By now you know, dear reader, that more often than not I pen these missives from my couch first thing in the morning while drinking my coffee, with whatever was on Bravo last night playing on the television in the background. Sometimes I tell you about what the Bravo people got up to, sometimes I tell you about what else I’m watching when I’m not watching Bravo (though not often because that’s a limited selection), sometimes I go rogue and tell you about something a celebrity said in an interview, but you tend not to like those so I try not to unless they said something really interesting. I am but your humble servant, after all.
All of this, for better or worse, has contributed to what the internet and now the Oxford English Dictionary refers to as my “brain rot.” In fact, I am not alone (thank goodness!)—“brain rot,” or the “‘supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state,’ particularly stemming from overconsumption of trivial online content,” was just named Oxford’s word of the year. This is the latest internet word to receive such an honor. Last year it was “rizz,” or charisma, and the year before that it was “goblin mode,” or “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy.”
Sigh. The dictionary people are catching me at a weird time. When I’m not doing this, I work retail. As of last week, it is the busy season in that field. I think you’re picking up what I’m putting down. I am tired. I come home after a long shift of standing on a concrete floor, selling candles and ornaments to the public, and I want to watch my Bravo people yell at each other. I want to escape to a world with pettier problems than my own. I want to rot my brain, as it were.
But there’s another layer at work, if you’ll allow me to be vulnerable for a moment. I am but a retail salesperson by trade. This, dear reader—these little moments we share—this is my passion. I have a master’s degree in this, I’ll have you know, and just like any good starving artist, I suffer from imposter syndrome and crippling self-doubt on a daily basis. “Is anyone out there?” I cry out my window, startling the construction workers down the street. “Does anyone care?” My sad little human brain can’t contain existential questions such as these and write well and smile at customers who ask me if I took the price tags off after I’ve already wrapped their purchase. Ipso facto, brain rot.
In a world such as ours, reminders of our mortality and our capacity for wretchedness are constant. Intellectualism will always be there. People are still quoting Nietzsche, for god’s sake, and he’s been dead for like, what? A thousand years? I bet he invented some of the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, and even he took a day off to veg out, I’m sure. This holiday season, be like Nietzsche. The dictionary people give you their permission, and so do I.