To the tune of “Dom Dom Yes Yes” by Biser King over an instrumental of “Give it to Me” by Timbaland, YouTube was graced with the infamous video of Skibidi toilet in early 2023. The video features models from the game “Gmod,” and shows a human head coming out of a toilet.
This simple 30 second video amassed over 200 million views and quickly became the face of “brainrot.”
A survey was conducted by The Chatterbox asking for Effies’ and E-flats’ opinions on brainrot.
We asked them if they considered themselves “brainrotted” and if they thought it was a real problem.
Roughly 48% of the students considered themselves brainrotted, and about 30% of the students said they use brainrot terms like “sigma,” “skibidi toilet” and “fanum tax” multiple times a day.
This reflects a new trend in today’s youth on how they use technology and speak to their classmates, friends and teachers.
Among these student responses, many students showed the effect of brainrot directly by responding to the survey with names such as “top G” or “Barack Obama.”
Many younger students agree that their generation is the “brainrotted” generation, and were at a complete disregard with brainrot being an issue for younger kids.
“They’re sigma rizzlers and shouldn’t be judged,” “Skibididdy,” ‘29, said in their response.
Some students even considered brainrot to be a good thing.
“I’m too sigma,” Meraf Getachew, ‘30, said. The term “sigma” refers to coolness.
Thirty out of the 128 students reported that they use brainrot terms less often, but still consider themselves brainrotted. These students responded more seriously.
“As the lost generation [2012], I agree that Gen Z and Gen Alpha combined are the brainrotted generation,” Denise Wents, ‘30, said. “I disagree that Gen Alphas and Gen Z’s are iPad kids because some people get iPads as their first device and I think iPads are useful. Not every Gen Alpha kid watches ‘skibidi toilet’ on their iPad.”
Another student blames the parents for the brainrot in their children.
“I don’t primarily blame Gen Alpha as I am in the Gen Z—Gen Alpha cusp,” Lucy Crowley, ‘30, said. “Millennials have taken to replacing parenting with an electronic device.”
Some students even take offense to the generation title of ipad kids.
“What’s wrong with iPads? I have one, but I feel like it’s rude to call the whole generation brainrotted,” Lucy Howard, ‘29, said. “It’s only a fourth of the kids that say stuff like that, [but] people think it’s more.”
The second most popular group was students who considered themselves to not be brainrotten at all, which consisted of 49 out of the 128 responses.
One of these students, Roman Bass, ‘30, believes that little to no students their age are truly brainrotted.
“The only people who use the brainrot words are third graders, really brainrot is just a meme people make fun of,”
Bass said. “Never in my life have I heard anyone using brainrot slang words in their vocabulary.”