Oxford Word Of The Year 2024 Is ‘Brain Rot’ — You Know What It Is If You Are Into Doomscrolling

Oxford Word of the Year 2024: How much time do you spend scrolling YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Facebook videos? Oxford’s language experts reviewed public input, voting results, and language data to conclude that “brain rot” best encapsulates the collective experience and concerns of the past year. Definition And Origin OUP defines ‘Brain Rot’ as "the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging". Thoreau criticised society’s preference for simplicity over complexity, coining “brain rot” to describe what he perceived as a societal decline in intellectual effort. The Rise of ‘Brain Rot’ In Digital Era In 2024, “brain rot” gained traction as a descriptor for both the low-quality content found on social media platforms and the perceived negative effects of consuming such content.