brainrot
“‘Internet novels’ have succeeded too entirely, which is to say that they are too exactly like being online,” wrote critic Becca Rothfeld. The fear was of a cheapened literary experience that leaves you as empty as a scrolling binge. Today’s internet novel doesn’t recount a person using websites and social media so much as those websites and social
... See moreGreta Rainbow • IYKYK: When Novels Speak a Language Only Part of the Internet Gets | The Walrus
It's this terrible Faustian bargain where you don't have to be bored anymore, but you also aren't going to feel alive.
J.E. Petersen • Uncomfortable on Purpose
The show’s portraits feature youthful muses with hip, online sensibilities. In “Some pleasant lies would be nice” (2021), a woman with bleached hair and a butterfly tattoo stares at the viewer with a pouty gaze. She’s nude, save for a pair of Apple headphones that twist naturally between her breasts. In front of her, we spy the forehead and eyes of... See more
Alana Pockros • The Blithe Realism of Chloe Wise
it’s never been so easy to look up an unknown term. But there’s a reward if you get the 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 shows, reading the same books, reposting the same posts as you.
Greta Rainbow • IYKYK: When Novels Speak a Language Only Part of the Internet Gets | The Walrus
THE FANTASY OF COZY TECH , newyorker
Perhaps the direct opposite of digital brainrot is “cozy tech,” a trend that “suggests that the Internet and artificial intelligence can lead us ever inward,” writes Kyle Chayka. “In the cozy era, our screens and the related accoutrements of digital life fulfill all of our emotional and sensory needs.”
Perhaps the direct opposite of digital brainrot is “cozy tech,” a trend that “suggests that the Internet and artificial intelligence can lead us ever inward,” writes Kyle Chayka. “In the cozy era, our screens and the related accoutrements of digital life fulfill all of our emotional and sensory needs.”
Cozy Tech and PDFed Brainrot
The dark forest theory of the web points to the increasingly life-like but life-less state of being online. Most open and publicly available spaces on the web are overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait, keyword-stuffing “content creators,” and algorithmically manipulated junk.
Maggie Appleton • The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
‘Yeah, TikTok is for three things: learning stuff and feeling good about yourself, stalking people, and brain rot.’
In this way, brain rot is what we might call a ‘genre of participation’, to borrow a term from the work of the cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito. On a digital social media application like TikTok, with its endless different types of con... See more
In this way, brain rot is what we might call a ‘genre of participation’, to borrow a term from the work of the cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito. On a digital social media application like TikTok, with its endless different types of con... See more
Emilie Owens • Why teenagers are deliberately seeking brain rot on TikTok | Psyche Ideas
We already have too much internet inside of us.