Have you seen your tween or younger child chortling over YouTube videos depicting an odd-looking cappuccino cup-headed ballerina or a three-legged shark wearing Nike sneakers? Or perhaps you’ve witnessed an entire room of kids break up over the numbers 6 and 7. Or maybe you overheard your teen’s conversation that went something like this:
“He was looksmaxxing and pretending that his moves were all bussin while he simped over her. And she was dropping, like, her typical UwU vibe; mewing over his rizz. But I was completely cringe barfing. They’re both delulu! I’d rather just hit the grindset and hang with my dawgs.”
Well, don’t worry. You needn’t lock the kids in their room and start frantically searching for a competent linguistic expert. I’m here to fill you in on this latest wave of viral strangeness.
(Oh, and in case you’re still guessing at the translation of the above statement, it essentially boils down to: “They were flirting, but I’d rather study hard and spend time with my friends.” So, weirdly, your kid was talking about making a wise choice.)
All of these terms generally fall under the new buzz term “brain rot.” Now granted, calling something brain rot sounds a bit ominous. But essentially, brain rot is a term that has come to define a variety of online memes, slang and other content that’s so absurd that, well, it melts your brain a little.
The Oxford Dictionary even picked “brain rot” or “brainrot” as one of its “words of the year” in 2024, since its usage increased by 230% during the previous year. The term is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
That definition is particularly interesting when you consider how many hours kids spend online looking at … stuff every day. But brain rot has also been winkingly expanded by many to include surreal AI memes and a glossary of words and phrases that appear in viral content on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.
The aforementioned Ballerina Cappuccina and Tralalero Tralala, for instance, both fall under the specialized heading of “Italian Brainrot.” This collection of goofy AI-generated animations emerged in early 2025, featuring hybrids of animals, machines, food and fantasy elements with Italianized names. The memes are often paired with AI-generated narrations delivered in a pseudo-Italian accent that nod to the content’s absurd catchphrases and charm. And, of course, that whole crazy, colorful meme stew is designed to catch the internet’s attention.
It’s that appeal, however, that raises parental questions about whether or not this brain rot stuff is problematic.
While seeking answers, I might first suggest that we step back a bit and look at this latest internet-fueled nonsense (and its accompanying lingo) through a historical lens. When we do, we start to see similarities to whacky trends and slang that young people have waded into and claimed as their own for generations.
Back in the 1920s and ‘30s our great-grand parents were swallowing goldfish, suffering through days-long endurance dance competitions and sitting pretty on 225-foot-high flagpoles for hundreds of hours. And in the 1950s, kids were competing to see how many people they could squeeze into a single phone booth. (The record rests at 25 and will likely stay there. I mean, phone booths?)
As far as generational slang is concerned, decades of adults have struggled to understand the 23 skidoos, palookas, banana oils, groovys, gnarlys and chill pills that have seeped into our national glossary over the ages.
Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is that today’s fads and slang tend to be all internet-driven things.
Instead of a fad that grows in popularity from some national event, or lingo picked up from a song or news article, today’s crazes can be created and driven by a single, random teen’s TikTok video. And some of that newfound slang seems oddly disconnected from a one-to-one translation. I mean, I can see the connection between the 1970’s knuckle sandwich and a good right hook to the mouth, but what exactly is a “skibidi” or a “shlawg”?
Perhaps thatvague sense of meaningthen is the biggest potential problem with some of the latest brain rot trends that younger kids dive into: They don’t know where these things came from or what they actually might mean. Those strange memes might have been created simply for the sake of breaking the ongoing social media scroll with something bizarre, strange or appealing to the eye. But I’ve seen some examples that have darker or more disturbing connections. The “six seven” meme I referenced above, for instance.
Kids have been calling out “six seven” in class as a sort of secret code that makes them all laugh and disrupt the lessons. But many suggest that “six seven” originates from a Skrilla song, “Doot Doot (6 7),” that contains explicit and violent lyrics dealing with drugs and gang life. To a kid and their guffawing pals who pulled it from some goofy online video, the meaning behind it all may be completely unknown. But what if a dash of curiosity leads them to the foul source material?
So, therein lies the caution. You don’t need to panic over trends or odd jargon your kids are a splashing around in. But when they’re using a phrase or talking about a video they’ve seen, it’s a good idea to ask where they heard or saw it. What does it mean? Why are they interested in it? What’s the point? If nothing else, your simple curiosity can open a dialogue to talk about the daily discernment we all need to use when consuming media.
For that matter, just asking tweens to look up the original definition of “brain rot” may not be such a bad idea either, especially in light of all their daily YouTube scrolling. Hey, with a little conversation, maybe everyone can discover what “yeet” means. It couldn’t hurt.
