Absurdism, brainrot and meme hyperinflation: what does it all mean?

You may have heard the numbers “6-7” resonating throughout the halls of GlenOak in recent times. This is what is known as a (quite popular) meme, a large part of internet culture in today’s modern age is contained within humorous phrases, images and short videos commonly referred to as memes.

First coined in 1993 by a man named Mike Godwin, according to an interview by Wired in 2006, internet memes have been constantly evolving as the cultural relevance of each and every one diffuses into a crowd. As time marches on, however, with the advent of short-form content sites such as TikTok and Instagram, it seems that the life cycle of a meme has been growing shorter and shorter as new content is created or discovered to replace it.

We watch. We laugh. We scroll. Then we repeat, a thousand times over. This seems to be the new era of humor, so it is time to define these terms and get a solid understanding.

As it stands today, a majority of the memes of the 2020s can be placed in two categories: absurdism and brainrot.

Absurdism is a high-energy form of surrealism, in which content classified as such features illogical scenarios and non sequiturs (events that do not logically follow the previous one) placed back to back, which is what makes it comedic – it simply does not make any sense. In internet culture, absurdism became prevalent around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, where it was considered a form of abstract expression.

Absurdist videos during this period were designed with digestibility in mind, expressing the inexpressible through skits and acting. In a video by popular influencer JennMelon, uploaded to YouTube on September 30th, 2022, you can see the defining aspects of pandemic-era absurdist humor— unbelievable, but still hypothetically possible.

Starting in late 2024, absurdist memes began to become more incomprehensible, rather than incoherent. Due to the pandemic, internet meme culture had become extremely short form as phenomenons such as doomscrolling and the advent of “brainrot” came to be used as coping methods to escape from the otherwise empty and therefore boring, outside world.

This video made by Instagram user essentiawater3 uploaded on June 30, features a zombified JD Vance and a product known as Rap Snacks. It provides a good example of post-pandemic absurdist humor, ngsacrificing any kind of plot or planned joke to instead catch you off guard with unrealistic representations of a character and obscure items, alongside other nonsensical elements that are out of place.

In the present day, absurdism now starts to overlap with a different style of memes known as “brainrot-” low-quality or meaningless content that, as the name would suggest, rots your brain. Brainrot is an incredibly broad category due to how easy it is to make videos or memes that do not hold any value, and thus, the floor continues to lower.

A well-known and recent example includes the ‘Italian Brainrot’ trend, in which surreal AI-generated images of creatures (often an animal combined with another object, ranging from Nike shoes to a banana to a bomber jet) were given pseudo-Italian names such as Tralalero Tralala and Ballerina Cappuccina. They were also given absurd backstories, such as Bombardillo Crocodilo’s, their story featuring Islamophobia (According to a transcript of its video, one line goes as follows: “He doesn’t believe in Allah and loves bombs.”) that was overshadowed by its absurdity.

While presented as a meme, Italian brainrot characters were seen as characters, and thus companies and content creators used these characters to make money off of. They spread their influence around the world, the tiny amount of brainpower required to comprehend it making it ever so easier to consume. These creatures could be created in no time at all, and thus, were of dubious quality, but due to their categorization as Italian brainrot, their existence was accepted and capitalized on, making the phenomenon even more adversely unintelligent.

The “6-7” meme is another good example of present-day brainrot. The hand sign particularly is attributed to a kid named Maverick Trevillain, while the numbers themselves have become an inside joke, straying away from its original context regarding basketball culture in favor of being used for nonsensical purposes.

And on the topic of AI, with the release of Sora, an AI video generator, brainrot has become virtually thoroughly uninspired due to the massive influx of AI-generated content now in the community.

Brainrot is considered to be a leading cause behind an especially new problem in meme culture known as “meme hyperinflation,” where the lifespan of memes becomes excessively short and thus, a fast cycle of low-quality content emerges, rather than a single meme remaining relevant for months or years at a time due to its comedic innovation.

Memes currently caught in this loop are oftentimes clips from existing movies or television shows sped up and slowed down and viciously edited in an attempt to be comedic— due to their insignificance and/or obscurity, they are dubbed “niche memes.” They are often made for the purpose of seeking attention.

In today’s modern age of humor, it seems like the quality and soul of it has greatly declined, the younger generation finding themselves laughing at incoherence and absurdity rather than well-crafted jokes and references. The rapid progression of technology has led to the rapid regression of our minds.