The Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 was “brain rot,” defined as “(n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” Gen Z and Gen Alpha have described their own internet-informed dialect as “brain rot,” a mainstream iteration of this genre of content that perfused the lexical sphere of its consumers. When I became aware of the rapid circulation and widespread adoption of brain rot language, it was—like many others—from members of Gen Alpha using words such as “skibidi”…
Author: Sophia Lyons
Sophia Lyons
Sophia Lyons (she/her) has been committed to the rhetoric and composition discipline since the freshman year of her undergraduate program at Ball State, and is currently a master's student at the University of Louisville laying the foundation of her research interests before pursuing a PhD. As a first-generation college student, she is committed to untangling modern phenomena that impact and/or gatekeep critical literacy as the impetus of her research that intersects epistemology, classical rhetoric, and political rhetoric.