Brain rot

You may have read a couple of weeks ago that brain rot was named the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024. The definition read as follows: “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”

To me this seemed to hit home, especially given the election palaver over the past few months here in the States. In a way it brought forward my “overconsumption” of the news articles and so on that I was reading up until Election Day. Sure it’s great to subscribe to The Guardian, especially as it’s from the UK so I was getting a different viewpoint, but I got into the habit of refreshing the front page every half-hour or so in the evenings, Britain time. Which of course leached into evenings, Colorado time.

Since then, over the past month, I’ve been trying to restrict my perusal of the news, especially given the nominations for the new US government in January. Also hasn’t helped with all the other goings on in the world of course, but I’m trying.

Another brain rot alleviation is to stay away from Twitter. Sorry, X. It’s getting to be all brain rot through and through. Thanks, Musk.

Another brain rot problem in a way is scammy emails. Oh yes, I purge them without reading any more than the brief synopsis that Outlook gives me, but sometimes I can’t resist. How about this one, sent to my DevExpress email account?

“Just following up to let you know that [CompanyName] can provide skilled iSeries/AS400 and cloud migration professionals within 48 hours.”

For f*ck’s sake, why advertise AS/400 skills as needed for DevExpress? We’re entirely PC-based. I even took a look at my résumé and although I mention the IBM System/38 (the precursor to the AS/400) from my job 36 years ago, never have I worked on an AS/400. Sure, in a way, I miss programming in RPG III but not much.

Yet another brain rot? I’ve been getting scam phone calls. The “best” one – received several times now – was from a “collection agency”. Always as a voicemail, sometimes two within a 10-minute span:

“This is an urgent and time-sensitive message from SRS.  Please return our call using the number on your Caller ID to be connected to a live representative.  Please return our call as soon as possible.”

Yeah, not. No friggin’ way. Especially as the Caller ID was different every time.

One of the things I’ve started doing again to alleviate brain rot is … reading fiction. Sure I read job- and programming-related stuff all the time, but I got out of the habit of reading fiction. One book I can really recommend is Ian Rankin’s latest: Midnight and Blue. Yes, it’s a John Rebus thriller, but I’ve read them all and ever since that final bit of A Heart Full of Headstones, I’ve been waiting to grab the next one in the series. Well worth it, if you are an Ian Rankin fan.

Playing: Zoo York by Paul Oakenfold. Yep, sometimes brain rot needs some trance music…

  Loading links to posts on similar topics...