It’s normal to “view the thing the newest generation is doing with fear and suspicion,” she said, pointing to how past generations have had similar concerns about the detrimental effects of comic books, television and even novels at one time.
Concerns about brain rot — that it is unproductive and pointless — actually reveal a great deal about their appeal, Owens said. Brain rot is an acute rejection of the intense pressures on young people to self-optimize.
“It’s very normal for everyone to need to switch their brains off now and again,” she said.
In the first half of 2025, she racked up over 55 million views on TikTok and 4 million likes, mostly from tweens glued to their cellphones. Not bad for an AI-generated cartoon ballerina with a cappuccino teacup for a head.
Her name is Ballerina Cappuccina. Her smiling, girlish face is accompanied by a deep, computer-generated male voice singing in Italian — or, at least, some Italian. The rest is gibberish.
She is one of the most prominent characters in the internet phenomenon known as “Italian Brain Rot,” a series of memes that exploded in popularity this year, consisting of unrealistic AI-generated animal-object hybrids with absurdist, pseudo-Italian narration.
The trend has baffled parents, to the delight of young people experiencing the thrill of a new, fleeting cultural signifier that is illegible to older generations.
Experts and fans alike say the trend is worth paying attention to, and tells us something about the youngest generation of tweens.
A nonsensical, AI-generated realm
The first Italian brain-rot character was Tralalero Tralala, a shark with blue Nike sneakers on his elongated fins. Early Tralalero Tralala videos were scored with a curse-laden Italian song that sounds like a crude nursery rhyme.
Other characters soon emerged: Bombardiro Crocodilo, a crocodile-headed military airplane; Lirilì Larilà, an elephant with a cactus body and slippers; and…