Why is this happening? Firstly, we need to look at brain rot not merely as deterioration, but also as cultural alteration . A distinction Drew Austin also recently made, where he argues that digital slop - rather than decomposing like rotting fruit - acts more like a poison that stays in cultural circulation:

I prefer “brain poisoning,” [to describe

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It offers what cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito calls a ‘genre of participation’ .There’s a reward if you get the obscure reference: you are in communion with the author; your specific habits and tastes are seen, confirmed, and validated by the knowledge that someone else is watching the same TikToks, following the same online conversations,... See more