TA #177: 🧟‍♀️ Does Brain Rot have an antidote?

Ann presenting in Belgium, with cameo by Elmo

Last week in Brussels, with Elmo.

Welcome to Issue 177 of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, marketing, living your best life. Was this email forwarded to you? You can subscribe here.

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Goedemorgen!

Last week marked my last speaking event of the year. It was in Belgium. I came home stuffed full of both waffles and gratitude for the privilege of doing what I do... and for you, being here. Thank you.

All that plus the year-end has put me in a more contemplative mood—maybe you, too? So this issue is a little less how-to and more reflective than usual.

Not your thing? You want just straight-up bullets of info? In a few weeks the holidays will be behind us and we'll be back into bullet-point mode.

But today, maybe take a minute with me...?

* * *

We had quite a year, didn't we?

"Glurbs-berffff-gruggoooooooo," we respond now. "Blooooooooofff."

That nonsense is about all we can—urp!—belch out. At least according to Oxford University Press, which last week crowned "brain rot" the 2024 Word of the Year.

(Or, technically, words of the year. But now I'm just being pedantic.)

Brain rot describes the downside of consuming too much content online—the wasting away of our mental health or intellect into a slumpy goo. It also describes the content itself.

Doomscrolling through negative news and distressing information? Brain rot.
Zombie-scrolling through TikTok without a specific goal? Brain rot.
Feeling the need to constantly check for notifications on your phone? Brain rot.
Staying up until the wee hours last week to watch grainy livestreams of the very last Eras Tour concert ever...? Brain raww—Wait...! No. This was not brain rot. This was necessary. Be gentle with the Swifties in your life this week. 🙂

* * *

Brain rot. We're oversaturated yet understimulated. And we're moving too quickly to care.

Or wait—maybe we do care...? Is that why lookups of brain rot increased 230% this year?

Maybe the volume is good news. Because we're self-aware enough to know that hey... maybe our brains needn't rot.

Maybe we should ventilate?
Let things dry out a bit?
Rub on a little fungicide to stop the necrosis?

Or maybe we'll do it later.

Blooooooooofff.

* * *

"Brain rot" sounds like a phrase TikTok made up, doesn't it?

It's not. It actually comes from Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in his seminal book Walden that society's tendency to brush aside complex or nuanced ideas in favor of basic, simple thoughts is... (deep-sigh)... sad.

We are in a period of mental and intellectual decline, Thoreau complained in 1854:

"While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

Is it heartening or depressing that brain rot has been a plague for humans since at least 1854? That it predates TikTok, social media, and the Internet itself...?

Is it heartening or depressing that even in 1850s we focused less on curing ourselves than on curing the rot of potatoes—which (despite Thoreau's dismissiveness) was actually a very big deal in 19th century Europe... as the potato blight decimated crops and led to the Irish Potato Famine and whoops now I'm sounding exactly like my Uncle Stanley at Thanksgiving. (Getting pedantic again.)

Heartening or depressing?

Maybe there's a different way of looking at it.

* * *

Oxford's nomination of brain rot feels like a pivotal moment. It speaks to an urgency that's as old as potato farming and Henry David—but now also has a modern edge as automation, technology, and our devices creep into our lives.

We move through many days in a split-in-half state: Distracted by our devices, ruled by our to-do lists, whipping around to the ping of the notification. Respond to the email. Scan the relentless news notifications. Ping! Your prescription is ready.

The urgent drowns out the important.

The short-term consideration swamps the long-term consideration.

But here's the thing: Oxford with its Word(s) of the Year tells us... it's not just you.

It's not GenZ or Gen Alpha.

It's not just Uncle Stanley (now reading aloud from the Wikipedia page about the Great Potato Famine.)

And it wasn't just the people who disappointed the judgy Henry David Thoreau.

It's all of us.

We're all oversaturated yet understimulated. Always have been.

* * *

Yet here, at the start of 2025, there's new urgency to figure out how we best balance the pull of technology and our age-old rotting tendencies with our very real need to feed our brains something more nourishing now and then. Because doing so helps us find more joy and strength and meaning in our day-to-day.

Not get rid of technology. Not stop the scroll entirely. That's illogical—as if we printed our B2B white papers on the Gutenberg Press.

And not just a get-off-your-phone mandate delivered in a punishing, punitive way. (Although I'm certain Thoreau would be angry-posting that on X from his hut in the woods.)

But by balancing the two. By actively seeking Anti Brain-Rot moments when we don't slip into brain-rot ease and speed by default.

What if in 2025:

>> We choose where to rub on a little salve to let the brain-rot necrosis heal?

>> We welcome Anti Brain-Rot moments to become part of an Anti Brain-Rot Movement?

* * *

I think the Anti Brain-Rot approach is a lot simpler and more fun than we think.

What would we love to spend time doing, even if there are easier and faster approaches?
What might we do strictly for the joy of it, detached from a goal or... well, "optimization"? (The root of the word "amateur" is "love.")
What would help us celebrate moments that make our work or life thrum with more meaning?
What are the moments we need to grow our expertise or our craft for lasting impact within ourselves?

* * *

Here's where l leave you... in the dim, dwindling days of 2024: Celebrating some Anti-Brain Rot moments I've seen recently.

A colleague who replaced her morning social scroll with 10 minutes of writing "terrible" poetry. This is a good example of a simple metacognitive practice that helps us process emotions and track patterns in your inner life, says my friend and neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

P.S. "Terrible" is my colleague's word, not mine. I do not judge as hard as Thoreau.
My neighbor who turned her phone to grayscale, because it made social media feel instantly less appealing. "Everything looks like old newspaper," she said. (On an iPhone, you can do this under Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters. Actually kind of wild.)
The CMO I met in Belgium last week who during team brainstorms bans phones and laptops in favor of analog pencils and magic markers and a wide sheet of butcher paper unfurled along the conference-room table.

She said it invites "a-ha moments instead of warmed-over TikTok trends." I love that so much.
My own practice of booting up a typewriter instead of email to write a thank-you note.

What about you...? Hit reply me about your Anti Brain-Rot moment!

* * *

I wish you happy holidays, whatever holidays you celebrate. I'll be back in the new year. See you on January 5!