If brainrot is the real problem, then AI, which allows brainrot to be produced at a vastly greater scale by anyone with money, regardless of agenda, should be considered a massive problem. I'm...
If brainrot is the real problem, then AI, which allows brainrot to be produced at a vastly greater scale by anyone with money, regardless of agenda, should be considered a massive problem.
I'm genuinely so exhausted with this same take all the time, "X isn't the problem because Y was already happening" yeah buddy that's how every crisis happens, a new event puts stress on systems which widen the existing cracks and flaws.
The UK had child poverty before Brexit. US politicians served big business interests before Citizens United. Dinosaurs were dying before the meteor.
That's an interesting take. To me it was just a rhetorical device. The author really only devotes one or two lines in the article to AI and really not in relation to any idea that AI will not be...
That's an interesting take. To me it was just a rhetorical device. The author really only devotes one or two lines in the article to AI and really not in relation to any idea that AI will not be consequential but rather as a comparison to what he already sees happening in mainstream culture.
I'm saying this not to attack you at all directly but rather a really pervasive approach to content these days that I see repeated often: What's genuinely exhausting to me is seeing people reacting so strongly to headlines but not actually dealing with the content of the articles. We live in a click baity world and even before things got so extreme publications have used headlines to editorialize and drive views for at least a century. I don't agree with it but it is what it is. Why bother becoming so worked up by a headline? (Rhetorical question) Engage with the actual content or move on, or at least that's what my philosophy is.
I do allow that my take was shallow and directed more at a general trend than this article in particular. However the headline contextualises the contents of the article (which I did read before...
I do allow that my take was shallow and directed more at a general trend than this article in particular. However the headline contextualises the contents of the article (which I did read before replying, for the record) as being in opposition to the assertion that AI brainrot is a problem. AFAIK it's common for writers to not pick their own headlines, but that doesn't change my criticism: the headline presents a headass thesis statement which the article fails to deliver on.
I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. One of the ways brainrot works is slot machine logic. You just keep scrolling until you find something that tickles your brain. Then you keep scrolling until...
If brainrot is the real problem, then AI, which allows brainrot to be produced at a vastly greater scale by anyone with money, regardless of agenda, should be considered a massive problem.
I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. One of the ways brainrot works is slot machine logic. You just keep scrolling until you find something that tickles your brain. Then you keep scrolling until the next thing. Every time you scroll to a new screen you’re pulling the machine again. But with “artisanally produced” slop, there’s a limit to how much you can make. Most people are just doing it because they’re attention seeking and uncreative so they just throw out whatever lowest common denominator pap to chum the water with and see what sticks. It’s the rare sort of complete sociopath, like Mr. Beast, who can really identify the exact sort of bait that will get people to click in. But there is enough effort involved in the production that there’s a balance of wins and losses.
I think with AI, it’s possible that the volume of low-effort trash is going to be so high that it’s entirely possible that it overwhelms the ability of algorithmic curation feeds to sift out anything that will tickle your brain from it. You’ll end up with those bizarre horror-show YouTube videos that the algorithm was serving up to kids in the late 2010s and people will just start to check out and retreat to more intentionally curated time-wasting.
The author spends a lot of time bemoaning memes and brainrot or whatever but haven't memes existed for like...the entirety of human culture? "Kilroy was here" in the 40s, any playground song that...
The author spends a lot of time bemoaning memes and brainrot or whatever but haven't memes existed for like...the entirety of human culture? "Kilroy was here" in the 40s, any playground song that you learned from another kid who learned it from another kid who went to a different school...literal chain mail that people sent back when mail was a thing? I can't think of any examples but surely cartoons have prompted kids to say random nonsense unprompted and that probably also predates the internet? Aren't the Uncle Sam propaganda posters the same shit we see the current admin doing (just with more fascist flavoring)? Is the issue then the speed at which these things spread and disappear? Is the issue that it's so much more pervasive that it invites a lack of critical thinking day to day? [insert made up Socrates quote about the youth here]
As an aside "gooning reality" sounds like nonsense and like the author thinks it can be used as a substitute for "edging" but if you said that in any discord server today I think you'd get laughed at...
Yeah it’s only the speed and the more visual nature of these things that have changed. There were countless things repeated to me when I was a kid and they were sort of urban legends but also just...
Yeah it’s only the speed and the more visual nature of these things that have changed.
There were countless things repeated to me when I was a kid and they were sort of urban legends but also just silly things like memes. It was often some gross thing a famous person supposedly did but it was shorthand for joking about their lifestyle or personality type. There was just no reddit to spread them and no google to verify them.
I think it's pretty clear that our culture has developed a strange, symbiotic relationship with technology, and we just refuse to discuss it. I get the sense that's the author's intended thesis,...
I think it's pretty clear that our culture has developed a strange, symbiotic relationship with technology, and we just refuse to discuss it. I get the sense that's the author's intended thesis, though I think they get so bogged down in the details the story kinda trails off.
Ultimately though, there doesn't seem to clear idea of what we should do about this, either as a culture or on an individual level. If the vast majority of people are plugged in and addicted to tech, it makes leaving that ecosystem even harder.
I see this in my personal life a lot. I'm fairly unplugged at this point (Tildes is basically my only active social media - I don't count discord as social media) and the majority of people I interact with I have some sort of IRL relationship with. Otherwise, my only feed is traditional news media, and scrolling through reddit passively at work. I also don't have a smart phone anymore - I switched to a flip phone a year or so ago.
When I meet someone new, (usually at a local gay bar, or at my work) they often talk about some sort of online trend or discourse that I haven't heard of, and I'll find myself kinda staring blankly at them. Or, I'll get a message from someone I know already irl talking about a social issue or something that they heard about online, and I don't know what to say back to them.
I'm happy being this unplugged, but I have to admit, it's lonely, and a bit bizarre to be this disconnected from the world at large. I'd feel like I'm an old person not aware of new trends, if it wasn't for people older than me telling me about them.
I think a way to look at it is: you have a healthy relationship with your phone and the Internet. If there is something worth knowing about, someone is bound to tell you. There's very little in...
I think a way to look at it is: you have a healthy relationship with your phone and the Internet. If there is something worth knowing about, someone is bound to tell you.
There's very little in the global news cycle that actually has an effect on your day to day. I see no use in worrying about things that you ultimately have no control over. Slacktivism is very closely related to this topic.
Not related, but I have a really bad YouTube addiction. I excuse it by saying I primarily watch educational low energy content, and I do feel like it's useful in that regard. However, lately, I've wondered if I am really just distracting myself from my thoughts.
It's funny how almost rage-inducingly meaningless 6-7 is to many adults, but isn't that the point? Let's consider some slightly older "funny numbers". They reference something. 420 is a weed...
It's funny how almost rage-inducingly meaningless 6-7 is to many adults, but isn't that the point? Let's consider some slightly older "funny numbers". They reference something. 420 is a weed reference. 69 is a reference to a sex position. 42 is a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 80085 is how you spell "BOOBS" on a 7-segment calculator display. 1337 is (e)lite spelled in gamer slang probably derived from that same 7-segment numerals-as-letters symbolism. But the way these joke numbers are used is often divorced from the original meaning. I don't even know what the origin of replying "nice" when the number 69 appears is from, but I remember it being reflexively used online at least 15 years ago, probably longer.
6-7 is a reference to a reference to a reference, but its actual usage seems to be a combination of tribalism (indicating you belong to a group by using a shared reference, even if the actual referent is vague or undefined), and the age-old "random is funny" type of humor. When I was in middle school, being "random" was often considered the peak of humor, even if the particular expression was different.
I'm way too old to "get" 6-7, but I think it's not all that different from previous generations' use of slang, often divorced from the original context to the point of absurdity, to indicate that you belong and to annoy the out-group, in this case, adults.
Which segues into the point of my comment, which wasn't to write an essay on a meme I admittedly don't "get" the same way that kids that use it get it. It's that modern brain rot isn't just the product of social media algorithms. Those algorithms may help spread memes further than they would in the pre social media, pre internet days. Kids will always copy each other, copy their older idols, sometimes do the exact opposite of what the adults are doing simply because they want to distinguish themselves from them. These are universal human tendencies that have existed at all times. In some ways, they're healthy. They're steps children take to define themselves as something more than the extension of their immediate family, and societies that don't allow that kind of self-expression are often ones that are socially regressive, authoritarian, and undemocratic.
I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how modern social media shapes all of our lives, but I think it's a mistake to focus on individual memes as if they're something new and unique. The article kind of acknowledges this when it says maybe we should focus on the evolution of slang more generally, but it still falls into the trap of attributing "kids these days" to some fundamentally wrong algorithmically manipulated social reality. It's normal for kids to have "dumb" slang, and for adults to think that slang is dumb, and there's no reason to think that any particular meme is, in some fundamental way, different from memes of the past few generations. That they're somehow so void of meaning that only a machine could have made them.
I also have to say, as someone who spends quite a lot of time online and comparatively less on in person socialization, I still can't empathize with the idea of literally thinking in memes. That seems bizarre to me. I don't think it's indicative of any widespread trend to have your literal thoughts transform into rage comics and funny tweets.
I'm not sure if this is just me, but it's hard to get into an article when I feel like the introductory logic doesn't hold up. I would argue 6-7 doesn't have meaning, but does have a purpose....
I'm not sure if this is just me, but it's hard to get into an article when I feel like the introductory logic doesn't hold up.
I would argue 6-7 doesn't have meaning, but does have a purpose. Simply, it exists to annoy adults. I'm not really sure why this author let their child be so distraught about it, when that is a perfectly valid explanation?
Kids will latch on to anything that adults hate. What reason is there to 6-7 other than that? Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean you should be afraid of it. This has been happening since the dawn of time.
If brainrot is the real problem, then AI, which allows brainrot to be produced at a vastly greater scale by anyone with money, regardless of agenda, should be considered a massive problem.
I'm genuinely so exhausted with this same take all the time, "X isn't the problem because Y was already happening" yeah buddy that's how every crisis happens, a new event puts stress on systems which widen the existing cracks and flaws.
The UK had child poverty before Brexit. US politicians served big business interests before Citizens United. Dinosaurs were dying before the meteor.
That's an interesting take. To me it was just a rhetorical device. The author really only devotes one or two lines in the article to AI and really not in relation to any idea that AI will not be consequential but rather as a comparison to what he already sees happening in mainstream culture.
I'm saying this not to attack you at all directly but rather a really pervasive approach to content these days that I see repeated often: What's genuinely exhausting to me is seeing people reacting so strongly to headlines but not actually dealing with the content of the articles. We live in a click baity world and even before things got so extreme publications have used headlines to editorialize and drive views for at least a century. I don't agree with it but it is what it is. Why bother becoming so worked up by a headline? (Rhetorical question) Engage with the actual content or move on, or at least that's what my philosophy is.
I do allow that my take was shallow and directed more at a general trend than this article in particular. However the headline contextualises the contents of the article (which I did read before replying, for the record) as being in opposition to the assertion that AI brainrot is a problem. AFAIK it's common for writers to not pick their own headlines, but that doesn't change my criticism: the headline presents a headass thesis statement which the article fails to deliver on.
I get what you’re saying and agree. Thanks for following up, I think I wasn’t grasping what you were trying to say in the first comment
I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. One of the ways brainrot works is slot machine logic. You just keep scrolling until you find something that tickles your brain. Then you keep scrolling until the next thing. Every time you scroll to a new screen you’re pulling the machine again. But with “artisanally produced” slop, there’s a limit to how much you can make. Most people are just doing it because they’re attention seeking and uncreative so they just throw out whatever lowest common denominator pap to chum the water with and see what sticks. It’s the rare sort of complete sociopath, like Mr. Beast, who can really identify the exact sort of bait that will get people to click in. But there is enough effort involved in the production that there’s a balance of wins and losses.
I think with AI, it’s possible that the volume of low-effort trash is going to be so high that it’s entirely possible that it overwhelms the ability of algorithmic curation feeds to sift out anything that will tickle your brain from it. You’ll end up with those bizarre horror-show YouTube videos that the algorithm was serving up to kids in the late 2010s and people will just start to check out and retreat to more intentionally curated time-wasting.
The author spends a lot of time bemoaning memes and brainrot or whatever but haven't memes existed for like...the entirety of human culture? "Kilroy was here" in the 40s, any playground song that you learned from another kid who learned it from another kid who went to a different school...literal chain mail that people sent back when mail was a thing? I can't think of any examples but surely cartoons have prompted kids to say random nonsense unprompted and that probably also predates the internet? Aren't the Uncle Sam propaganda posters the same shit we see the current admin doing (just with more fascist flavoring)? Is the issue then the speed at which these things spread and disappear? Is the issue that it's so much more pervasive that it invites a lack of critical thinking day to day? [insert made up Socrates quote about the youth here]
As an aside "gooning reality" sounds like nonsense and like the author thinks it can be used as a substitute for "edging" but if you said that in any discord server today I think you'd get laughed at...
Yeah it’s only the speed and the more visual nature of these things that have changed.
There were countless things repeated to me when I was a kid and they were sort of urban legends but also just silly things like memes. It was often some gross thing a famous person supposedly did but it was shorthand for joking about their lifestyle or personality type. There was just no reddit to spread them and no google to verify them.
I think it's pretty clear that our culture has developed a strange, symbiotic relationship with technology, and we just refuse to discuss it. I get the sense that's the author's intended thesis, though I think they get so bogged down in the details the story kinda trails off.
Ultimately though, there doesn't seem to clear idea of what we should do about this, either as a culture or on an individual level. If the vast majority of people are plugged in and addicted to tech, it makes leaving that ecosystem even harder.
I see this in my personal life a lot. I'm fairly unplugged at this point (Tildes is basically my only active social media - I don't count discord as social media) and the majority of people I interact with I have some sort of IRL relationship with. Otherwise, my only feed is traditional news media, and scrolling through reddit passively at work. I also don't have a smart phone anymore - I switched to a flip phone a year or so ago.
When I meet someone new, (usually at a local gay bar, or at my work) they often talk about some sort of online trend or discourse that I haven't heard of, and I'll find myself kinda staring blankly at them. Or, I'll get a message from someone I know already irl talking about a social issue or something that they heard about online, and I don't know what to say back to them.
I'm happy being this unplugged, but I have to admit, it's lonely, and a bit bizarre to be this disconnected from the world at large. I'd feel like I'm an old person not aware of new trends, if it wasn't for people older than me telling me about them.
I think a way to look at it is: you have a healthy relationship with your phone and the Internet. If there is something worth knowing about, someone is bound to tell you.
There's very little in the global news cycle that actually has an effect on your day to day. I see no use in worrying about things that you ultimately have no control over. Slacktivism is very closely related to this topic.
Not related, but I have a really bad YouTube addiction. I excuse it by saying I primarily watch educational low energy content, and I do feel like it's useful in that regard. However, lately, I've wondered if I am really just distracting myself from my thoughts.
It's funny how almost rage-inducingly meaningless 6-7 is to many adults, but isn't that the point? Let's consider some slightly older "funny numbers". They reference something. 420 is a weed reference. 69 is a reference to a sex position. 42 is a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 80085 is how you spell "BOOBS" on a 7-segment calculator display. 1337 is (e)lite spelled in gamer slang probably derived from that same 7-segment numerals-as-letters symbolism. But the way these joke numbers are used is often divorced from the original meaning. I don't even know what the origin of replying "nice" when the number 69 appears is from, but I remember it being reflexively used online at least 15 years ago, probably longer.
6-7 is a reference to a reference to a reference, but its actual usage seems to be a combination of tribalism (indicating you belong to a group by using a shared reference, even if the actual referent is vague or undefined), and the age-old "random is funny" type of humor. When I was in middle school, being "random" was often considered the peak of humor, even if the particular expression was different.
I'm way too old to "get" 6-7, but I think it's not all that different from previous generations' use of slang, often divorced from the original context to the point of absurdity, to indicate that you belong and to annoy the out-group, in this case, adults.
Which segues into the point of my comment, which wasn't to write an essay on a meme I admittedly don't "get" the same way that kids that use it get it. It's that modern brain rot isn't just the product of social media algorithms. Those algorithms may help spread memes further than they would in the pre social media, pre internet days. Kids will always copy each other, copy their older idols, sometimes do the exact opposite of what the adults are doing simply because they want to distinguish themselves from them. These are universal human tendencies that have existed at all times. In some ways, they're healthy. They're steps children take to define themselves as something more than the extension of their immediate family, and societies that don't allow that kind of self-expression are often ones that are socially regressive, authoritarian, and undemocratic.
I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how modern social media shapes all of our lives, but I think it's a mistake to focus on individual memes as if they're something new and unique. The article kind of acknowledges this when it says maybe we should focus on the evolution of slang more generally, but it still falls into the trap of attributing "kids these days" to some fundamentally wrong algorithmically manipulated social reality. It's normal for kids to have "dumb" slang, and for adults to think that slang is dumb, and there's no reason to think that any particular meme is, in some fundamental way, different from memes of the past few generations. That they're somehow so void of meaning that only a machine could have made them.
I also have to say, as someone who spends quite a lot of time online and comparatively less on in person socialization, I still can't empathize with the idea of literally thinking in memes. That seems bizarre to me. I don't think it's indicative of any widespread trend to have your literal thoughts transform into rage comics and funny tweets.
cursed sentence:
otherwise i don't get the thesis other than "memes exist"
What a terrible day to possess the ability to read.
I'm not sure if this is just me, but it's hard to get into an article when I feel like the introductory logic doesn't hold up.
I would argue 6-7 doesn't have meaning, but does have a purpose. Simply, it exists to annoy adults. I'm not really sure why this author let their child be so distraught about it, when that is a perfectly valid explanation?
Kids will latch on to anything that adults hate. What reason is there to 6-7 other than that? Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean you should be afraid of it. This has been happening since the dawn of time.