Skibidi toilet? Livvy Dunne? Baby Gronk? Mewing? Ohio? What the sigma? Can you understand all of that? If so, you’re probably a part of the Class of 2028.
In recent years, a new sense of humor known as “brainrot” has reached Gen Alpha, particularly the Class of 2028. The jokes range from popular memes such as “skibidi toilet” to nonsensical terms like “sigma” and “rizz.”
To simplify these terms, “skibidi toilet” features a photo of a smiling human head coming out of a toilet. “Sigma” refers to being a cool (usually male) individual. “Rizz” is short for charisma, or the ability to charm others.
For the most part, there is a clear consensus on the general immaturity of brainrot.
“Our collective minds are more mature, so we see brainrot as mostly annoying compared to some freshman,” says Antonio Angelini (12).
While most freshmen are following the brainrot rave, there are some dissenters amongst freshmen.
“There is more depth to things instead of being exactly as said,” says Brian Allison (9).
“I understand it from its sheer popularity, but I don’t repeat it due to my opinion on it being odd and cringe.”
While seniors consider the new content to be immature, Gen Alpha sees it as entertaining, despite its confusing qualities. However, both seniors and freshmen alike can agree on brainrot’s bizarre qualities.
The rise of brainrot stems largely from social media — particularly TikTok.
“I use both Instagram and TikTok, but I mainly use TikTok every day,” says Antonio Angelini (12).
According to a survey by theharrispoll.com, 80% of parents give their children a phone at around the age of 12.
As more and more children receive iPhones and iPads, the content on social media continues to change significantly.
Is this content necessarily bad? No, but the changes are certainly noticeable.
In the past, you’d typically encounter social media content that had more depth, such as nostalgic animations and gaming. The influencers in the past put in effort to make the videos.
Popular influencers like DanTDM, Dude Perfect, Coyote Peterson, and Good Mythical Morning are such youtubers that instill core memories into Gen Z. Their popularity mainly stems from their unique and original content — contrary to the influencers you see today.
Now, content simply aims to grab one’s attention through shock value. Videos today are cleverly designed to generate clicks by preying on society’s falling attention span. Rather than putting in the effort to create new and original content, creators simply jump on the newest brainrot trend and generate captivating thumbnails to get views — this type of content is known as “clickbait.”
With the questionable content of today, it’s a wonder what the content of our future generations will entail.
“There will definitely be more brainrot coming,” says Angelini.
Gen X describes these changes to have potential consequences affecting Gen Alpha.
“We’re going to look back on this time of allowing young people to have social media, and wonder what we did wrong,” said social science teacher Jamie González.
Brainrot is clearly dominating social media today. With Gen Alpha constantly spewing unknown terminology, the language we know is being transformed into an entirely new entity right before our eyes.
