The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer).
There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
Here's a study showing an immediate negative impact on prospective memory from switching context repeatedly on short-form video platforms: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107...
Unlimited skipping until a video is sufficiently stimulating had a negative impact regardless of the content, while people limited to ten skips in ten minutes did not experience a negative impact. This suggests that the format itself has harmful cognitive effects.
Scrolling through a comment thread in an online forum such as this requires a lot of context switching. Does the context-switching theory of brain rot apply to text based feeds as well, or only video?
The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
Yeah that’s what memeing is. What is this, 2000s internet and we start discovering what memes are or something.
Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...
You can use youtube and never come across a "meme" like that.
It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.
Memes were usually funny though. And just pictures so easily ignored if they weren't. I feel like this is just attention seeking.
Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos.
Weren't memes always just that? I think we're just old
Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part.
>The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
congratulations on discovering mimesis
They've made it into an actual skit now? I remember when it was just a regular old meme.
I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey..
edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
> I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women…
Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Is that also short form?
How would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex
Short form video is the brainrot.