This is Oxford University Press' Word of the Year. It's what happens when you scroll on social media too much.

"Brain rot," though first recorded in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, has emerged as a defining word of online, and especially meme, culture.

If you’ve been scrolling too long on social media, you might be suffering from “brain rot,” the word of 2024, per the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary.After public consultation, Oxford University Press announced its choice—defined as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state,