I confess to feeling desperate about the enormities of the world we humans have crafted. Whether you look through the lens of climate, conflicts, economy, extinctions, health, politics, pollution, or population, the whole picture is unnerving. (Notice my list is in alphabetical order; I see no way to prioritize these diverse disasters.)
Gone are the days when our feet were on the ground, when we attended foremost to our daily interactions with families and friends, homes and jobs, nature and personal passions. The morning newspaper or the evening newscast was our window into the public world, one that we could, more or less, open and close at will. (Less so during wars, depressions, and disasters.)
The Digital Door
In contrast, the digital door never shuts. As I work at my computer, pop-up ads intrude, uninvited. Everybody-and-his-brother’s AI is eager to spoon-feed me a blended mush of who-knows-what. Doom and gloom enter our inbox and fill our screens. We hang a little plastic “do not disturb” sign on our doorknob, but the toxic world we have collectively created is already inside. (Even as tiny bits of plastic, microplastics, have invaded our bodies. Just google it, starting with Harvard Medicine. I find it shocking.)
What is this doing to us?
Brain Rot
Oxford University Press to the rescue, to pinpoint our malady. It’s brain rot.
Based on worldwide discussion, analysis, and 37,000 votes, the creators of the esteemed Oxford Dictionary named “brain rot” the 2024 Word of the Year. They say the term was used 230 per cent more often in 2024 than in the previous year, as a term “to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media.”
We have Gen Z and Gen Alpha ― our youngest living generations ― to thank for the surge in the term’s usage. “These communities have amplified the expression through social media channels, the very place said to cause ‘brain rot,'” observed Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages. “It demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of social media that they’ve inherited.”
Quiet Desperation
Henry David Thoreau
Brain rot did not start here; it’s intergenerational.
Henry David Thoreau first used it in Walden (1854), his account of leading a simple lifestyle in the woods. Sitting in his little cabin constructed at minimal cost, he denounced society’s tendency to scorn complex ideas that have multiple interpretations.
“While England endeavours to cure the potato rot,” he wrote, “will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot ― which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
Thoreau’s independent mind both prompted his time in nature, and flourished as a result of it. He used the time to reflect on the complexities of the society around him.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. … A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusement of mankind,” he wrote in Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (1866).
Underlying this desperation? Brain rot.
Independence of Mind?
So brain rot is not new. In a society where instant results and nonstop speed are the norm, we have no time to taste life or question our values. Most of us haven’t, for a few generations now or more. Many are the warnings that this lifestyle has affected our health, our mental health, and our capacity for independent thought. The online universe has multiplied this effect.
Brain rot. Is this the American Dream come true? And what of the Canadian dream? And the Townships dream? Do we have the stamina to resist being subsumed by the American tyrant and his threats? Trade wars can lead to devastating economic consequences.
We look with pride at our Townships history of resisting invaders from the south. But in fact, perhaps we have not been so successful as we would like to imagine. There’s military invasion. There’s also economic, cultural, and other invasions of various stripes that we have already succumbed to. The digital door is wide open, exacerbating these encroachments. We are only now beginning to notice.
Where Does One Begin?
Thence comes my sense of desperation. All our small acts of resistance ― will they suffice to withstand the enormities of the world we have crafted? Where does one begin?
To Grathwohl goes the last word. “‘Brain rot’ speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time. It feels like a rightful next chapter in the cultural conversation about humanity and technology.”