okay, there are a few different categories to this one! the first is what i'd say most people think of when they hear the term brainrot: gen alpha, skibidi ohio rizz, all that. the second category could probably be called something like chronic online-ness, but it fits under the umbrella of 'brainrot,' so i'm calling it that. 

first category!

"look at that sigma! he's got skibidi ohio rizz and a level 10 gyatt, he's edging livvy dunne with his looksmaxxing and alpha mewing skills, +1000 aura unless someone fanum taxes her from him."

(okay i'm sorry that hurt to write i think my eyes are bleeding)

but seriously! there is honestly not much i can say about this because all it is is slang. really, could i say anything about 'rad' or 'cheugy,' both which are very questionable terms that not very many people use in regular conversation anymore?

they're just words! and although some of them may be kind of.... interesting, and even inappropriate for gen alpha kids (which is usually said to be 2012-present), it's fine, every generation had their words. 

okay i think i'm done writing about that because there's honestly not much to talk about and i have strong feelings about the second category anyways.

secondddddd.... you already know what it is.... the great... the famous..... chronic online-ness! 

i'll give you a definition for this one, since the last category didn't need one (sorry if this is a bit offensive, it's not purposeful): being overly sensitive towards issues that could be slightly offensive, such as borderline hatecrimes that could go either way (extreme example sorry) or other things of the sort. 

cancel culture really ties into this a lot, so maybe i'll do a chapter on that, we'll see. it's a good topic!

but anyways: what i mean by this, really, is a person who is online so much, so engaged in every little side of the internet, that they encounter too many perspectives and too many things, often things the average person would never encounter. 

for example: my mother, who is middle-aged, is on facebook but not often, and same with instagram. i'll tell her the plot of a book i'm reading or something of the sort--let's say it's about someone who is suicidal, or maybe it's a murder mystery with a lot of grisly details. she'll gasp and say that's crazy and she can't read even though it's not real. i wouldn't count myself as someone who is chronically online, but i would say that after having so many of those doors open--the entire internet was available to me from a young age--you develop a sort of desensitization to those sorts of thing. 

not that i would be able to watch a tiktok video of a murder without blinking an eye, but you get what i mean. as the younger generations grow up and the older generations get even older, things become more evident and change a bit. 

another example of being chronically online is something that i touched on in my chapter 'i don't know what to call this': the idea (i still don't know what to call it is there even a word) of sort of defending another culture that is not yours with the idea that something is incredibly offensive, or a strange sort of seemingly-helpful generalization. that chapter comes before this one so maybe you've already read it, but if you haven't, here's an example from that: 

someone posts a tiktok making a joke about gun violence in the US, maybe particularly in schools. a US citizen comments that the joke is very offensive and not at all funny and should be taken down immediately because of how offensive it is. the truth is that while they are partially right, not everyone feels the same way. if my best friend died to gun violence, maybe i wouldn't want to see jokes about it, but then again, maybe i would like to cope with the grief through humor. this random commenter on the internet would know nothing about my situation, or anyone else's.

this basically comes down to the idea of 'a team is only as strong as its weakest member,' or more accurately, the idea that--okay, i don't know how to phrase it exactly, but it's sort of like, all jokes should be kind because this one person, in a pool of maybe a million, isn't okay with it. you know what i mean? there's probably a word for that. damn, maybe i need to get a thesaurus or something, i'm kind of struggling over here. 

but anyways! this is something that happens online a lot and i am not really a huge fan of, but honestly i am just a girl and there is not very much i can do to stop it. 

i thinkkk that's where i'm gonna end the chapter because i think i probably had more to write about in here, but i just spent like five minutes trying to brainstorm a word for that example i just used and all my other thoughts just left my brain completely, like they're gone. 

thanks for reading! comment if you have questions (because i know i would if i had to read this 😣)