It would be more entertaining of they had the slightest clue of any of the meanings.

IMO the interesting part of "memes" is the information density not in the meme "data" itself but in the collective mind.

And the (possible) origin of Skibidi (by Little Big): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDFBTdToRmw

Really good video. I don't speak German but the subtitles were fine.

Wow that's just excellent. German classes paying off already!

> Kids are always gonna love stuff that pisses off their parents.

Thing is, gen alpha's parents grew up with weird shit themselves, edgy stuff that pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable. MTV and Comedy Central productions for a lot of people, stuff like Beavis & Butthead, Jackass, South Park, and then the 2000's internet of Newgrounds productions. Especially South Park I think desensitized the millennial generation, to the point where there's nothing that really weirds us (well, me) out.

I never watched skibidi toilet or much gen alpha stuff, but I'm not shocked by it or anything. I just think it's weird and surreal, but nothing worse than e.g. Salad Fingers.

> Kids are always gonna love stuff that pisses off their parents.

Does this stuff piss off parents? Some of what my child is into is incomprehensible to me, but a lot of it is absolutely recognizable as the kind of things I was into as a kid, it's just their version of it in 2025.

I'm actually rather enjoying watching her go through this, trying to understand what some of it means, and just going along with the ride of some stuff.

Yesterday, my kid very excitedly told me about something funny that the whole class did with 6 7. The 6 7 meme is completely opaque to me, but it was still an amusing story, and while I don't understand the specifics, I love that all of it is happening.

I don't think it is even so much about angering their parents as just having something they know that their parents don't.

Skibidi Toilet is pretty old hat at this point. It is well off of the radar. Current trends include stuff like 6-7.

On a similar note my parents didn't love the [AS] shows with more narrative but always sat down to watch stuff like 12oz Mouse with me. I still enjoy that kind of loose narrative content but I really don't get a lot of stuff these days, Skibidi included.

Idk, I wouldn't consider adult swim and friends brain rot. Whereas kids these days celebrate brain rot ("Italian brain rot", specifically). I see this as part of the larger anti-intellectualism gripping our species and really dislike it. A lot of these kids are glued to screens and are fed just a constant stream of ads and algorithmic shit while forming parasocial relationships with fake personalities.

> weird shows on Adult Swim like metalocalypse and squidbillies

Those masterpieces belong in the Louvre.

Google trends supports your experience. According to it, interest peaked about two years ago [1]

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

The new skibidi toilet are the italian brainrot

The first thing that came to mind the first time I saw Skibidi Toilet was this kind of TF2 SFM memery, which I love. The expressions in the second verse and the Spy's slow turn to look to heaven still really amuse me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTUH_wRrZZo

I find Skibidi Toilet fascinating because it's one of those things that looks like random garbage but is probably anything but. It takes a special kind of skill to achieve that. Just the right comedic timing, exaggeration of facial animations, instant narrative cues that make immediate sense even if the story itself is nonsense, all distilled into a few seconds of video. I gotta respect that. It's garbage, but it's high quality garbage, and I tip my hat off to the author.

But does it really matter if the theories are simplistic? They are thinking about it, forming a basis for, well, thinking. They're allowed to be wrong, because with time they will look back and think "haha I was wrong but man did I learn a lot from that".

> More grown up analyses of it are not that enlightening and overall the phenomena doesn't work

Have you seen the one fxwin linked?

They are already doing it, blender is enormously successful and only growing by the day

That would be nice, but I fear it will teach them prompting Sora.

Especially the stop motion animations, they were just absurdist / surreal, not unlike skibidi toilet and italian brainrot content.

If people were a bit more media savvy and less kneejerk or pearl clutching about it, they'd realize that it's nothing new. I don't actually know anyone clutching pearls about skibidi toilet, the worst is a somewhat indifferent "I don't get it". And not getting it is fine.

We also have SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM, eggs bacon sausage and SPAM.

wikings: SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM ...

Funny, complete and utter nonsense and probably a lot older than most of the people complaining about "modern" brainrot.

“It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese.”

All your base is in no way comparable to skibidi and is simply a parody making fun of how bad Japanese are at English.

All Your Base didn’t sprawl into a hundred episodes of vaguely continuing story, with toy deals and a major Hollywood director involved in a film, though.

ASDF movie, look at my horse, llamas with hats.. it truly was the peak time of brainrot

I have a bag full of crabs here, I'm gonna put them in my mouth oh yes!

Sallad Fingers

and my absolute favorite: Charlie the Unicorn!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And quality educational content like "Hokay, so, here's the Earth, chilling. 'Wow, that's a sweet Earth,' you might say. ROUND!"

SNAKE SNAKE OH GOD IT'S A SNAKE

You're a wizard Harry walked so Skibidi Toilet could run

You're the man now, dog.

Or, lore is a dinosaur, and the fractal, chaotic idea of reality becomes clearer by the day in our dystopia.

These are clearly toilets vs cameras, or out vs in. Resonant media doesn't have to explain itself. But simpler minds need the illusion of backstory, or the idea of good/bad, etc.

Never underestimate the ability of smart people to be overconfident in their understanding of the world, even in fields they know very little about. This is how you get a lot of very articulate nonsense, news papers are filled with this and so are many small blogs.

I tend to view the world through a psychoanalytical lens. I'm always curious about the unconscious drives of individuals and the collective, and how we interpret and interact with the world we live in.

I thought the article was interesting and thoughtful. It did a marvelous job of making sense of something that, at first blush, is seemingly senseless, and I do not think for a moment the paper is a prank.

Quite the contrary. One of the main characteristics of today's world is the devaluation (or utter disregard) of meaning. Even in this thread the term "brain rot" implies that it's not only valueless, but harmful. The article is not only about finding meaning in the content, but that its ambiguous narrative can be a good thing, as it opens the mind up to multiple possibilities and perspectives.

I find that to be quite hopeful.

We're through the looking glass. Post-ironic paper taking random memes seriously?

I bet there's papers about Monty Python's animations too. Actually I don't need to bet, there's Google [0]:

> The animated interludes in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail demonstrate director and animator Terry Gilliam's interest in and use of images in the margins of Gothic manuscripts. [1]

[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0%2C5&q=monthy+pyt...

[1] https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/91/article/424939/summary

Could be the prank began at causal-phenomenological explanations. How different is Skibidi from "lightning causes fire"?

I watched the first video a long time ago to see what the deal was, and reckoned it was just one of those silly, absurd videos that become well-known for whatever reason. The tradition of very stupid, absurd stuff taking off on the internet goes back to at least “Mr T Ate My Balls” and hell, I love the long-running, weird YouTube channel “How To Basic”, so, I didn’t mind it but thought that’s all there was to it.

But no. I eventually learned it was an hours-long series and gave it another try.

It’s a long, serialized silent film sci fi war epic told without intertitles. And damn, I was invested in it before long!

[edit] I am not joking that I cared more about and paid more attention to the long battle and infiltration mission near the end (at the time—I understand there’s more now?) than I care about or pay attention to at least half of the 30-45 minute final battles in Marvel movies. I would defend the series as outright better than, certainly, something like Quantumania.

> There was a half wall of skibidi toilet merch

Pretty crazy... My hypothesis is that it's popular because it feels more authentic and grassroots than most things being foisted upon them. It has surreal comedy and doesn't take itself seriously; both traits that are in extremely low supply in the recent / current zeitgeist. It was not designed by a committee pre-conception to appeal to the most-profitable possible audience. It is now however, produced by a studio which has just partnered with the Creative Artists Agency (a major Hollywood agency). We'll see if they ruin the vibe or ride off into the sunset akin to Minecraft.

The article explains it pretty well. If you want to understand it better, watch the first video, then skip 20 videos, repeat, and you'll see the development over time as it morphs into what it's become now (I.E: watch episode 1, 21, 41, 61). I also dismissed it at first, but as the article points out, there's a lot more to it than it looks.

It's just something dumb to pass the time. When I was a kid we had Charlie the Unicorn, Potter Puppet Pals and YouTube Poops.

If you feel morally panicked by Skibidi Toilet, you are old and out of touch (which is fine). It's the same as it's always been.

Edit: Well, not /just/ something dumb. Completely forgot about the associated lore some of these had, which makes them even more like Skibidi Toilet. I guess there's a whole category of "dumb things with underlying narratives." Filthy Frank is another one that comes to mind.

I’m 43. About six months ago I sat down and watched an hour of skibidi toilet.

I get why it’s popular. I didn’t enjoy myself but I completely get why kids soaked in memes might love it.

Eh it's just another meme like Hamster Dance or All Your Base Are Belong To Us - not sure anyone needs a moral panic over it (though it won't stop some of them either).

Concrete TV also fits the bill: https://www.brooklynvegan.com/cable-access-sh/

I don't think you're wrong, but also don't think that the article's wildly wrong either.

[dead]

Resolution isn't the point, the semantic confusion is what generates clicks.

Beavis & Butthead? You like this trash?

South Park? You like this trash?

Salad Fingers? You like this trash?

Monty Python? You like this trash?

Rick and Morty? You like this trash?

Elvis? You like this trash?

It's tiring; people should let people have things. And get over themselves because not everything is or has to be for them or for everyone's liking. That's art.

Gen X - those all suck.

Already is, but because everyone can do it and it takes barely any effort to make it, there's an oversupply.

I mean granted, it's relatively easy to make stuff in the HL movie maker tool as well, but it's more work than AI.

The choice of making the “good guys” camera heads and such does give one pause about wholeheartedly rooting for them. Intended or not, it really did have that effect in me.

And one does wonder whether that has anything to do with their enemies being, basically, clever, organized zombies…

The symmetry of the heads without bodies being on one side, and the bodies without heads on the other side is nice too.