Welcome to Brainrot 101. I’m going to be your professor today.
Brainrot encapsulates online slang, influencers and trends that are purposefully dumb. It hypnotizes its audience under the disguise of “humor,” enchanting them to never have an intelligent thought again.
The effects of brainrot are so powerful that my research suggests it’s possible that chimpanzees and octopi have begun their journey into brainrot.
“[Brainrot] lowers the social standard of society,” senior Christopher Gouvis said. “It is a disease that is an infection of the brain.”
Gouvis cringed horribly after I forced him to relive all the times he ever heard “skibidi Ohio rizzler sigma” around Cal High.
Now as learners, that phrase might seem daunting, and even for a master it really is difficult.
Brainrotted individuals aren’t human anymore. Some reports suggest they put the milk before the cereal. Yes, it’s that bad.
And its spread isn’t contained to students either.
“Skibidi toilet only in Ohio,” world geography and AP United States History teacher Jackson Collins said without breaking a sweat.
You may have reasonable concerns for the existence of this class. I honestly can’t blame you.
But brainrot is a pretty big deal right now. In fact, according to the Oxford University Press, “brainrot” has been deemed as Oxford Word of the Year 2024.
The thing about brainrot is that there’s different levels of it. The most basic, most well-known tier would be slang.
Then there’s also influencers and trends, which aren’t as notorious as the slang and are mostly known to the chronically online.
So buckle up and get the Grimace shake (that’s an ancient brainrot, which this introductory class won’t cover) that you’ve always wanted, because we’re starting with two of the most common terms: sigma and skibidi.
There’s much confusion when it comes to skibidi and sigma. Are they the same, or is there a nuanced difference?
Luckily, freshman Jay Choi was kind enough to demonstrate his cerebral prowess in the matter.
“Skibidi would be like “cool,’” Choi said. “Sigma means like… it would be like you’re really goated. Sigma’s just like skibidi, but as a person, I guess.”
Thank you for your insight, Mr. Choi. I most definitely understand what you said.
Next up would be two brainrot influencers worth mentioning: Costco guys.
“There were these guys called the Costco guys, and they’d start every video by going, “We’re Costco guys, we’re Costco guys,’” Collins said. “And then they’d do their whole thing. ‘Oh, we’re Costco guys. We buy, you know, four gallons of whole unpasteurized milk’.”
Then comes the trends, which can be rather dangerous in some cases.
One trend is to avoid “still water”, which allegedly has brain-eating amoebas in it.
Sounds to me like the water is brainrotted too.
“You put a video of water that looks dirty and then you put a really scary-looking troll face on it and say, ‘Those who know’,” sophomore Derik Triana said.
There’s one more level of brainrot that we must cover. There’s an increasing trend of overusing abbreviations for slang and the such, resulting in sentences that look more like Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Ts pmo twin ngl, icl. Yhu pmosb sybau,” sophomore Ashley Bushard said.
She followed up by explaining what all those acronyms mean, but I was still perplexed and bewildered. Truly bamboozled even.
This advanced level of brainrot is a whole ’nother language, truthfully.
Even with doing the floss while dabbing upside down would be easier than deciphering that. Frankly, it’s way beyond my current understanding as an academic.
Guess that’s part of the job description for being a Brainrot professor though.
Collins shares my confusion, due to what he endures in his own classes.
“I see it in assignments,” Collins said. “I see a lot of people name their files after brainrot stuff, so I’ll get someone that will submit their essay and it’s just like ‘skibidi Ohio one child policy in China’ and I’m like, what?”
For students, though, randomly inserting brainrot things into the daily life seems pretty normal.
“[Brainrot is] like a drug for me,” Triana said. “It’s bad, but I can’t stop.”
But how did brainrot even begin? This question always stumps me. Blame Gen Alpha for this mess, I guess?
I feel as if I’m not qualified to be your professor. This new language really has developed far too rapidly for me to understand.
Needless to say, I’ve learned too much at this point, so now I’m going to hide in my room and not show my face for another five years. Still, it was an honor being your professor. Stay sigma, folks.
