Brain rot is the word or phrase of the year 2024 according to the Oxford University Press. And right on time, we have the viral story of the hawk tuah girl meme coin rug pull to prove it. If you don’t know what any of that means, then do yourself a favour by not finding out. I do know and feel as if something meaningful and important has been cauterized from my brain for ever to make way for it.
It is, of course, my own fault. I spend too much time online and occasionally find myself dragged into the recesses of the Internet where this stuff exists. I am human and this stuff is designed by extremely clever and aware people to drag me in. The dopamine tells my cerebrum to shut up, and down, down I go.
Knowledge is both enhanced and undermined by the drivers of this brain rot: the algorithm, GenAI, and the thought-terminating cliché. ‘Do your own research’ is parroted by Dunning-Kruger idiots everywhere whenever challenged about their belief in patent nonsense.
Meanwhile, in short time, GenAI has flooded the online realm with slop and is now consuming it and shitting it back out like an infinite digital centipede.
To exacerbate this, the human race has replaced many of its editors, experts and curators with algorithms. We are guilty of this ourselves. We play the game. We don’t use ‘clever’ headlines on stories because search engines can’t process them to drive traffic. We flatten them out to appeal to the technology first, people second. It’s nearly 25 years since Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup prompting what is widely considered the greatest British media headline of all time: Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious. The SEO optimised headline according to ChaptGPT would be Inverness Stun Celtic with Historic 3-1 Victory at Celtic Park. Nobody will remember that in a quarter of a century.
This isn’t just about the flattening of content in the service of algorithms. We base our belief in information on our own prejudices and what we perceive as worthwhile. A recent UNESCO report found that the majority of digital creators gauge the reliability of something they see online by the number of likes it gets on social media.
The routine creation, ingestion and regurgitation of slop can override our ability to see the world for what it is. Instead, it presents us with an image of the world as it is imagined and processed. This is not about understanding anything. It is about satisfying an instinct, and often a base instinct.
There are limits to what we can understand anyway. I can only talk about a handful of subjects with any degree of real confidence and one way I know this is by trying to express my understanding of something outside of that realm of expertise, such as quantum.
I may grasp an idea when it is explained to me, but when I try to express it, my lack of insight becomes clear very quickly. One of the best ways to find out out what I know or think about something is to express myself on the subject. I can surprise myself with my own opinions or lack of knowledge. Writing is not only thinking, it is also humbling. We should be able to spot the canny valley as well as the uncanny valley when we see it. We should know our limitations as well as our expertise.
All of this matters because what we make also makes us.
We should not casually outsource this to machines and processes. It changes our ability to think about the world and form ourselves. In her book The Human Condition the great Hannah Arendt wrote:
If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.
Yet again, the people behind the tech that can separate us from what makes us human display their complete lack of self-awareness in their marketing.
This is not thinking. It looks like the firm is about to promote a lazy, feckless idiot, which is a hell of a marketing message. This ad didn’t get the full backlash that a previous Apple ad had for crushing the instruments of human creativity, but it perhaps should have.
This is not to say that AI and other tech does not have a role to play in the way we live and work. We use it ourselves. But we shouldn’t lose sight of what make us human. It’s not even specifically about 21st Century tech. In the fourth book of his famous trilogy, Douglas Adams makes the same point about the most mundane analogue tech he could imagine.
“Here,” said Wonko the Sane, “we are outside the Asylum.” He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. “Go through that door” — he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered — “and you go into the Asylum. I’ve tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there’s very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away.”
“That one?” said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.
“Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.”
The sign read:
“Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.”
“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.
Image: From Still life with rotting fruit and nuts on a stone ledge by Abraham Mignon
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
December 23, 2024
Brain rot is the word of the year and we only have ourselves to blame
by Mark Eltringham • AI, Comment
It is, of course, my own fault. I spend too much time online and occasionally find myself dragged into the recesses of the Internet where this stuff exists. I am human and this stuff is designed by extremely clever and aware people to drag me in. The dopamine tells my cerebrum to shut up, and down, down I go.
Knowledge is both enhanced and undermined by the drivers of this brain rot: the algorithm, GenAI, and the thought-terminating cliché. ‘Do your own research’ is parroted by Dunning-Kruger idiots everywhere whenever challenged about their belief in patent nonsense.
Meanwhile, in short time, GenAI has flooded the online realm with slop and is now consuming it and shitting it back out like an infinite digital centipede.
To exacerbate this, the human race has replaced many of its editors, experts and curators with algorithms. We are guilty of this ourselves. We play the game. We don’t use ‘clever’ headlines on stories because search engines can’t process them to drive traffic. We flatten them out to appeal to the technology first, people second. It’s nearly 25 years since Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup prompting what is widely considered the greatest British media headline of all time: Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious. The SEO optimised headline according to ChaptGPT would be Inverness Stun Celtic with Historic 3-1 Victory at Celtic Park. Nobody will remember that in a quarter of a century.
This isn’t just about the flattening of content in the service of algorithms. We base our belief in information on our own prejudices and what we perceive as worthwhile. A recent UNESCO report found that the majority of digital creators gauge the reliability of something they see online by the number of likes it gets on social media.
The routine creation, ingestion and regurgitation of slop can override our ability to see the world for what it is. Instead, it presents us with an image of the world as it is imagined and processed. This is not about understanding anything. It is about satisfying an instinct, and often a base instinct.
There are limits to what we can understand anyway. I can only talk about a handful of subjects with any degree of real confidence and one way I know this is by trying to express my understanding of something outside of that realm of expertise, such as quantum.
I may grasp an idea when it is explained to me, but when I try to express it, my lack of insight becomes clear very quickly. One of the best ways to find out out what I know or think about something is to express myself on the subject. I can surprise myself with my own opinions or lack of knowledge. Writing is not only thinking, it is also humbling. We should be able to spot the canny valley as well as the uncanny valley when we see it. We should know our limitations as well as our expertise.
All of this matters because what we make also makes us.
We should not casually outsource this to machines and processes. It changes our ability to think about the world and form ourselves. In her book The Human Condition the great Hannah Arendt wrote:
If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.
Yet again, the people behind the tech that can separate us from what makes us human display their complete lack of self-awareness in their marketing.
This is not thinking. It looks like the firm is about to promote a lazy, feckless idiot, which is a hell of a marketing message. This ad didn’t get the full backlash that a previous Apple ad had for crushing the instruments of human creativity, but it perhaps should have.
This is not to say that AI and other tech does not have a role to play in the way we live and work. We use it ourselves. But we shouldn’t lose sight of what make us human. It’s not even specifically about 21st Century tech. In the fourth book of his famous trilogy, Douglas Adams makes the same point about the most mundane analogue tech he could imagine.
“Here,” said Wonko the Sane, “we are outside the Asylum.” He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. “Go through that door” — he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered — “and you go into the Asylum. I’ve tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there’s very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away.”
“That one?” said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.
“Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.”
The sign read:
“Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.”
“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
Bookmarks
You are being lied to about ocean plastic
Reinventing work for the Digital Golden Age
Hannah Arendt reinvigorated as a critic of technologists
The challenges facing London’s property market
How switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored
Beware the AI bureaucrats
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.
Image: From Still life with rotting fruit and nuts on a stone ledge by Abraham Mignon