'PDF to Brainrot' study tools are an iteration on a TikTok trend

37 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by ZeljkoS
(techcrunch.com)

43 Comments

cullumsmith

8 hours ago

There is a small segment of parents who completely prevent their children from accessing these brainrot platforms. Usually these kids are in homeschool groups with other like-minded families, with no phones or screen time.

I often wonder if this cohort will be the future elite class, or if they will be so incompatible with their peers that they'll end up forming insular communities amongst themselves (like the Amish).

michaelt

7 hours ago

> I often wonder if this cohort will be the future elite class, or if they will be so incompatible with their peers that they'll end up forming insular communities amongst themselves (like the Amish).

There's also a third option: They might just turn out normal.

jvanderbot

5 hours ago

I'm fairly certain (having been homeschooled for a while) that they'll just grow up pretty normal, possibly advanced in some areas but have some part of themselves that feels out of touch since they never participated in the usual social rituals. Socialization is hugely important, and a lot of success is just being a relatable person that's easy to work with. (Once you have grit, education, etc)

llm_trw

8 hours ago

Remember the kids who weren't allowed to watch television in the 80s and 90s?

It's them all over again.

GeoAtreides

2 hours ago

oh my god, it's always the same thing

Socrate-the-youths this, television that

No, social media is not like anything else before it. Algorithmic informational hoses are not like television and the harm they do is not like whatever Socrates complained 2500 or so years ago.

Can we try to at least have a normal discussion without repeating the same tired platitudes over and over again

rrr_oh_man

7 hours ago

Tiktok is a different kind of emotional brainrot.

pier25

5 hours ago

Absolutely. Plus there's content available 24/7 and it's a lot more addictive than anything on television.

I was a kid in the 80s and there wasn't that much content for kids back then. At least in my country.

Drakim

7 hours ago

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

preommr

7 hours ago

This fees like when our parents were worried about 'maymays' because that's what all the kids were talking about. I could easily see the same panic about how kids are now learning history through these images, and how teachers are assigning homework to make your own meme about a scientific fact.

Ultimately, these formats are passing entertainment and I doub they're going to have too much of an impact.

xtiansimon

4 hours ago

> “‘PDF to Brainrot’ trend, which will read the text of a document you upload…”

I’m curious if this could make Lacan or Derrida understandable. Joking/not joking

Qem

8 hours ago

Does it work? What is content retention like?

throwawayqqq11

7 hours ago

I suspect it doesnt really work.

Maybe you know the mind numbing state of brainrot clips or excessive TV watching, back in the old days. Your alpha brainwaves go up as your consciousness tunes down. I cannot imagine this mind numbing state to create complex and lasting new knowledge.

4gotunameagain

8 hours ago

If I tie you up to a chair, hold your eyelids open with toothpicks and play a lecture on a projector for two days straight, content retention will be quite high as well.

rnewme

7 hours ago

Is this snark or based on actual data? Is there relevant research? I would logically assume person would just zone out and retention would be nil

jumpoddly

6 hours ago

Is there relevant research? For torture?!

The gp is referencing a famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.

rnewme

5 hours ago

After learning about nazi torture experiment camps, Japanese torture experiment camps, American torture tests on own citizens etc, yea, I would sadly expect that there is a body of knowledge on the topic :/

Thank you for elaborating on the reference, I still haven't had the chance to see that movie

Elfener

9 hours ago

oh no

Woeps

9 hours ago

Oh no indeed.

And my first reaction was:"Naaaaaah ... This can't be a thing people actually use right?"

But I haven't been a student in decades so what do I know.

Cthulhu_

9 hours ago

The article itself casts doubt upon it as well - is it actually used, or is it rage bait and marketing that tries to tell people that it is a thing?

j4hdufd8

9 hours ago

Why not? What's your point?

wccrawford

9 hours ago

> (you can choose from voices like “Sam Sigma,” “Gabi Gyatt,” or “Sara Skibidi,” referring to somewhat meaningless words that are popular among young people who spend a lot of time online)

I find this hilarious because kids know what these words mean as much as they know what any word means. It's adults that don't know what they mean. Unless, of course, they bothered to stop and educate themselves.

Edit: The more I read of this "article" the more I realize it's just rage-bait. sigh

jumpoddly

9 hours ago

As always, the eternal refrain: “the kids are alright”, but wow, the adults, they look like they’ve lost it.

I think these adults are misguided at best.

~“Kids diets are causing an obesity epidemic so teacher brings sweets to class to encourage them to eat.”

Was there a subtle insinuation that they are being paid off to promote these tools?

I am all for getting creative with teaching, but I think the creativity should stem from the actual material.

Subway surfing is incredibly dangerous with zero upside. Bringing videos of people doing that into a classroom is despicable.

bananicorn

8 hours ago

Absolutely with you on the last point, but the Subway Surfers mentioned in this Article is a mobile game which has been around since 2012 - they don't splice in videos with actual subway surfing. Not that that changes much about the article in general^^

jumpoddly

6 hours ago

What a relief.

Thanks for the correction.

I legitimately tried to watch the linked vids multiple times, but the social media site where they are located kept booting me to install their app.

I even tried searching for reuploads to other, more open, social media, but was unable to find the same teacher.

tux3

9 hours ago

I, for one, welcome our new dopamine overlords.

It is still early days, but the oncoming flood of AI content is inevitable at this point. Since modern content is meticulously engineered to snipe children into jumping for the beef with perfect efficiency, killing their reward center instantly, we are well on track to revolutionize education.

The Adtech era is over. Addiction science as an industry shall bring forth the age of brainrot maxxing.

notTooFarGone

9 hours ago

gl getting developers for high complexity products or experts in general in the future with less and less attention spans and frustration tolerance.

j4hdufd8

8 hours ago

Implying these study apps will reduce attention spans and tolerance to frustration?

gtvwill

9 hours ago

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

Honestly can't wait. Feed me info in dopamine adjusted methods. My spicy meatball brain finds old methods boring af and an absolute chore. Can learn at 10x with the new ways. Much like the meme watch a 4hr movie in one go? Meh. Feed me a 10 hour movie in 14 40ish min episodes? Hell yeah!

Education needs to strap itself in and get with the times. No point holding onto the old ways just because it's what we did as kids. Wanna feed em a 60 min lecture? Give em 30 to 60 small clips of high interest action!

sourcepluck

7 hours ago

> Can learn at 10x with the new ways

Can consume at 10x with the new ways

tgv

8 hours ago

I don't think there's much evidence you'll learn a lot that way, and certainly not 10 times as much as someone who hasn't been turned into a "spicy meatball" by a social media addiction.

> Give em 30 to 60 small clips of high interest action!

That's such a glib remark. How do you propose to make 30 to 60 small clips per teaching hour? There's over 1200 of those per year. Shortest path through school is 12 years. Good luck making 500,000 of those clips for "what's the capital of Kenia?"

And I'm fairly sure that once you're exposed to them, they'll get boring pretty quickly, and the effect will be nil.

In case you need any more conviction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5RsaOOsZFk

michaelt

8 hours ago

> How do you propose to make 30 to 60 small clips per teaching hour?

Well, we're discussing an article about AI-based "PDF to Brainrot" tools that overlay textbooks on minecraft videos.

I don't know if the tools achieve their stated goals - but the tools do seem to exist.

gtvwill

5 hours ago

I was a spicy meatball before social media even existed.

It's why it took me 7 years to complete the last 30% of my two degrees. I got bored and went and worked full time in heavy industry. Pretty sure I had adhd well before I even started uni. Fairly sure I was born with it rather than it being a learned condition.

Also Im not sure if the shortest path through school is the goal either. I'm in my late 30s now and I still learn new things every day and still regularly consume education materials every week. I don't ever plan to stop. How arrogant must you be to think you should stop learning once school is over? Hell I've learnt stuff post school that other students learnt in school. I studied business they studied science.

I've done a huge amount of learning in trades and honestly 60 second videos have taught me over a few cumulative hours as many tricks as a decade in construction has.

On the job you only learn what your exposed to and what the people around you know. 60 second videos from anyone anywhere can literally teach me anything because it's not limited to just who I am able to be exposed to now in this minute today.

Hell I've learnt skills from shorts fellas who have spent decades in industries haven't learnt. Stuff that's valuable and saves time. It's all about exposure. Expose yourself to more, learn more. Lectures are slow and exposure is limited when it's just you and whoever the education source deemed suitable to be your teacher.

poulpy123

7 hours ago

> No point holding onto the old ways just because it's what we did as kids.

Yes I'm sure that killing the brain of children will have no adverse consequences

sabbaticaldev

6 hours ago

that would only bring them on par with the current generation that killed their brain with television

Iulioh

9 hours ago

____

Feed me a 10 hour movie in 14 40ish min episodes? Hell yeah!

____

I can't get myself to watch a film but will watch an entire 12ep anime in a day...

I'm fucked.

Pigalowda

6 hours ago

Attention building requires work and discipline. It’s really hard to build it up and so easy to lose it. This is just more idiocracy. More and more. Oh well.

0x20cowboy

8 hours ago

Welcome to Costco. I love you.

aaron695

9 hours ago

> did Odysseus really have rizz, or was he a sigma male?

Reading about his life on Wikipedia his was pretty sigma, I image he'd read HN -

  When Helen of Troy is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honour their oaths and help him to retrieve her <> Odysseus tries to avoid it by feigning lunacy <> He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow)
He got with a witch trying to kill him, so he has rizz

  goddess Circe <> feeds the men, all but Odysseus change into swine. Odysseus had been warned <> herb that protected him from her spell <>  lovemaking <> she turns his men back to men.

GTP

7 hours ago

Ok, now try to tell a literature teacher during an oral test that Odysseus was a sigma male with rizz, then let us know which grade you got :D