Is your feed being overtaken by “67”, “skibidi”, “rizz” and overly-stimulating short form AI videos? Don’t worry, it’s not just you.
[Jade Truong is a third-year Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and Commerce (Economics) student at Monash University, with a keen interest in the intersection of modern trends, behavioural economics, and consumer psychology. This article stems from her investigation into the “Brainrot” phenomenon, applying economic principles and psychology to analyse how market incentives shape users’ digital consumption and the resulting shifts in consumer behaviour.]
In 2024, the Oxford University Press named “brainrot” its “Word of the Year”, marking a 230% increase in usage from the previous year (Oxford University Press, 2024). What was once a niche term for the mental fogginess following a deep dive into the internet has evolved into a legitimate macroeconomic powerhouse. We are no longer just looking at a series of strange videos, but witnessing the emergence of the brainrot economy; a market designed to commodify micro-attention, capitalise on social isolation, and trade in the currency of the absurd. Phrases like ‘67’ and ‘fanum tax’ have entered the brainrot lexicon, as they gain attention due to their association with specific viral internet videos. As views and clicks of these videos increase, they become embedded in the everyday language of young viewers, transcending their original contexts.
The Algorithmic Engine powering a High-Frequency Dopamine Loop
The bedrock of this economy is the algorithm, which has shifted from a mere delivery system to a primary market maker. Unlike in traditional economics where supply usually follows demand, brainrot algorithm reverses this by generating a massive, nearly free supply of high-frequency, low-utility content, coined “slop”, to induce demand.
The statistics are staggering. Over 90% of Gen Z and Millennial users watch short-form content (Marketing LTB, 2024), with short-form AI videos (under 60 seconds) generating 2.7x more engagement than static content (Vivideo, 2026). This is the industrialisation of the dopamine loop. With 64% of children aged 8–12 consuming platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts daily (Annie E. Casey Foundation [AECF], 2024), the market has successfully shrunk entertainment down to a 15-second burst. This creates a high-frequency trading environment for human attention, where the marginal utility of a single second has plummeted, requiring creators to be louder, faster, and more nonsensical just to remain competitive so viewers don’t scroll away.
Brainrot content is appealing to many, especially youth in many different ways. These videos often display the impossible and bizarre, like a monkey morphing into many different animals in a 10 second video, a cat applying makeup, or a shark singing while wearing sneakers. For many, brainrot is a tool utilised to switch off from the stressful reality of everyday life. The unrealistic and unserious nature of a mindless brainrot TikTok scroll allows for an easy form of stress relief, as users avoid confronting anxiety from everyday responsibilities and the ever-changing world around them. Moreover, due to its base in AI generation, much of brainrot content is made to be extremely stimulating, targeting sensory stimulation and dopamine release in the brain that leaves users hooked. As a result, many find themselves scrolling this “useless information” for hours, even with the knowledge that it may be a waste of their time.
Buying Belonging in a Generation of Isolation
Why is the demand for nonsense so high? The answer lies in an epidemic of digital isolation. Despite being the most “connected” generation in history, Gen Alpha is facing pressures of loneliness. 40% of 13 year olds reported feelings of loneliness and anxiety in a given week (Brower, 2025). A large contributing factor to this is the increasing amount of time children spend disconnected, where the average child has spent the equivalent of one full year of 24 hour-days staring at a screen by age seven (Sigman, 2012).
In this landscape, brainrot serves as a low-cost entry into a sense of belonging. Participating in a trend like shouting “67!” or tracking a viral character provides a sense of group identity that requires zero social risk. Recognising this, corporations have started to market and produce following these behavioural trends. We are witnessing a shift from a value-based market to an identity-based market, where the primary utility of a product is its ability to make the user feel less alone.
How Corporations benefit off Brainrot Monetisation
Brainrot merchandise
For big corporations, the rise of brainrot is a large profit opportunity. Modern consumers, particularly Gen Alpha and Gen Z, have developed a natural immunity to traditional advertising. To break through, brands have pivoted to Asymmetric Marketing: adopting youth language to cultivate a peer-to-peer connection rather than traditional top down advertising.
You are likely to find brainrot characters like “Labubu”, “Tung Tung Tung Sahur” and “Skibidi Toilet” printed on large amounts of children’s clothing, toys and accessories. Corporations are “trend-hopping” at the speed of culture by identifying terms that are peaking algorithmically and instantly attaching them to merchandise. Although the “hype” may be confusing to the average adult, many brands and sellers see it as a genius business idea. Brands are no longer selling products; they are selling the “receipt” that proves a child is “in on the joke”. As children lack the financial literacy to consider the quality, price and value of a product, they see the familiarity of known brainrot terminology and characters that saturate their everyday content. Companies bypass a child’s critical thinking and tap directly into their need for cultural signaling, psychological comfort, and an immediate dopamine boost.
AI “slop” Youtube channels
The spread of brainrot does not stop at merchandise, or the repetitive content of specific characters and phrases. It extends to low quality AI content in general, designed to farm views through their mindless and trivial nature. In fact, brainrot YouTube videos have bought in over 63 billion views globally, generating about $170 million revenue annually (Way, 2025). These multi-million subscriber channels make up more than 20% of YouTube’s feed (Hern, 2025). Countries around the world are recording views of this content in the billions, with South Korea alone recording 8.45 billion views on trending brainrot channels. This is 164 times more than the total South Korean population (Way, 2025).
A Market of “Cheap” production that Creates Negative Externalities
The supply side of this economy thrives on hyper-elasticity. Because brainrot content and its associated merchandise are often low-quality by design, and children don’t usually have an eye for quality, the cost of production is extremely low. This allows for “Instant Merchandising,” where a viral sound on Monday becomes a t-shirt on Wednesday. This efficiency comes with significant negative externalities. Due to their ease of production and goals of dopamine, new brainrot trends and memes die fast, and are created even faster. The overproduction of fast fashion merchandising leads to an immense increase of deadstock and overall material waste as these trends die. Not only this, but the brainrot economy also “pollutes” the collective attention span. A 2024 study found that excessive short-form consumption is directly associated with diminished attention functions and increased psychological distress (Hao & Wu, 2024). We are trading long-term human wellbeing for short-term corporate profit.
Conclusion: The Future of the Nonsense Market
The brainrot economy is a mirror of our broader financial world: high-speed, volatile, and increasingly detached from tangible value. It thrives because it satisfies a fundamental human need for connection and detachment in a high-stress everyday environment that makes authentic connection difficult. As corporations pivot between nonsensical brainrot trends, they prove a new economic reality: when you can’t make sense of the market, you might as well monetise the madness.
References
Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2024, February 13). The impact of social media and technology on Gen Alpha. https://www.aecf.org/blog/impact-of-social-media-on-gen-alpha
Brower, T. (2025, December 7). New data reveals what Gen Alpha wants most—and how we should respond. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2025/12/07/new-data-reveals-what-gen-alpha-wants-most-and-how-we-should-respond/
Hao, J., & Wu, K. (2024). Exploring the impact of short-form videos on the mental health of adolescents and young adults: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(7), 896. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21070896
Hern, A. (2025, December 27). More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/27/more-than-20-of-videos-shown-to-new-youtube-users-are-ai-slop-study-finds
Marketing LTB. (2024). Short-form video statistics: Usage, reach and platform differences. https://marketingltb.com/blog/statistics/short-form-video-statistics/
Oxford University Press. (2024, December 2). ‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024. https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/
Sigman, A. (2012). Time for a view on screen time. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 97(11), 935–942. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2012-302196
Vivideo. (2026). 15+ AI video statistics for 2026. https://vivideo.ai/blog/ai-video-statistics-2026
Way, M. (2025, December 28). Top ‘AI slop’ YouTube channels generate £90,000,000 every year from ‘brainrot’. Metro.
https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/28/top-ai-slop-youtube-channels-generate-90-000-000-every-year-brainrot-25878138/
