Gen Z’s “rotting of the Italian brain” is unproductive and useless – and that is perhaps the point

The concerns about brain rot – that it is unproductive and useless – actually reveals a lot about their call, said Owens. Brain rot is an acute rejection of intense pressures on young people to optimize.

“It is very normal that everyone needs to deactivate their brain from time to time,” she said.

In the first half of 2025, it accumulated more than 55 million views on Tiktok and 4 million likes, mainly pre -adolescents stuck to their mobile phones. Not bad for a cartoon ballerina generated by AI with a cup of cappuccino tea for a head.

Her name is Ballerina Cappuccina. Her smiling girl’s face is accompanied by a deep male voice generated by computer in Italian – or, at least, from Italian. The rest is charabia.

It is one of the most important characters of the Internet phenomenon known as “Italian Rot of the Brain”, a series of memes that exploded in popularity this year, composed of animal objective hybrids generated by the unrealistic AI with an absurd pseudo-Italian narration.

The trend has disconcerted parents, to the delight of young people who experience the thrill of a new ephemeral cultural signifier which is illegible for older generations.

Experts and fans say that the trend deserves attention and tells us something about the youngest generation of pre -teens.

An absurd domain generated by AI

The first Italian Brain Rot character was Tralalero Tralala, a shark with blue Nike sneakers on his elongated fins. The first videos of Tralalero Tralala were noted with an Italian song charged with a curse that looks like a gross has.

Other characters quickly emerged: Bombardiro Crococodilo, a military plane with a crocodile head; Lirirì Larià, an elephant with a body of cactus and slippers; And Armadillo Crocodillo, a tatou inside a coconut, to name only a few.

Content creators around the world have created whole stories told through intentionally ridiculous songs. These videos have proven to be so popular that they launched slogans who entered the general public culture for Generation Alpha, which describes anyone born between 2010 and 2025.

Fabian Mosele, 26, is called “an Italian connoisseur for brain rot”. Italian animator who lives in Germany and works with AI by Trade, Mosele created his first Italian Brain Rot content in March. Shortly after, Mosele’s video of Italian Brain Rot characters in an underground rave collected about a million views overnight, they said. He has since exceeded 70 million.

Even if hysteria with the absurd sub-genre has slowed down, Mosele said that the characters have transcended the digital domain and have become an indelible part of pop culture.

“It’s so ephemeral,” said Mosele, “but it’s so real.”

This summer, one of the most popular games in Roblox, the free online platform that has around 111 million monthly users, was called “stealing a brain”. The goal of the game, as the title suggests, is to steal characters for the rotting of the brain to other players. More popular characters, like Tralalero Tralala, are worth more money in play.

Sometimes, the administrators of the games – who are also players – cheat to steal the characters, a decision called “administrative abuse” which has sent many children and adolescents to a frenzy. A video of a young child who cries hysterically on a stolen character has 46.8 million views on Tiktok.

It is not supposed to have a meaning

In the non -virtual world, some have replicas of physical toys from the characters, while others have created real living rooms that put them featured.

The absurd songs have sometimes made gestures on real numbers: a clip by Bombardiro Crocodilo aroused indignation for having apparently mocked war in Gaza.

But ultimately, the majority of videos are silly and absurd.

Mosele said Italian consumers for brain breeds do not carefully care about how images are linked to what is said or sung. Often, they don’t even care to translate absurd Italian into English.

“It’s funny because it’s nonsense,” said Mosele.

“Seeing something so dark, in a way and out of the ordinary, which breaks all the standards of what we expect to see on television – it’s just super attractive.”

The rise of brain rot

The rot of the Italian brain has not become viral in the void. “Brain Rot”, the word of Oxford University of the year 2024, is defined as the numbness of an intellectual state resulting from “overconsumption of trivial or indisputable material”.

It can also be used to describe the cerebral rotation content itself.

Lots of content is part of this category. Consider the videos of the game “Subway Surfer” written alongside the complete episodes of television shows, or “Skibidi toilet”, a animated series featuring toilets with human heads that come out of their bowls.

Those who are not online chronic could instinctively go back to the term rotten rotten, with its vaguely bloody connotations, in particular as concern about the potential social media damage for adolescent frames.

When the brain rot has been crowned in the year, the president of Oxford’s languages, Casper Grothwohl, said that the term speaks of “one of the perceived dangers of virtual life and the way we use our free time”.

Emilie Owens, 33, a researcher for the children’s media, agreed that by parading endlessly poses dangers for young people. But she said that the concern about brain rot is wrong.

It is normal to “see the thing that the new generation does with fear and suspicion,” she said, stressing how past generations have had similar concerns about the harmful effects of comics, television and even novels at the same time.

The concerns about brain rot – that it is unproductive and useless – actually reveals a lot about their call, said Owens. Brain rot is an acute rejection of intense pressures on young people to optimize.

“It is very normal that everyone needs to deactivate their brain from time to time,” she said.

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Riddle is a member of the body for the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national services program that places journalists from local editorial rooms to account for undercurrent issues.