Comment by SamBam
20 days ago
I really disagree with the label brainrot. Brainrot is low-quality garbage with no artistic merit, and very little thought behind its creation, which does nothing but make you briefly pause while scrolling, before scrolling away with no lasting impression being done to your mind (besides increased boredom and inability to focus).
This is clearly an artistic statement, whether you like the art or not. A ton of thought and time was put into it. And people will likely be thinking and discussing this video for some time to come.
I think I have a different definition of brainrot than you. I think of attention grabbing visuals that have no meaning, just something to keep your eyes glued to the screen.
A good example are those Subway Surfers split screen videos, where someone is babbling about nothing in one frame, but the visuals in the other keep people watching.
Another example is AI-narrated “news” on YouTube. Nobody would normally listen to an AI voice read AI slop, but if there are some extreme video clips quickly switching every few seconds, people don’t immediately click away.
Brain rot shreds the attention span and uses all kinds of psychological tricks to keep people engaged. In the Helicopter video, every second is packed with visual information, not to contribute to the narrative but to capture attention. The backgrounds are full of details. The camera never stops moving. The subjects depicted are even attention grabbing: police lights, dancing people, guns, car crashes, flamethrowers! Hey, does that guy have pink curlers in his hair?
It’s not that I don’t like it (I kinda do), but a media diet of that kind of content is bad for the brain.