Surreality Bites: Diving Into The “Italian Brain Rot” Meme

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Advocate of Brain Freshening; image from the TikTok video Tralalero Tralala…

What’s the surreal TikTok obsession with “Italian Brain Rot”? I provided my take in a story by Forbes magazine, and thought I’d expand on it here.

@br.ai.nrot Tralalero Tralala – Italian Brainrot Song 🎶🗣️ A Brainrot Movie 🎥🧠 Tragic Tragic Tragic #tralalerotralala 💿 Song created by myself ! #tralalero #brrbrrpatapim #bombini #bombardinocrocodino #italianbrainrot #tungtungtung #tungtungtungsahur #trippitroppa #lirililarila #frullifrulla #spionirogolubiro #chimpanzinibananini ♬ original sound – LitLlamas

As you can see in the video above, there’s not much Italian about the first Italian brain rot star, Tralalero Tralala, which relies on a catchy reggae beat and surreal imagery. Italian brain rot appears to be the “I Can Has Cheezburger” of the AI generation. It’s absurdist escapism for social media users — especially young Americans — overwhelmed by stressful news, a frustrating job market, and new fears (deportation, measles, global warming disasters). Many are still reeling from the pandemic, and all this is happening while the institutions they relied on to make sense of the world (education, journalism, science) are under attack.

Now they have a new technology, AI, that older adults are portraying as a threat — “it will take our jobs” or “it will destroy humanity” — with some teachers and schools banning it outright. For this generation, adult fears and warnings have made the technology even more tempting to use, just as music advisory stickers made certain albums more attractive to their parents 30 years ago. Young adults have easy access to AI, and are adept at learning new digital technologies, so they readily put it to use. TikTok promoted a fun, irreverent way to do so, one they could readily emulate, just as a previous generation created silly photos and captions involving cats.

Some see anti-Islamic sentiment in some Italian brain rot lyrics. No one will claim responsibility for the perceived Islamophobia — some say it’s just an inadvertent coincidence stemming from absurdity — but it’s not unusual for memes to be appropriated by extremist groups, such as Pepe the Frog being adopted by white nationalists. Pepe was created as an innocent character in 2008; seven years later, he was coopted by the alt-right; and in 2020, he took on another meaning in the Hong Kong protests. Interestingly, Italian brainrot is popular in Indonesia, which is a majority Muslim country, so I expect to see it evolve even further, as people adapt the meme to their own interests.