EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 6,984 words- 0:00 – 0:50
Brainrot as algorithm-driven meme language: “skibidi rizz Ohio”
- AGAdam Grant
The idea is that brainrot as a, is a semantic class that points back to the algorithm. So it started out with skibidi rizz Ohio. Skibidi doesn't mean anything. Rizz is charisma. Ohio doesn't mean anything either. It's funny because these words are algorithmic trends, and they're overused to death. Creators use them because they're trending, and that helps them go more viral. And then we're in this positive feedback loop of the, the phrase becoming a more of a meme and more creators using it because the algorithm is pushing it, and then it becomes even more of a thing. [upbeat music]
- AAAdam Aleksic
My neighbor's mom is a huge fan of you, so she'll be really excited that I'm on here.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Well, one, I'm honored, and two-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... neighbor's mom, I feel like I've made it in life now. Can you start by quizzing me on Algospeak? Uh, I, I would, I would love-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Sure
- AGAdam Grant
... I would love if you give me some words, and then I'll do my best, and you can tell me how I've done.
- 0:50 – 2:20
Quiz segment: Labubu, matcha, Dubai chocolate—and commodified “brainrot”
- AAAdam Aleksic
All right. I'll try to hit you with more trending memes. Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate was a popular meme this summer. How much do you know about the, the brainrot version of that?
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] I'm sorry. I didn't recognize any of those words except I've heard people say labubu and brainrot. And I don't know what labubu is, and as far as I can tell-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... brainrot is using a bunch of these Algospeak words, uh, in ways that cause the quality of thinking and conversation to deteriorate.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah. I think you're actually... That's interesting. You're kind of conflating two definitions there, which I think are important to separate. Um, brainrot can be something that is perceived to be mentally deleterious online, or it can be this meme aesthetic associated with things that are bad with your brain, but not necessarily. Like, there's nothing about matcha that is bad for your brain, and yet matcha is brainrot, uh, in the same sense as a labubu, which is this plushy toy from China that looks a little ugly. And then there's, uh, Dubai chocolate, which is this popular new pistachio chocolate from Dubai, obviously. And so now we have this inundation of meaningless vocabulary, and we start using it absurdly, ironically to point back at the idea of the algorithm pushing this content. And the, the most recent iteration, this labubu matcha Dubai chocolate, is pointing fun at that hyper commodification of, of items that are being pushed by the algorithm. It's a sort of reflexive knowledge that these, uh, trends are being overrepresented to sell us something online.
- AGAdam Grant
So interesting. What's your next one?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I didn't realize I'd have to be given a quiz. Uh, there was-
- AGAdam Grant
Wait a minute. This is... You, you get the easy part.
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
You only, you only have to give the quiz. I'm the one who has to take it and fail it.
- 2:20 – 3:27
Quiz segment: “67” and the rise of clip-farming culture
- AAAdam Aleksic
All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. It, it requires, you know, teacher prep. Do you know about 67?
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, my kids tell me about it, and as far as I can tell, it has no meaning, but they think it's hilarious anyway.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah. I think this one's really interesting. It, it is sort of a meaningless interjection, kind of like skibidi, but it comes out of clip farming culture where NBA players would say it in order to go viral. And, um, the idea was in an interview, if you say 67, you'll get remixed into a TikTok edit. And then other people, Gen Alpha children, start saying 67 on camera in hopes of going viral. So actually, I think it's less of a meaningless thing and more of an absurd reference to this idea of clip farming culture, the idea that the algorithm is always implicitly there. And it's sort of a absurdist parody of the fact that we are existing in this algorithmic milieu.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow, fascinating. I completely failed at that. Okay.
- AAAdam Aleksic
No, no. You did great, actually. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
It's-
- AAAdam Aleksic
It can be meaningless too.
- AGAdam Grant
No. I mean, I, I didn't know the origin story, and it turns out neither do my kids. I can't wait to tell them that I know something about Gen Alpha speak that they don't.
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
Yes.
- AAAdam Aleksic
That's how you kill a meme, by the way. As soon as you tell them more about it, then [laughs] they know.
- AGAdam Grant
Noted. But I wanna kill that meme 'cause it's ridiculous. What's your next one?
- 3:27 – 4:22
Algospeak for censorship and uncertainty: the evolution of “bop”
- AAAdam Aleksic
Uh, new form of Algospeak is the word bop, which probably means something different than, uh, what you learned growing up.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh, okay.
- AAAdam Aleksic
The idea is, like, an OnlyFans worker. And so in the past, a bop was, like, a really good song. And then out of, I think, Bay Area slang, African American English, it percolated into the mainstream and, and was used by OnlyFans creators who needed a way to describe their profession without being censored by the algorithm.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- AAAdam Aleksic
So bop started becoming popular in that sense.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. But doesn't the algorithm learn that?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Well, yeah. There's also this idea of the algorithmic imaginary, that we're hypercorrecting constantly, that the algorithm is, uh, suppressing less than you think. And yet because you don't know exactly what the algorithm is doing, people will attempt to circumvent it, and that's kind of Algospeak. But Algospeak is also, I think, more broadly any way that we talk online that is conditioned, uh, uniquely by the constraints and expressive possibilities of the algorithm.
- 4:22 – 6:17
Why TikTok changed the game: machine learning, personalization, and attention capture
- AGAdam Grant
Got it. Okay. Why now? It seems to be new just in the last couple years, but algorithms are not new. Is it just that, like, TikTok largely has made algorithms more sophisticated in this way? Why was it not happening on old school Facebook or on, you know, a decade ago Instagram?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah. Well, it's important to emphasize that an algorithm is just a computer process where there's an input, something happens, and there's an output, right? And in the past, algorithms were used for all kinds of things. The algorithm as we refer to it on, on TikTok is something different entirely, which is, uh, importantly not one algorithm. It's hundreds of different algorithms that are involved in user classification and content classification and then matching users to that content and then censorship. A- all this stuff is kinda combined into what we think of as the algorithm, that pipeline between a video being uploaded a- and it showing up on your for you page. But there's a- also an important addition of machine learning into this process. The new algorithms are based on neural nets, kind of the same architecture that's underlying ChatGPT and these chatbots. It's an AI-based algorithm that learns from itself, that learns from the content as it's uploaded, and that learns from your behaviors. It is b- uh, created under, under this promise of a personalized for you page, a page that is meant to be for you and you alone, that is built through your activity online and your interests. And that is what kinda set TikTok apart when it acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and then started building itself out as this distinct platform. Um, also, the rise of short-form video is a whole nother aspect to analyze here, how that has impacted our culture. But this combination of the personalized algorithm and the short-form video that dominates your entire screen and holds your entire attention m- made TikTok the most addicting app possible. Users spend way more time on TikTok than any competing app in the past, and there are many good aspects in terms of democratized communication, but also many concerning aspects of what kind of speech is allowed to travel online.
- 6:17 – 8:14
From etymology nerd to internet linguist: why word origins matter
- AGAdam Grant
When did you first get into etymology and linguistics?
- AAAdam Aleksic
About 10 years ago, actually. I have, uh, been really fascinated with etymology from the start. I got into it for the fun facts. I, I like to say that the word etymology actually in Greek, etumos, means the study of truth. You find out something real about ourselves and about how we relate to society and to each other through our words. Um, and I started this little blog for myself in high school called etymologynerd.com, and I'd do a little blog post a day on where words came from, and then I studied linguistics in college, and then I was like, "Well, what do I do with a linguistics degree?" And I ended up making videos, which is, uh, the modern-day Etymology Nerd.
- AGAdam Grant
That's fantastic. It, it reminds me a little bit of, um, uh, the... You probably know the origin of abracadabra, right?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I was just looking into, uh, how, like, the Harry Potter curse avada kedavra is based on abracadabra. Um, but is, doesn't it have something to do with the alphabet?
- AGAdam Grant
Actually, I don't even know. You would know better than I would on that. The, the thing that always stuck out at me from the little I do know about that is the Aramaic translation, or one of them at least, is, "I create as I speak." And I thought that was-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... it was such a, a, a simple but profound way of describing how the, the access to language that we have actually shapes the way that we see the world.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Oh, that's so fascinating. And also hocus pocus in, i- in Latin means this is my body. Uh, I think there's such a fascinating connection between words and, and performance. Uh, so in, in the Bible, right, uh, God says, "Let there be light," but it's the saying let there be light, and then he goes on to name it light. The literal word is the thing that does it. There's such a fascinating connection with how ancient cultures thought about magic and language being inextricable. Uh, the word spell as in magic spell and spell as in spell a word go back to the same source because it's thought to be the same thing. By saying, by writing down the word, you are conjuring a physical change in the universe which affects how other people understand each other. By saying something right now, by you saying something, we're affecting the minds of all the people who are listening to this. Uh, that's, that's unbelievably powerful to me.
- 8:14 – 11:14
Language as a virus: how words spread and where internet slang comes from
- AGAdam Grant
Me too. So this, this reminds me of, of one of the more, I think, interesting ideas in Algospeak, which is language is a sort of virus in your view. Um, and the metaphor instantly made sense to me because we do spread these wor- in fact, I don't know of a way to learn a word other than through communication, right? I'm either hearing it from another person or I'm picking it up through something I've read. Uh, or I guess now we have a growing number of AI tools that can teach me a word, but [laughs] they've, they've usually ingested it from, uh, a data set that involves human communication. So talk to me about beyond the, the obvious, what, what is viral about language?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah. Uh, so there is this virus metaphor, and it is very useful up to a point. I wanna caution that, uh, the, a metaphor can only take you so far, a metaphor being Greek for carry across. It's good for carrying across a concept, but it's, uh, the carrying is never quite where the concept is. It's a semantic domain in how we understand it. Uh, that being said, uh, there is something very useful to understanding how language spreads through this sort of epidemiological lens, where it's, a word starts out in some small cluster community, and you see this all the time, especially on the internet. Maybe the internet's given us better tools than ever to understand language from this viral lens. Uh, I mean, you can literally talk about going viral. Uh, but it starts with these, like, uh, hosts, and then it is transmitted and infects other people, and then those people become hosts for the word, and then they say it, and then it's, uh, infecting the minds of other people. And one thing I, I try to emphasize in the book is that pretty much 90% of internet slang right now is either from African American English or it's from 4chan, which, uh, you know, you can draw your own conclusions.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Okay. Wow on two levels. Uh, one, I think that is scary [laughs] if, if that's, if that's becoming a source. But two, I just wanna go back to the way that you dropped in that metaphors carry across. Uh, I love, I love this linguistics sleight of hand, and I think if I could redo college, one of the first things I would change is I would take at least one and probably multiple linguistics classes. I've always loved words. I'm definitely a word nerd. And I just think it's so cool how you can, how you can say, and by the way, like, here's what a metaphor does. Its origin is to carry across. Other than the parlor trick, um, what's the value of you being able to do that?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Right. Well, part of it, again, is just the fun fact, the parlor trick, but the other part is that part I said, that etumos, truth, right? You find out an aspect of how humans understand society. Uh, you find out w- where these words are coming from, and you understand actually where ideas are coming from. I see language as sort of a, a bellwether, like a canary in the coal mine of greater cultural shifts. And if 4chan is influencing our language that much, it stands to reason that 4chan is influencing our political beliefs, our social understandings as much, and I, I strongly think that they are because language is never, you know, isolated in a system. It, uh, serves as an indicator maybe of, of how we think. It is, uh, a little map of our vibes, I guess.
- 11:14 – 14:12
Can you invent a word? Organic adoption vs. elite-imposed vocabulary
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. So if that's the case, how easy is it for you to use this understanding of language to start implanting words into our vocabulary?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I've tried. Trust me, I've tried. Uh, it's every linguist's dream to, uh, get people to say their, uh, word that they invented, but that's not really how it works. You have to have this effervescent, uh, natural feeling to language. It has to spread usually along the conduits of what is seen as funny or cool, which is like, uh, African American English is seen as cool. 4chan language is seen as funny. It spreads through memes. And we end up adopting something because it follows just these, uh, sort of pathways of how humans like to adopt concepts. Uh, we feel a resistance to something if it feels like it's being forced on us.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- AAAdam Aleksic
There is a difference, I think. Uh, the elites can impose language when they use it to structure things. Uh, and then we just adopt the vocabulary of something like, uh, why, you know, YouTube calling it channels and creators. Those are just decisions they made in their boardrooms in, uh, the late 2000s. Uh, and, and so now we just use words like channel and creator, uh, and we don't think about what those words might mean. Uh, that's an upper elite structure decision-
- AGAdam Grant
[clears throat]
- AAAdam Aleksic
... that affects other people. But unless you give me a, a platform to influence people, then I probably can't get my word to naturally percolate outwards.
- AGAdam Grant
What, what's the word that you would most wanna spread that you've coined?
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs] Uh, just with my friends I've, I've secretly been, uh, seeding the word noxious to mean good for a while.
- AGAdam Grant
Why?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Uh, I think it's, it's, like, kinda like sur- "Oh, that's totally noxious, bro." Like-
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- AAAdam Aleksic
... it's surfer slang. It sounds like it could mean good. I think it's funny.
- AGAdam Grant
I guess-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Um, yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... yeah, I guess, I guess noxious-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... could be in some ways the opposite of obnoxious.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Right. I'm ... Why not, you know? Uh, I mean, it does mean, uh, I think poison in Latin, but in a, in a funny kind of way, in the same way you'd say, "That's sick," you know? Uh, that's my secret dream to get more people saying noxious. Oh, also -wardly as a suffix. Like, you can say, uh, eastwardly, northwardly, but ... Or, like, what about this-wardly? I'm going this-wardly. I'm going, uh, Boston-wardly. I... Like, we need to throw more... Like, it's just a fun suffix.
- AGAdam Grant
That-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Uh, so if anybody's listening and they wanna use this, I, I don't think we can make it happen, but you might as well try. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
I don't think the -wardly is gonna take off. That sounds like-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... Shakespearean English.
- AAAdam Aleksic
It's funny. It makes it a little more poetic.
- AGAdam Grant
It's true. It's true. You know, one of the challenges of having your words sort of arrive in the lexicon is at some point I've seen people get upset that they're not getting credit for what they've coined.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Right. Right.
- AGAdam Grant
And I, I've always found that so puzzling. Like, it, it, it makes my day when somebody talks about, like-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Mm-hmm
- AGAdam Grant
... givers and takers, um, which is probably one of the ideas that, um, that I helped to popularize, without referencing me, because that is a sign that-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- 14:12 – 16:50
Ownership, attribution, and cultural power: from ballroom slang to “on fleek”
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah. I think you have to accept the reality that if you're trying to influence culture, uh, it's honestly good for that idea to spread on and take its own life, and you kind of plant the seed that later on grows. Um, but there is sort of this history of, of language being power, as a tool of, uh, creating belonging. Uh, and the thing that's interesting with, like, African American English is that, uh, a lot of the slang specifically comes out of the ballroom scene in the '80s and '90s. This is this gay, Black, Latino space. And, uh, it was used as a tool to subvert the straight, white norms of the English language, which they didn't feel represented them, and it was used to build community. Words like slay, serve tea, cooked, ate, bussin'. Uh, all those are, like, from that area. Now they're thought of as Gen Z internet slang. And they percolate outwards into the, into the mainstream, and now, you know, you have your white middle school girl saying slay. But it loses that initial power that it had within that community. So there, you know, I, I see it both sides. I, as- You can't stop it. You cannot, uh, stop a tsunami. The language is gonna change, and then there's a new need to invent new shared vocabulary. And if anything, that's also beautiful, this, uh, how it, uh, bubbles up kind of rhizomatically in a n- in new direction that you have, uh, a new development of language. Uh, but it is inexorable that language is going to keep marching on, um, and get moved through these communities until you get to the base root of why it's moving through these communities the way it is. Um, there's also individual attribution. I remember the example from on fleek in 2014 when the Vine user Kayla Newman, going by Peaches Monroe, uh, coined the phrase on fleek in a, in a short seven-second video. And that went viral, and Nicki Minaj, uh, rapped about being on fleek, and, uh, all these celebrities, and Forever 21 released on fleek T-shirts. And, and meanwhile, Kayla Newman never saw a cent of profit. And it was, like, her idea, it was her creativity. But, you know, and another argument is why shouldn't she see profit? It's not... A word is not something you can really own. It, it... Trademark is kind of a different concept than just, uh, having a word that you came up with. But there is this idea online of, of crediting the originators of something. Uh, I think this has, uh, been more of a standard s- on TikTok since, um, 2019 or so when Charli D'Amelio, the famous TikToker, uh, got a lot of, um, of flack for, uh, stealing the Renegade dance without crediting this original creator. And, and so there's this, this culture of attribution. I mean, you can draw your own conclusions about how much attribution should be given, should not be given. I think it's, it's cool when you have the opportunity to acknowledge where an idea came from. Uh, but at the same time, uh, we need to accept, uh, the things that we cannot change.
- AGAdam Grant
Right.
- 16:50 – 20:57
Memes, Dawkins, and the missing ingredient: the medium
- AAAdam Aleksic
You see this happening a lot with music especially. Uh, it's, it's harder even to trace what a sound is, what an aesthetic is. And we have all these different genres of music all tracing back, uh, to a few early starts in, like, you know, jazz and, uh, folk music and stuff. And I like to use the example of, of Stevie Wonder as a- another instance of virality, where his album Songs in the Key of Life is one of the most influential albums of all time. You, uh... His song "Pastime Paradise" from that album-
- AGAdam Grant
[clears throat]
- AAAdam Aleksic
... got remixed into "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio. His song, which has, like, two billion Spotify streams. His song "Saturn," which, uh, I... imagines this better world on a planet called Saturn. It later got redeveloped into SZA's Grammy Award-winning hit with a billion streams, Saturn. He's the bassist for the Mario Kart soundtrack. Elton John, Michael Jackson, all these people think that Stevie Wonder was o- their greatest influence. So he was literally viral in the same way that you can think of, uh, the Kayla Newman coining on fleek. Uh, there's a higher node that influencers lower nodes, a, a host that transmits an idea. Uh, and this is sort of this concept of a, of a meme, which, um, is another meme in and of itself. Uh, we don't really know what a meme is. Uh, it was... The word was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene-
- AGAdam Grant
I remember that one
- AAAdam Aleksic
... comes from the Greek word for, for imitate. Uh, and he, he... I don't know. He has some, some- I think underdeveloped, uh, ideas about what a meme could be. Uh, there's this i- idea that it can evolutionarily compete against other memes, which I, I think is again reductive as a metaphor, but is useful. Uh, and so we have memes competing against each other in the wild, and when a c- meme is better able to compete for your attention, it, uh, is the one you end up using. That's why we start using certain words. That's why we start listening to certain songs. The meme is winning. Um, it is self-replicating.
- AGAdam Grant
So I remember reading The Selfish Gene, I think it was in 2000, and being intrigued by, by the idea that cultures pass on memes just like, you know, biologically we pass on our genes. And it seems like the way that's happening is different now. Um, it seems like there's much more cross-fertilization between different groups because of the internet and because of some degree of globalization. It also seems like because, to your earlier point, people are trying to game the algorithm, uh-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... there's an incentive to master the memes and then share them. I mean, you, you know the, um... I, I'm just thinking of a, a dumb example. The, um, the, the photo of the guy who's looking at the- [laughs] the girl who's looks like... You know what?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Oh, the distracted boyfriend meme.
- AGAdam Grant
Distracted boyfriend. Thank you. I was like-
- AAAdam Aleksic
That's from, uh-
- AGAdam Grant
How do I describe this?
- AAAdam Aleksic
... 2015. Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AAAdam Aleksic
There's this shared knowledge of what the distracted boyfriend signifies, for sure.
- AGAdam Grant
So yeah, I guess the question is then, how do you distinguish between a meme that's useful versus a meme that's being used?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I think that's such an important question, and, uh, I want to sort of redefine that Dawkins definition of a meme as just merely a self-replicating unit of culture and, and, a, a idea of a viral idea as merely something that goes from our head to another person's head. The missing piece of this equation is the medium. Before it can go from my head to your head, I need to put my idea into a medium. That is, I can... Right now I'm using speech as a medium. Stevie Wonder was using song as a medium. And, uh, TikTok is itself a new medium. I think it's a paradigm shift in how we communicated as a, a, fundamentally a new medium with new structured incentives for how we should be communicating to each other with new dimensions of what makes something go viral. Um, the distracted boyfriend is a medium. Uh, there are many different types of memes where there is two choices presented, and you need to choose between one of them. There is, uh, there's a split path meme where one of the paths is, like, this good, idealized kingdom, and the other one is this, uh, dark, uh, evil land, and this boy's confused about which way to go. I don't know how effective these new AI slop at- platforms are gonna be, like Sora, but we have the short form video as a medium affecting our reality and they're, through these personalized for you algorithms, uh, that is a medium. That has incentives for creators. It has certain implications for how we, uh, uptake the meme by how we interact with it from this, like, sort of phenomenological perspective. We have a unique way of looking at it, and I'd, I'd love to get into that.
- 20:57 – 22:21
Brainrot as a meme package: remixing rizz, skibidi, and political speeches
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. Same. Um, you know, this, this discussion reminds me of a video that I'm sure you've seen a million times. Uh, it's a polyglot, uh, who gives an entire speech using Gen Alpha slang.
- AAAdam Aleksic
All those words are also individual memes, and something interesting about memes is that they spread sometimes better as a package, and this is sort of tying back to that idea of brainrot, right? So rizz was a meme from the Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, and skibidi was a, a meme from Skibidi Toilet, this YouTube Shorts series. Uh, and, but then it got remixed in October, uh, 2023 in this Rizzler song that combined a bunch of brainrot lyrics, uh, sticking out your gyat for the Rizzler, you're so skibidi. And but combining all that harnessed the memetic value of both of those at once. And sort of that viral video of the Gen Alpha teacher you were describing, he was using a bunch of different words, uh, but using the memetic power of all of them at the same time, uh, that's kind of how I think brainrot as a genre emerges. Uh, there's other few examples, uh, of politicians using brainrot. Uh, Senator Fatima Payman in Australia and Senator, uh, Bernadette Clement in, in Canada both used brainrot speeches to help get points across about youth communication. Uh, it, it is a powerful tool for grabbing attention because there's an element of social fascination behind these words as well that drives the meme fundamentally. It is a human attentional thing that drives a meme.
- 22:21 – 25:01
What makes memes stick: incongruity, emotion, and everyday applicability
- AGAdam Grant
I would, uh, maybe add one layer to that, that I'm curious to get your reaction to.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Please.
- AGAdam Grant
Which is, uh, yes, memes grab attention, but also the surprise factor, the incongruity of somebody who does not belong to the generation sounding fluent in these words, it's, it's, it seems like in some ways the same status or cachet you get if, like, as a gringo, I go to a Spanish-speaking country and hablo español bastante bien. [laughs] Um, and all of a sudden somebody's like, "Wow, you, you speak better than I thought. Uh, you must not be what I thought you were."
- AAAdam Aleksic
Well, th- I think awe or humor, which are two key, uh, high arousal emotions that help spread ideas, uh, they both rely on this subversion of expectations. You have an idea of what's going to happen, and then you break it, and often that requires setting up a frame of, of, like, oh, this looks like a profess- professor at a lecture. This looks like, uh, a distinguished Australian senator. And then you break the frame by in- uh, introducing these terminally online phrases that seem incongruous. That for sure is a part of what makes something successful as an individual meme. Um, I, I think in terms of memes with longevity, uh, uh, something like the word itself that needs to spread beyond context, part of it is the adaptability. 67, for example, as a viral meme right now is very popular because it shows up all the time. You are primed to see it whenever you count to 10. You, like, uh, it is a very common, uh, number in prices, in accounting, in math. You, you, you see the number 67 almost daily, and so you're reminded of this meme constantly. You reference it. It becomes this in-person thing, at the same time pointing to the absurdity of algorithmic recommendations. Uh, I think that's partially what makes a meme successful, that it has this applicability.
- AGAdam Grant
Why are we so intrigued by [laughs] the brainrot vocabulary, uh, as opposed to other slang?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I think, well, one, there's that element of social fascination, that this seems like this is online language. Surely nobody could be using that offline. And then when somebody does use it offline, it, it becomes more of a thing. Um, but, uh, fundamentally, it ... Because of that association of this is bad for your brain, it is a reflexive awareness of the internet's harmful effects, and I don't think the words themselves are harmful. And this is a point I really try to emphasize for people, that, uh, there is a separation here between language and culture, where language is just this way we have of describing the world. It is a tool. A tool can be neutral. A tool can be harnessed for good or for evil. Um, but with it, uh, come all these, like, uh, loaded cultural ideas and, uh, uh, that's when things can start to get misused.
- 25:01 – 27:28
Lightning round: rejecting “content,” favorite brainrot, and intentional language
- AGAdam Grant
Got it. I think it may be time to go to a lightning round.
- AAAdam Aleksic
All right. Let's go.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. What is the word or phrase that you think we should abandon altogether, forever?
- AAAdam Aleksic
I don't, I don't think we should. I ... Like, they all serve a purpose. Is it stupid to say that? [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
No. No. It's not stupid.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Sorry if it's a boring response. I don't like the word content. How about that? Uh, I think content on social media is something that is contained to a platform. Content is just something that fills up space, definitionally, like the contents of a box or drawer. So are, are videos just something that fill up space, or are they something that have the ability to move people and influence society, which I think they do. So I don't like the word content. I try, I try to avoid it.
- AGAdam Grant
Do you have a favorite either slang word or bit of Algospeak?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Uh, I really like the, uh, the Italian brainrot trend, which was in, in March, uh, which was just these absurd AI-generated animal hybrids. Uh, and this is sort of, like, in that camp of nonsensical interjections. So you can just say tralalero tralala or toontoon toontoon to zahoor. And these are, like, uh, parts of Italian brainrot canon. Uh, yeah, those are really fun to me. I like the little animals.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. I had not come across that at all. Uh, what is the worst advice that you hear given about language use?
- AAAdam Aleksic
Well, kind of what you were trying to trap me into saying, which is that you, we should or should not be saying certain things. Um, there, there is a deep power to the words, as we were discussing, uh, and we should be using them with intentionality, but that doesn't mean we, we shouldn't be saying the words. We should use them in the context that we mean to and recover human intentionality. Uh, I think there's too often, uh, this, this attitude of, uh, language also as, as transmission, uh, of data, rather than this, like, deep thing that has the ability to change the universe, which is what it is.
- AGAdam Grant
What is something you've changed your mind about with respect to words or language?
- AAAdam Aleksic
In terms of communication, another thing that's changed my perspective on language is I read this book, um, Communication as Culture by James Carey. And, uh, he pulls communication back to the original root, which is the same root as community, something that is meant to build a bond between people. And I think we tend, over time, to abstract language, as that thing I was talking about, data transmission. How many information bits per second am I transmitting? That's how TikTok treats content. Uh, but, uh, with meaning and intentionality, that is, uh, communication, building community.
- 27:28 – 29:08
Defining “meme” together: recognizability, nested layers, and hierarchy
- AGAdam Grant
I love that. What's a question you have for me as a psychologist?
- AAAdam Aleksic
What do you think a meme is?
- AGAdam Grant
I think of a meme as a recognizable symbol of culture that communicates meaning without requiring words.
- AAAdam Aleksic
But it can have words.
- AGAdam Grant
It can have words, but it doesn't need them.
- AAAdam Aleksic
So like a meme ... Okay. Interesting. Uh, I, I guess I'm, I'm wo- I'm wondering what recognizable is. I'm won- Like, there's so ... Like, and nobody really knows what a meme is, so I'm not trying to nitpick with your definition particularly.
- AGAdam Grant
No.
- AAAdam Aleksic
I'm, I'm asking because I'm struggling with what a meme is.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Something with cultural significance, for sure.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. I think cultural significance is a good way to des- describe it. Uh, the, the reason I like recognizable, as I, as I think this through a little bit more, is I think you can have memes that are only understandable to a small group of people, right? Like, some families have their own memes. Some sports teams and work teams have their own memes.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
Classrooms develop them, right? Um, often making fun of a professor who says certain words. That turns into a meme. Uh, anybody who's ever-
- AAAdam Aleksic
This isn't coming from a personal place, is it?
- AGAdam Grant
No, no. Anybody who's ever played buzzword bingo with me will know exactly what I'm talking about here. But, um, but also I think, you know, you could, you could scale the recognizability and say Distracted Boyfriend is recognized by millions and millions of people.
- AAAdam Aleksic
So there's multiple layers or scrims of what a meme is as it exists. So with Distracted Boyfriend, there is the image. There are the words on the image, which are their own meme. There is the image as it appears on the platform. Even the entire medium is a meme. Uh, so, uh, you can go, like, multiple layers down of, of what content is or what the medium is, um, which is useful to remember, that memes can exist in other memes. And the memes that are higher up hierarchically will stick around longer.
- 29:08 – 34:23
Why origins matter: Skibidi Toilet, “slop,” and media literacy in an AI future
- AGAdam Grant
So what, what, what is, what's the impact of all of this? So I think we've ... You, you've made a very compelling case, both in Algospeak and in this conversation, that, like [laughs] our, our language creates our reality and it also shapes other people's reality. I think, like [laughs] we, we can, we can understand that and then say, "Okay, but why do I need to know the origins of the words that I'm using? Like, why do I need to know where brainrot comes from? Why do I need to know where skibidi comes from?" Actually, skibidi is a great example. Like, [laughs] my, my son explained to me that skibidi came from Skibidi Toilet. I watched a few Skibidi Toilet episodes.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I want that time back. [laughs] Like, that, that added no value to my life.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Well, I think it's actually incredibly important to look at Skibidi Toilet, which is this YouTube short series about a race of fictional, uh, camera-headed androids battling toilets. And what is this story telling us, right? If you're a Gen Alpha child looking at this, it is diegetically narrated through the lens of a camera. They often look at iPads and direct other cameras in the show. So you now you're, you are looking at this on your iPad as an iPad kid, looking through the head of a camera, looking at another camera, uh, and it's this commentary about surveillance. It's about the, this digital gaze and how we interact with, uh, this hyper-mediated reality. And on the other side of this technological progress is the basest thing you're taught is evil in the world. It, the toilet is the first bad thing you're encountering. It is this story about, uh, the panopticon versus this just human kind of ugly force. I, I see it as actually a, a dialectic commentary on our, on our culture. So yeah, you look at the meme, you dissect where it comes from, and you understand more about who we are as a society, how ideas are affecting us. Um, I think if we educate ourselves and have deep media literacy about the things we are looking at, we are better able to judge reality. And I think that is so, so important. Uh, it's going to be even more important moving forward as we are increasingly in this boundary of not knowing what is real. There is very convincing AI deepfakes on the internet now. They're gonna be widespread because of apps like Sora and, and future apps where without watermarks. We don't even know the... Algorithms don't recommend us the actual picture of reality. They recommend us what generates engagement. Because even if you're not online, the chocolate that's in your store nearby, or the song that's playing on the radio in the bar that you're in with your friend, that comes from TikTok, or the clothing people are wearing around you, that comes from TikTok. Because this is where it's higher up in this memetic node, percolating outwards into the mainstream, affecting all of our lives regardless of whether you're on or offline. So I think we should take time to understand how we're being affected by the internet, and that requires this deep knowledge of ideas and why they're popular.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Okay. I did not... This was not on my bingo card for today, that I was going to-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... rethink my aversion to Skibidi Toilet and discover that there is actually a lot to understand about culture-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... through watching what I thought was garbage animated short TV. Now-
- AAAdam Aleksic
There is something bad to slop, right? Where it's, it's not, it's in that should or could, uh, camp. Um, how did you define it?
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, want, should.
- AAAdam Aleksic
Where it's-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah
- AAAdam Aleksic
... want, should. Right. So there's the should where w- it, like, we look at slop, it kind of is satisfying. People actually prefer AI-generated poetry when they don't know it's AI-generated. People tend to like slop, you know? Um, but we know we consciously want the complicated poetry, but it's, it's more difficult for us to consume it. Uh, and so s- slop feeds into that reptile brain-based desire, and, and, uh, the other stuff feeds into this conscious desire. Uh, it is useful to look at slop and consider, you know, how this is being targeted, how, like... But do it with, with rational understanding of what's going on.
- AGAdam Grant
So-
- AAAdam Aleksic
Um
- AGAdam Grant
... I think one, one thing I just learned is that [laughs] I clearly did not watch enough Skibidi Toilet to understand the larger metaphor. But I heard some of the language used and told our son, who at the time was 10, "This is not a great choice of, of [laughs] viewing material." And I obviously need to take a second look, so-
- AAAdam Aleksic
No, I mean-
- AGAdam Grant
I'm gonna go back-
- AAAdam Aleksic
... it is slop
- AGAdam Grant
... and ask him to re-watch it-
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... and tell me-
- AAAdam Aleksic
No, no
- AGAdam Grant
... what the-
- AAAdam Aleksic
That's not necessary
- AGAdam Grant
... what the meaning of it is.
- AAAdam Aleksic
I'm not [laughs] , I'm not actively saying like, "Oh, you need to study Skibidi Toilet," but it's just good to be aware of what's going on.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, Adam, I think, uh, I think it's safe to say that you ate this interview.
- AAAdam Aleksic
[laughs] It's... You just killed it. You killed the word.
Episode duration: 34:24
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Transcript of episode d2btxT3l-lg
