When Did Brain Rot Start? From 1854 to Word of the Year

6 min read · Brainrot Test

Brain rot started in 1854, when Henry David Thoreau used the phrase "brain-rot" in his book Walden. The modern meaning, content so trivial it feels like it's melting your mind, grew online in the 2010s, exploded with TikTok and short-form video in the early 2020s, and became Oxford's Word of the Year in 2024. So when did brain rot start? Thoreau coined it; the internet made it famous.

If you've gone from knowing the history of brain rot to wondering how much of it is in your own feed, Check my brainrot and get a score for your real phone habits.

Short answer: when brain rot started

Here is the brain rot timeline in one table.

The rest of this post fills in each step.

1854: Thoreau coins it

Who started brain rot? The first recorded use belongs to Henry David Thoreau, the American writer who spent two years living in a small cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts. In the conclusion of Walden, he wrote:

"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?"

Thoreau wasn't talking about phones, obviously. He was criticizing a society he felt preferred simple, easy ideas over complex ones. Oxford University Press pointed to this exact passage when it announced its 2024 word, which is why "henry david thoreau brain rot" is such a common search.

What Thoreau meant vs. what we mean

• Thoreau's brain-rot: people choosing shallow thinking over deep thinking.
• Today's brain rot: the feeling that endless low-effort content is wearing down your focus.
• What's the same: both are about easy input crowding out harder, better input.

It's a little funny that a 170-year-old complaint about easy ideas fits TikTok so well.

The early internet years

For roughly 150 years after Walden, "brain rot" was just an occasional insult. Once the internet arrived, it found a home.

Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, people used "brain rot" in forums, blogs and early Twitter to describe:

• Watching hours of bad reality TV.
• Binge-gaming until your eyes hurt.
• Scrolling through meme pages and image boards.
• Anything that felt fun but left you feeling dumber.

At this stage the phrase was self-deprecating. You said "I'm rotting my brain" the way you'd say "I ate too much candy."

The first short-video era

Then came Vine in 2013. Six-second looping videos gave us a whole culture of quotable nonsense, from "road work ahead" to "look at all those chickens." Vine shut down in early 2017, but it proved short, absurd loops could hold attention like nothing else. For a full nostalgia trip, see our guide to old school brain rot.

The TikTok era

When did brainrot become popular? The honest answer is the TikTok years. TikTok merged with Musical.ly in 2018 and grew fast worldwide. By 2020 and 2021, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts had copied the format.

That's when the word changed. "Brain rot" stopped being only a feeling and became a type of content:

• Split-screen videos with gameplay underneath a story.
• AI voices reading nonsense.
• Meme words stacked on meme words.
• Loops designed to be rewatched without thinking.

Skibidi Toilet and Gen Alpha

In 2023, the YouTube series "Skibidi Toilet" by DaFuq!?Boom!, with singing heads popping out of toilets, became the poster child. Parents and teachers started hearing words like "skibidi," "rizz," "sigma," "fanum tax" and "Ohio" in every sentence. "Brainrot" became the label for this whole vocabulary.

This is where many people's brain rot origins story starts, even though the phrase is much older.

Here's the tricky part about brain rot in the TikTok era: it doesn't feel like much while it's happening. One video is nothing; a hundred is an evening, and it's hard to judge your own habits honestly. Brainrot Test does it for you with 17 questions about what you actually do with your phone, then gives you a score from 0 to 100 and where you rank. Check my brainrot

Oxford Word of the Year 2024

In December 2024, Oxford University Press announced "brain rot" as its Word of the Year. Oxford defines it 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."

A few facts from Oxford's announcement:

• Usage of the term rose 230% between 2023 and 2024.
• More than 37,000 people voted in the public poll.
• It beat a shortlist that included "demure," "lore," "romantasy," "slop" and "dynamic pricing."
• Oxford noted it took off first among Gen Z and Gen Alpha on social media.

The brain rot Oxford Word of the Year 2024 pick is also a bit ironic. The people who spread the word most were often the ones making fun of their own scrolling. So is brain rot a real word? Since then, yes, officially.

Italian brainrot and what came next

When did Italian brain rot start? Early 2025. AI-generated characters with fake-Italian names and chant-like voiceovers spread across TikTok. The first big one was Tralalero Tralala, a shark wearing sneakers. Then came:

• Bombardiro Crocodilo, a crocodile-plane hybrid
• Tung Tung Tung Sahur, a wooden figure with a bat
• Ballerina Cappuccina, a ballerina with a coffee cup head
• Chimpanzini Bananini, a chimp inside a banana
• Brr Brr Patapim, a tree-like creature

Italian brainrot showed something new: the content wasn't just about brain rot, it was made to be proudly, joyfully meaningless. It spread into Roblox games, merch and fan animations. That shift from a complaint to a genre is worth knowing if you want to understand brain rot humor and why nonsense is funny.

Where brain rot goes from here

Every meme wave fades, but the word probably won't. "Brain rot" now does two jobs: it names a style of content, and it names the worry about how much time that content takes. The second job isn't going anywhere while feeds keep getting better at holding attention. We cover the next wave in detail in is brain rot dead?.

What you can control is your own relationship with the feed. A few ideas:

1. Notice when you open an app without a reason.
2. Put your phone in another room when you need to think.
3. Keep your meme knowledge, drop the autopilot scrolling.

See when your brain rot started

The history of brain rot took 170 years. Checking yours takes a couple of minutes. You'll tap through 17 questions, get a brainrot score from 0 to 100 and a tier, and see how you rank against everyone else. After that, a two-minute drill a day can take points off your score, with a re-check every Sunday.

Check my brainrot

FAQ

Who started brain rot?

Henry David Thoreau is credited with the first recorded use, in Walden (1854). No single person started the modern meaning; it grew from internet slang and short-form video culture over the 2010s and 2020s.

When did brainrot become popular?

It became popular during the TikTok era, roughly 2020 to 2023, and peaked when Oxford named it Word of the Year in December 2024. Oxford reported a 230% rise in use between 2023 and 2024.

When did Italian brain rot start?

Italian brainrot started in early 2025 on TikTok, with Tralalero Tralala as one of the first viral characters. It grew into dozens of AI-made characters and spread to Roblox and fan videos.

What did Thoreau mean by brain rot?

Thoreau used "brain-rot" to criticize people who preferred easy, simple ideas over challenging ones. He compared it to the potato rot England was trying to cure and suggested brain-rot was the bigger problem.

Is brain rot a real word?

Yes. Oxford University Press named "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year and defines it as the supposed mental decline caused by consuming too much trivial content. It's slang, not a medical term.