WEBVTT 00:00.655 --> 00:06.543 [SPEAKER_01]: Because it's AI and not patented, like there's no overarching corporation that owns this IP as of yet. 00:06.743 --> 00:11.370 [SPEAKER_01]: All of these like boot-legging companies have merchandise to the fuck out of this. 00:11.650 --> 00:13.873 [SPEAKER_01]: So likely what my nephew was playing with. 00:14.294 --> 00:17.218 [SPEAKER_01]: There's even like children's books about it, like featuring the characters. 00:17.438 --> 00:18.900 [SPEAKER_00]: And let me tell you, at least they're reading. 00:18.880 --> 00:21.185 [SPEAKER_01]: at least they're sure, sure. 00:21.345 --> 00:24.773 [SPEAKER_01]: And let me tell you, kids fucking love this stuff. 00:25.214 --> 00:25.575 [SPEAKER_01]: Love it. 00:26.076 --> 00:29.844 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's taken off mostly with like very, very young people. 00:29.984 --> 00:32.751 [SPEAKER_01]: Like my little baby nephew, which we'll get to. 00:32.811 --> 00:35.396 [SPEAKER_01]: So Hannah, what does the word brain rot? 00:35.497 --> 00:36.619 [SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean to you? 00:36.599 --> 00:59.316 [SPEAKER_00]: It means consuming content that doesn't just not challenge your brain, it's sort of like puts it in like a numbed out sort of pacified state to the point where you haven't even noticed how much time has passed because you're just almost like meditative in the idea that like you lose time in space because you're just watching shit until it like bleeds into each other. 00:59.296 --> 01:24.021 [SPEAKER_00]: it's like when you do school to the point of like transcending your body totally yeah you're kind of transcending your floating into the ether uh you're not picking you're in like another state of it's it's almost like transcendental meditation but for like those who's brains have melted out very in raw is what made it so like I couldn't watch a movie without looking at my phone and 01:24.305 --> 01:24.886 [SPEAKER_00]: You know? 01:24.906 --> 01:30.893 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like instead of reaching enlightenment with, you're reaching like, um, stupidity. 01:31.053 --> 01:34.677 [SPEAKER_01]: So Oxford University Press actually named it the word of the year last year. 01:34.697 --> 01:42.506 [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, and it is like formally defined as the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swaths of trivial or un-challenging content online. 01:42.766 --> 01:46.030 [SPEAKER_01]: But in this context, it actually refers to like a thing itself, right? 01:46.230 --> 01:48.953 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not an experience, but it's like an actionable object. 01:48.974 --> 01:51.156 [SPEAKER_01]: These are like brain rot, etc, or something. 01:51.136 --> 01:53.600 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's not like it's not like an action. 01:53.700 --> 01:55.363 [SPEAKER_01]: You can brain rot on TikTok. 01:55.383 --> 01:56.105 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a noun. 01:56.205 --> 01:57.086 [SPEAKER_01]: The thing is a noun. 01:57.227 --> 01:57.547 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. 01:57.567 --> 01:58.509 [SPEAKER_01]: It's gone from verb to noun. 01:58.769 --> 02:07.845 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think you could also call this an effect of inshitification, which is a term that was coined by Corey Doctero in a blog post in 2022. 02:07.825 --> 02:19.020 [SPEAKER_01]: to describe platforms, basically loaring people in with like quality service, the promise of quality service and content, and then slowly allowing that content and services to decay over time. 02:19.380 --> 02:23.726 [SPEAKER_01]: In his words, abusing their users to make things better for their business customers. 02:24.007 --> 02:28.292 [SPEAKER_01]: Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. 02:29.033 --> 02:33.439 [SPEAKER_01]: And he said that we're living in like an inchido scene, which I thought was so fucking funny and true. 02:33.760 --> 02:35.622 [SPEAKER_01]: This is like my favorite kind of scholarship. 02:35.602 --> 03:00.968 [SPEAKER_01]: It's basically like the degradation of user experience because tech companies lose incentive to providing a user experience once they make a bunch of money off of people's investments and then like once they have your attention they're like okay well we have it you know we'll do the lowest brow thing to keep it but we don't have to actually put time and investment and energy into like what is coming out of it what how it actually affects the person or the function it's providing. 03:00.988 --> 03:05.473 [SPEAKER_01]: Basically brain rot the noun which i'd argue is like kind of synonymous 03:05.453 --> 03:14.183 [SPEAKER_01]: low-quality, like, thoughtless garbage is flooding these feeds that once were meant to serve a purpose, you know, allegedly connecting people. 03:14.604 --> 03:20.591 [SPEAKER_01]: One article I was reading in this book that I loved, it's about junk online, it's about like space junk. 03:20.611 --> 03:34.768 [SPEAKER_01]: This writer calls it a poetics of crap, and he says that brain rot convinces us all that it's this form of rebellious pleasure, but actually it signals a passive acceptance of the endless scroll as an indescapable horizon of existence. 03:34.748 --> 03:57.263 [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to think about that tension in this episode because we did talk about in another episode this idea like the vulgar image and maybe some sort of like subversive potential of slopp and junk and like vulgarity that is kind of like the central tension in this episode like is something like Italian brain rot turning us all into like brain dead blockheads, passively accepting the shit as it comes, 03:57.243 --> 04:00.131 [SPEAKER_01]: or does it have some sort of transformative potential? 04:00.311 --> 04:05.445 [SPEAKER_01]: What I think really interested me is how successfully the stuff is resonating with kids. 04:05.765 --> 04:11.320 [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think kids would be attracted to a tally and brain raw at like out of all the stuff on the internet? 04:11.485 --> 04:13.908 [SPEAKER_00]: But because they're cartoons, they're characters. 04:14.008 --> 04:25.762 [SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because it's like, it's AI-generated, but it's essentially in its essence, especially if you're a child who doesn't really know a pre-AI world, you're just like, that's the cartoon. 04:26.222 --> 04:34.612 [SPEAKER_00]: These are silly cartoons with silly names that they're finding on sites like TikTok and YouTube and whatever that you can get real life toys out of. 04:34.652 --> 04:35.974 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, of course. 04:35.954 --> 04:48.610 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like the same reason why like it probably drove our parents crazy that we love SpongeBob, which is, you know, quite annoying if you're an adult, but like if you are a child, it's hilarious and fun and silly. 04:48.650 --> 04:50.335 [SPEAKER_00]: It's silly.