PaperWork: Careful if reading this online – it might rot your brain

It looks like Henry David Thoreau said it first.

We know this because he put the words on record in his book “Walden” in 1854.

Thoreau worried about society’s desire to dumb down complex ideas. He feared a decline in intellect when he wrote the following: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

Oh, Henry, Henry, Henry. You had no idea what the future would bring. By that I mean more “brain rot.”

And Thoreau would have applauded the 2024 Oxford Dictionary “Word of the Year.” For those who haven’t heard the winner is: “brain rot.”

The Oxford University Press explains the annual honor on its website, including its definition of “brain rot” – “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”

Oxford notes usage of the term increased by 230% between 2023 and 2024.

They further state: “The term has taken on new significance in the digital age, especially over the past 12 months. Initially gaining traction on social media platforms – particularly on TikTok among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities – ’brain rot’ is now seeing more widespread use, such as in mainstream journalism, amidst societal concerns about the negative impact of overconsuming online content.”

Choice of the word involved a public vote – 37,000 people voted in November 2024 from this shortlist: brain rot, demure, dynamic pricing, lore, romantasy, slop.

Other dictionaries and individuals also select words that reflect a year, but the Oxford word seems to have the “rizz” with the media. (That’s a short form of the word “charisma,” which was last year’s Word of the Year.)

Oxford Dictionary also has a fascinating history with an anniversary coming up on Feb. 1 marking 141 years since part of its first edition was published. Garrison Keillor provided these tidbits in The Writer’s Almanac:

“The Philological Society of London had conceived the idea for a new dictionary almost 30 years earlier, back in 1857, and then in 1879 they worked out an agreement with Oxford University Press to publish their ambitious project. The Society felt that the English dictionaries that existed at the time were ‘incomplete and deficient,’ and they wished to write a new dictionary that would take into account the way the English language had developed from Anglo-Saxon times.

“The dictionary, they proposed, would take 10 years to complete, fill four volumes, and amount to 6,400 pages. They were halfway [five years] into the project when they published the first volume on this day in 1884, and they’d only completed from ‘A’ to ‘Ant.’ In the end, the dictionary took 70 years [not 10] to complete, and it filled 10 volumes [not four] and it was 15,490 pages, more than twice as long as they’d originally estimated to their publisher. The last volume of the first edition of the dictionary was published in 1928.”

I do love words, but I’m not sure I could have worked on that project without suffering a little brain rot, if you know what I mean. What they accomplished, however, was monumental. I’ve always kept a dictionary within reach. Now, thanks to that brain-rotting internet, I can quickly look up word definitions and spellings. (Oxford, of course, is available online.)

The word is supposed to be a sign of the times, I guess. I can recall, though, hearing those words throughout my growing years. Generally in reference to all those earlier threats to our intellect.

“Get your head out of those comic books. They’ll rot your brain.” Or ... “Shut off that boob tube. It’ll rot your brain.”

So that chant has been around a while. At least since Thoreau lived in the woods.

I have to say Thoreau was on target. We still don’t use our brains the way we should sometimes. Call it “brain rot” if you want.

And, as with the leaders of old, nothing is really being done about it. But we sure do like talking about it. Which, of course, is how it became Word of the Year.

• Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His PaperWork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.