Brain Rot and the future of human intelligence
Imagine a scene in a town devastated by aerial bombing. A feisty journalist finds the body of a woman and her 12-year-old child riddled with gunshot wounds. It is a heart-wrenching sight. The caption goes “They kill women and children!” and it gets shared a million times.
But what if that’s not the whole story? One day before this tragic incident, a group of soldiers were patrolling the streets in that town when they come across a woman and her son begging for food from the soldiers. Imagine you are one of the soldiers. What would you do? Being a kind-hearted soul, you empty your bag of rations and ask your companions for more and together, you give your food to the starving mother and her child. Then, you notice something suspicious. The boy is holding something in his hand. It’s a hand grenade!
The whole team stands frozen as the boy pulls out the safety pin and throws the grenade at you – just as he has been taught in school. What do you do? As a trained soldier, you shout “grenade!”, take cover and shoot the assailants just in case they have more grenades to throw at you. The grenade explodes, your team suffers some shrapnel injury but you guys are soon evacuated for treatment in hospital. Yes, women and children can throw grenades and strap bombs to their bodies – a plain and verified fact that many choose to ignore. Meanwhile, our feisty journalist is now a hero for exposing the evil of your team. He/she (don’t tell me it’s “they”, crazy wokies) doesn’t know that you guys are injured. It’s far more “rewarding” to send out the ultra-simplistic meme “they kill women and children” and label you guys as Nazis committing genocide – all favourite words of the woke apart from racism and Islamophobia.
Some folks don’t realise their own audacity when they tell Venezuelans they shouldn’t celebrate, tell Iranians they shouldn’t fight and tell Americans what they don’t know about their own country. Individuals like this hide behind a pseudonym to do the dirty job for the woke. It takes a lot more effort to articulate a piece like this in your own words. It’s far easier to click share on a meme that sounds catchy.
The story I told in the beginning is just a little over 200 words in length. It doesn’t take a couple of minutes to read. But attention spans today are measured in milliseconds, thanks to TikTok and all its equivalents. The worrying thing is, we’re not even talking about teenagers. We’re not even talking about GenZs. We’re seeing people in their 60s, 70s and even 80s who grew up without social media indulge in oversimplified memes and minute-long catchy commercial-like videos. They all have “no time” to read books. In a way, it’s true. With practically every daily administrative task doable on the mobile phone, people do a thousand things on their mobile phones every day, making themselves so hooked to it that they don’t cook, don’t exercise, don’t read. The result? Brain rot.
But how do platforms like TikTok lead to this brain rot? Why are people so enticed by ultra-simplistic memes, labels and fancy conspiracy theories. Let me break it down to four main reasons.
- Laziness/busyness – The smart phone has given us a tremendous amount of convenience. At the same time, it has also taken away a lot of excuses not to get things done. It’s a great helper but also a constant reminder that there’s a lot more to do. People are busier than ever. I remember when my father was warded in hospital and I was having a casual chat about upcoming elections with a doctor. He confessed to me that he didn’t know what I was talking about because he hadn’t been following the news. Memes have been described as junk food for the mind. People have no time, so they just grab and go satiate their hunger in an instant.
- Finding a Cult – Humans want to belong; they want recognition; that’s why we form clubs and societies. When a charismatic leader says that the earth is flat or that the end of the world is coming on a certain date, people flock to these groups, believing that they are the exclusive and chosen ones going to heaven while the rest of the world go to hell. Delusional superiority and “us versus them” is a powerful binding force. Physiologically, sharing a post that resonates with the sharer releases dopamine. In a highly stressed, aimless and meaningless population, dopamine fixes help keep the symptoms of depression at bay.
- Saviours and Heroes – We need more heroes in our dangerous world. Some answer the calling even without getting a call – like Edgar Welch. He believed that he was performing a heroic act, rescuing innocent children from their captors. While few people are actual warriors on the ground like Welch, there is an endless supply of keyboard warriors contributing to all the virality of social media by playing hero in the virtual world. Of course, there are also some “warriors” who are somewhere in between; not just in their approach, but also in their intention. Most of the folks on Greta Thunberg’s flotilla sailing towards Gaza were fully aware that they were not making any tangible contribution to Gazans. The same goes for many who were supporting them online. It’s a game and the fans want a team to cheer for.
- Amnesia and Willful Blindness – As the title of this blog post says, brain rot is not a generational problem. Not only teenagers and GenZ are affected. Even the older fogies. Many of us were already adults when we witnessed the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Strangely, many of these old folks completely forget and act like the youngsters from China today who denounce it as fake news. Those who claim to be “true blue” Singaporeans vilify Japanese PM Takaichi, mock our own PM Lawrence Wong, warn about the danger posed by Japanese militarism and completely forgot about the Singaporean spying for China and who impounded our Terrex. Memories are most vivid when they are associated with emotions and emotions can fade over time. When new and favourable emotions arise, like pride in the tribe, the old memories rot and get replaced by new, contradicting ones.
Of course, these factors are seldom isolated. Folks who are bored, angry or self-righteous want someone to blame. When they stumble on a group that has found a target, they get that aha moment, receive a torrent of memes and minute-long videos to confirm their thoughts and feelings, get their dopamine fix and destress by clicking like or share. Similarly, when people with low self-esteem make audacious statements which are obviously false, they will still get many fans as their statements will still go viral somehow.
The attention media doesn’t care whether the influencer’s information is true or false. Their advertisers pay for eyeballs and viewing time. The platforms themselves don’t provide any content. The content creators compete to create outrageous memes that can go viral. They slap inappropriate labels like fascists, terrorists, apartheid, racist, on the very people who fight these monsters and keep them safe in bed at night. Do the wokies really want to defund the police? Defund ICE? Is it brain rot that is preventing them from seeing the consequences? Think it doesn’t matter? Think again.
Take a look at the following book. The author, Dr Jonathan Wright advocates a counterintuitive way to treat heartburn – fight acid with acid. Instead of prescribing medication to decrease the secretion of acid in the stomach, Dr Wright wants his patients to consume more acid. His book identifies the usual culprits. Big pharma. The reason his “natural therapies” gain no traction in the scientific literature? They are not patentable. It all boils down to profit. Is it? Dr Wright seems to be right because he has many fans who subscribe to his philosophies and believe his accusations/conspiracy theories.
Many people are not aware that his licence to practice has been revoked in several states. So why do you think Dr Wright lost his licence? Because Big Pharma is colluding with the authorities to silence him so that patients don’t get cheap and effective treatment? Why is this explanation so attractive? Why is his book still selling? Mistrust in government? Mistrust in big corporations? The big dopamine fix? Or just brain rot?
Books (like the one above) are not always right, but at least they are harder to fake. In contrast, it’s so easy to label Israel as an apartheid state, so easy to call the IDF terrorists, so easy to call Donald Trump a Nazi, but if you write a book, you’ll need to elaborate and that’s when an intelligent reader can call you out. It’s infinitely better to read than to get “educated” on TikTok. That stuff gives you brain rot.