What the sigma?

This blog is also available in Brainrot format. Please see video beneath the article.

Imagine you were given the browsing history of your 10-year old nephew. You’re immediately slapped with a wall of words like skibidi, The Rizzler, sigma. You click on one of the links and suddenly the grinch is smirking because you’re having knee-surgery tomorrow and roblox characters start emoting. You feel a little dizzy and confused.

The Brainrot Report is here to tell you that it’s ok. You’re not meant to understand.

We’ve always had weird stuff online. Once it was in places like 4chan and the more left-field subreddits. People declared these things as Weirdcore or Deepfried. It was kind of the drip-tray of the web. Meme’s were spun into absurdity and from absurdity back into memes. Their origins and meanings lost to all but a few. It was only the most ‘online’ of your friends that could peer into these digital dregs and have any clue what was going on.

But something even weirder has happened and suddenly it’s not just that slightly too-online person who gets it, but now a whole generation, who have left us scratching our heads whilst they splash through this strange internet cocktail of weird.

There isn’t some organised coalition of Gen Alphas that have agreed to embrace this new aesthetic and block us oldies from understanding (we read substacks so we are old, and I'm 25). But there is a very human love for things that can only be understood by your peers. From Rock & Roll to Punk we are witnessing the newest collective exercise in liking things that your parents don’t get. Even the slightly pejorative term of Brainrot, used to describe this absurdist internet sludge, has already been reclaimed by Gen Alpha and heralded for proving that we just don’t really get it.

So welcome to the Brainrot Report. The aim here is to feel like we’re not staring into the total abyss. I’m going to be exploring some emerging trends and ideas from Gen Alpha & Gen Zalpha (yes Zalpha is the real word for people on the border of Gen Z & Alpha). You might become able to successfully terrify and delight your little cousins by quoting the most-recent MrBeast video, or it might even aid your marketing strategy for the next generation of consumers.

Look out for deep dives on different platforms, spotlights on different creators and marketing campaigns, and even conversations around new internet legislation. I welcome all and any forms of contact, including Roblox Chat. Or better still, just leave a comment here.

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