Citations:brain rot

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

 * 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"

 * 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.