Citations:brain rot

English citations of brain rot, brain-rot, and brainrot

Noun: "(slang, derogatory) the degradation of mental faculties, intelligence, common sense, or moral character" edit

					1854	1997	2007 2008 2013 2014 2015 2016 2018 2020 2021
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1897 printing), page 501:
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?
1997, Margy Levine Young & Jordan Young, "Cyber Shopping", Seven Days, 3 December 1997, page 41:
Full disclosure: This is our Web site, where we sell lovely kids' video and audio tapes that don't induce brain rot.
2008, Jonathan Gray, Television Entertainment, page 9:
But at the same time, television entertainment can disappoint, disempower, disgust, exclude, and depress us, and it can trigger passivity, apathy, and brainrot.
2013, "Automated Growrooms", Hydromag, January/February 2013, page 32:
Is this another symptom of modern culture's increasing brain rot, of fried attention spans, MTV and Ritalin prescriptions?
2013, "Expo chock-full of information and resources", CrossRoadsNews, 16 March 2013, page B2:
They should engage them, teach them new things, and prevent summer brain rot.
2014, Jonathan Iwry, "Saying NO to Netfix: How to avoid the sophomore slump", 2014 Housing Guide (from The Daily Pennsylvanian, University of Pennsylvania), page 12:
Take a well-deserved break from the brain rot of TV and feast your eyes on some bad young adult ﬁction. Or Dostoyevsky. Or both.
2014, Rob Sawatzky, quoted in Richard Rolke, "Sawatzky prepares to leave mayor's chair", Vernon Morning Star, 26 November 2014, page A3:
“I don't want complete brain rot to set in,” joked the 62-year-old.
2015, John Grant, Spooky Science: Debunking the Pseudoscience of the Afterlife, page xviii:
We might think that misinterpreting a pattern of circumstances to make people think they've seen ghosts or UFOs is unimportant, but, taken together, all these false reports add up to a huge and threatening mudslide that swamps the attention of a population that might better direct its attentions to more crucial matters, such as the survival of future generations. There’s only so much brainrot a society can take before it faces the threat of collapse.
2016, Eileen Beaton, "Backing The Donald Is Appalling" (letter to the editor), Kamloops This Week, 10 March 2016, page A9:
Forty-five per cent voted for Donald Trump?

There must be something in the water that is causing brain rot.
2016, Tom Royer, "Rated M for Millennials", Mankato Magazine, April 2017, page 25:
And then our parents decided that comics books were to blame for their children's brain rot, tossing most of these halftone gems in the garbage.
2018, Leza Warkentin, "That Kind of Mom", Vallarta Tribune, 8 February 2018 - 14 February 2018, page 12:
She makes sure they don't watch stuff like “Rick and Morty” and experience brain rot and moral degeneration.
2020, Joanna Ellner, "Diary Of A Mum: Part 6", Baby, January 2019, page 61:
I carried with me a vague awareness of the political state of the world. I had actual views on things. I made mid-conversation gags that mostly paid off. And yet, four months into babyland and I have reached brain rot.
2020, Debbie Murray, "Navigating The New Normal", BIBLIO, November 2020, page 4:
It is okay if your child has a little more screen time than normal if it's quality time and not just brain rot.
2021, @mahertymcfly, quoted in "Trinity shouts and murmurs", Trinity News, 9 March 2021, page 16:
lockdown brain rot is so bad that i currently am fantasising about having a BABY like a REAL ONE that i'd actually have to be RESPONSIBLE FOR call the fucking gards ive never even in my most hormonal state wanted this before
2021, Aviva Majerczyk, "Cutting the guilt from the pleasure", The Concordian (Concordia University), 16 March 2021, page 9:
Because that's not what people mean when they discuss guilty pleasures — it's never an issue of media being harmful (unless you take “brain rot” literally), just that media isn't up to some arbitrary taste level.
2021, Joseph Sandy, quoted in Olivia Stock, "Perfectly Balanced", Acumen (Carmel High School, Carmel, IN), 14 May 2021, page 17:
"Those three months of summer, the reason we experience so much brain rot is because we finally get a break from all that work."

Noun: "(slang, derogatory) media deemed to hold little artistic value and/or negatively impact those who consume it" edit

						1978 1998	2003 2011 2016
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

1978, Lionel Menuhin Rolfe, The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey, page 47:
Yaltah thought him particularly repulsive, and I remember that I had to stay home and receive a stern lecture on the evils of Tinseltown brainrot.
1998, Bernard Ashley, Tiger Without Teeth (2004 printing), page 92:
By the time he got home Jarvis would be swilling Coke in front of some brain rot on the box; that scare was over — for tonight.
2003, Tom Cox, Educating Peter, page 111:
It could be a great album, like Big Star’s Radio City, or it could be one composed entirely of what I deemed to be drab, scum-sucking brainrot, like The Stereophonics’ Performance And Cocktails.
2011, John Vannisselroy, "Reality bites: we need less English Premier League", TNT Magazine, 15 August 2011 - 21 August 2011, page 52:
So this winter, I'll chill on the couch watching The Only Way Is Essex or some similar brainrot instead, happy it'll be over in a^[sic] hour and I won't have to be subjected to countless replays of its overpaid morons for the next week.
2016, Ryan Smith, "Video Games Level Up To High Art – And William Chyr Is At The Controls", Chicago Reader, 11 August 2016, page 15:
On the surface, it might seem surprising that the contemporary art world has begun to embrace a medium best known for paper-thin, simplistic distractions like Angry Birds or the orgies of violence, gore, and sexism in Grand Theft Auto—brain rot for kids or those afflicted with Peter Pan syndrome.