Contextualizing AI generated characters within the Italian brain rot phenomenon
If you spend a significant time on social media, you might have encountered nonsensical artificial intelligence (AI) generated pictures of a shark wearing running shoes, or a cup of coffee doing ballet. Or maybe, you have seen someone share pictures on Facebook of random objects coming together impossibly perfect to look like Jesus Christ.
All of the mentioned above is a part of a not-so-new internet phenomenon called brain rot. Oxford University Press defines brain rot 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.” With the increase of the term’s usage, ‘brain rot’ was announced the Oxford Word of the Year 2024.
Despite the connection with online space among the younger generation, brain rot has appeared long before the Internet. Oxford Press writes brain rot was first mentioned in 1854 in the book Walden, by an American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. He philosophised on the idea of rejecting modern materialism and writes, “while England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” Oxford Press states one of Thorneau’s conclusions was the criticism of “society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones,” which Thoreau calls brain-rot.
Let us return to the shark in shoes and the cappuccino in a tutu dress. Earlier this year, the internet witnessed the rise of ‘Italian brain rot.’ The phenomenon, or even a genre of media, refers to AI generated characters, such as Ballerina Cappucchina, Trallalero Tralala, and Bombardino Crocodillo.
But is the origin and meaning of these characters really nonsensical? Italian brainrot can act as a tangible representation of how AI operates to create seemingly unique and new ideas by patchworking seemingly random pieces of information. For example, Trallalero Tralala generally represents a shark with long fins as legs, wearing running shoes. What initially might seem a completely random and meaningless collection of physical attributes, the name stems from an Italian style of singing, Trallalero. The name describes the tradition of non-lexical vocalization, meaning singing without a particular meaning.
Another of the popular Italian brain rot characters is Bombarino Crocodillo. As alarming as it sounds, this character is a bomber airplane with a head of a crocodile. One of the less Italian-sounding characters yet not less popular is Tung Tung Sahur, a human-like log with a bat that beats you if you do not wake up for breakfast. This character is included within the Italian brain rot universe, even though it is technically Indonesian. Suhur, sometimes also known as Sahur and Suhoor, is “the pre-fasting meal you eat right before sunrise” during Ramadan, writes Islamic Relief Canada. The name ‘Tung tung tung’ is a reference to the sound of playing bedug, a drum played to call for prayer.
For many social media users, especially younger ones, brain rot characters are just a product of fast overconsumption of online platforms that are given little meaning culturally. However, when digging a little deeper, systemic racism, and Islamophobia is revealed. What Thorneau wrote about almost 200 years ago about watering down intrinsically complex ideas to their simplest meaning, is still relevant today.