2025 has started and we are already witnessing the first wave of new short-form content that is incomprehensible to anyone over the age of 21. This is nothing new as last year we witnessed the wave of “brain-rotted” content being pumped out on TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts. These massively popular videos don’t make sense, they won’t make sense, and viewers are not meant to critically analyse it like Shakespearean literature.
This article is an analysis of brain rot and the social impact of it.
To understand brain rot, we must know brain rot. So, let’s analyse the first massive brain rot trend of the year, “I bought a property in Egypt”. This trend started when TikToker Itscameasty posted a video about buying a property in Egypt for investment. TikTok users then quickly began taking the video and cutting the video at the halfway point ending on a very obvious thing when you are buying a property, the seller giving you the property. Now on its own, this may not make sense, not even funny. But within the context of “Grindset” videos where TikTokers post content on how to make money to be rich and retire at 25, cutting this video short serves as a parody of the hustling side of TikTok where the message prevalent there is making money is the only thing that matters. This may be a sign that the majority of people are not too fond of the message that your worth is the money you make, perhaps most people agree that there is more to life than buying a property in Egypt to get rich or they just find this meme funny for some reason. Either way, I want you, the reader, to know that when you buy a property in Egypt, they will give you the property.
Brain rot is not just entertainment, brain rot is an art form, forged from shared experiences of humankind. Take the “property in Egypt”, it is a culmination of feeling fed up with hustle content or take “mewing” a parody of the looks-obsessed side of humanity, satirizing the absurdity of doing nonsensical actions in the pursuit of conventional attractiveness. Being short form elevates this quality as it makes these trends spread like wildfire.
However, brain rot comes at a cost. With every new video blowing up massively, another fades into irrelevance. These videos usually have an online life cycle of around one to two weeks before they get stale. This may be a sick reflection of humans always looking for the next big thing going forward leaving things in the past. To some, the ability to keep moving is beautiful, able to keep your head up and go forward. To others, this is scary, as they are left behind and left to rot.
Many have tried understanding brain rot, some even imagine a world without it. But this art form is incomprehensible. Perhaps it is just our brain tricking us with dopamine. Maybe it is something else entirely But we all know, it is here to stay.
So dear reader, I leave you with this one question:
Do you know what else is massive?