You have probably heard terms like “drip,” “cap,” “slap,” and “gatekeep” in the last few years. However, 2024 has introduced yet another set of words that are extremely goofy and nonsensical.
The Internet has begun referring to them as “brain rot” because indeed: it hurts to hear them. The most important point to make, though, is that this new generation of slang breaks communication simply by being profusely irritating.
You have to do research to understand slang, but you probably won’t smile unless you’re in Generation Alpha.
We have been through various stages of online humor: picture-based memes, Vine trends, dank memes, offensive absurdism, cursed images, TikTok trends, and now we’ve finally reached brain rot-based humor.
The most prominent example is “sus,” originating from the cult-classic game “Among Us” in which players would say the first three letters of “suspicious” rather than the entire word. It’s been around for four years, but it classifies as brain rot because of its frequent use and longevity. Other terms such as “rizz” in place of “charisma,” or “sigma” to replace “savage” follow suit.
Why is it important to mention one’s “gyatt,” or oversized rear, at all? Similarly, nobody wants to know what anyone is “edging” to. “Mewing” is a method of resting your tongue on the roof of your mouth. But the question on my mind is: Who cares?
Another, more recent slang word to come out of the Internet is “skibidi,” born from the Garry’s Mod series Skibidi Toilet. The word comes from the enemies—toilets with spinning, singing heads—singing a mash-up of “Give it to Me” by Timbaland and “Dom Dom Yes Yes” by Bliser King. Most importantly though: the word technically means nothing. As a sentence-starter term, what’s its purpose?
If you’re on social media like Instagram, you might have seen comments on popular posts saying, “Nice try Diddy.” My question is though: What does P. Diddy have to do with things like the new Princess and the Frog ride at Disney World, a new item at Burger King, or TwitchCon? Exactly: nothing.
Sometimes, the term “brain rot” even feels like it belongs under its own umbrella. Like memes, brain rot is expanding into more than what it began as. People are throwing in random subjects like comically oversized objects, Prime energy drinks, and rappers like DaBaby into the category.
The expansion of “brain rot” makes communicating ideas unnecessarily confusing. The most important point of talking is to say what you mean, and this dialect is an extensive list of verbal roadblocks. Maybe I would know why that “sigma male over there got an L+ ratio trying to skibidi rizz up his friend at lunch with the fanum tax” if the slang sounded more sensical.
Fortunately, most ABAC students know that these slang terms have appropriate times and places—in class is not one of them.
“I hear them infrequently,” said writing and communication professor Dr. Jay Baldwin. “Mostly because I think students code-shift when speaking with professors.”
Baldwin continued, “The only thing that’ll stop the use of these terms will be when they fall out of favor, usually only to be replaced by something else.”
Crop and soil science student Cass Uchida said, “I don’t mind it for itself because new slang shows up with every generation because language is constantly evolving. Think about how goofy ‘yeet’ was for millennials.”
Nonetheless, brain rot stands as one of the more questionable developments in our dialogue. Nobody has a good answer for why it exists, and that’s the exact point: Brain rot has no meaning, and therefore it has no use or place in our communication.