kids were told that if they sat too long in front of the TV, it would “rot their brain. The same, later, with video games. And while brain rot is crowned this year’s word, let us not think it is peculiar to Gen Alpha.

Remember those Victorians with their well thought out arguments? With their TL;DR books? The publishing industry did the same thing that the movies and TV would do later: it mass produced titillating novels called “penny dreadfuls,” aimed at the working class, and sold en masse so that the publisher might garner a delicious sum of profit. It should also be noted that the 1800s was the era that invented photography and everything that that entails, giving rise to the visual media that would come later.

And what differentiates art versus brain rot? Can we elevate that minute and a half TikTok video to an art form when it consists of three people dancing in a way that three other people were dancing three minutes ago?

This is a question critics have tried to answer for a while now. Mass produced culture versus Culture with a capital c. If something is mass produced, does it by virtue of its mass production use its cultural value? What is, for instance, the aesthetic difference between the Mona Lisa and the Top Five ghost videos I like to watch?

If culture, as stated by A&H nearly 100 years ago, is an industry, what are we looking at now in terms of brain rot? If it was an industry, is it now hyper-industrialized like the Amazon or Temu of culture? It pays to be viral, so why not try for virality if one can?

What would be the opposite of brain rot, though? Could we potentially stave off the stupidity we are inflicting upon ourselves daily through another avenue?

Reading philosophy and other thoughtful works offers us an option to contend with brain rot and instead foster brain growth. Like an atrophying muscle, we need to exercise our intellect to keep it in good shape. Reading and studying those who spent their lives questioning the world around them helps us keep a firmer grip on reality, and in doing so exercises our brains.

It is customary to consider the past year at the end of every year and look forward to the new year. When we end 2024 with brain rot, will we begin 2025 with (at least a little) brain growth? Will we be able to put away the devices in times of stress and boredom and instead start our own little revolution by picking up a book or even a pen?