With excellent timing, your article (From Chimpanzini Bananini to Ballerina Cappuccina: how gen alpha went wild for Italian brain rot animals, 25 June) appeared on the day that “brain rot” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
When researching the entry, we discovered that brain rot is nothing new. The earliest evidence of its usage that we found was in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden (1854); in it he lamented society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas in favour of simple ones, viewing it as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort. The term has been applied variously to reading too many books, watching too much television, and listening to “pimpley music”, bringing us up to date with the digital content that takes the blame currently.
While it took the last year or so to really cement it in the language, it seems that nothing much has changed except the medium.
Concerned parents, citizens, or even linguists can take comfort in one fact revealed by our research: the supposed consumers or victims of brain rot are often the very people using the term (to mean both the content itself and its impact on them). This suggests that – whatever the cost to intelligence or attention spans – they at least retain self-awareness or a sense of irony. To quote David Bowie, “They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.”
Fiona McPherson
Executive editor, Oxford English Dictionary
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