BENGALURU: The Oxford Dictionary has finalised its word of the year, and it is brainrot. I have never given much importance to these words of the year. Every few years, the genteel men at Oxford decide to add words like ‘medhu vada’ or ‘masala dosa’ into their dictionary, and we celebrate it like an achievement. Of course, nobody points out that medhu vadas and masala dosas were being prepared at a time when the English language didn’t even exist in its current form.
But this year’s word struck a chord. Brainrot (while it is still being underlined on my computer) is something I have been dealing with for a few years now. When the engineers at Meta and TikTok were creating algorithms, they probably had me in mind. The perfect candidate - no day job, works only in the nights, zonked out circadian rhythms, and a messed up sleep cycle.
Every night, I promise myself not to take my phone to bed. Then I remember that my phone contains the alarm. Like a toxic ex, my phone makes its way back to my bed despite repeated warnings. For the next few hours, I am looking at dogs chasing squirrels, cats dropping vases, and funny scenes from a movie I watched in 2004!
When I was younger, I used to judge grown-ups. They carried their newspapers to the washroom. I used to laugh at them. Elders in my family used to spend their free time writing ‘Om Sai Ram’ in a book countless times. ‘Why can’t they read comics? Or collect stickers? Or watch the highlights of the recent India vs Zimbabwe match?’, I used to wonder! Today, I can’t go to the washroom without my phone. I go to sleep looking at reels and wake up looking at them. At this point, me and reels are soulmates - we are constantly there for each other – through thick and thin.
It is not for lack of trying though. I have followed meditation pages that upload 60 second reels to calm and refresh my mind – so I can watch more reels with lesser guilt. I have followed pages titled ‘Close Reels Daily’ that post one reel and ask you to get off reels. I suspect engineers at Meta are actively hunting down the admins of such pages! I have set daily limits for different apps – that can be turned off in a second, thanks to the intuitive UIs of most modern phones. I might be a human in every definition of the term. But for an alien from Neptune, I am a homo sapien lab rat, being boosted with tiny dopamine shots throughout the day.
I sometimes wish to go back to the age without frequent dopamine shots. Back when televisions would wish us good night and shut down for the day. When all you could do was go to sleep and hope for an exciting dream. In fact, my dreams were like reels – 15 seconds of excitement, followed by a change of scenario. I was so obsessed with dreams that I even maintained a ‘Dreams Diary’ to note down interesting dreams that came to me. Most of them featured pretty classmates of mine, along with a Hero Honda CBZ!
I hope the word for next year is ‘dumb phones’. I wish we could go back to those annoying phones with polyphonic ringtones that required you to wait for 10 minutes before posting a comment. That let you plug into FM radio without a monthly subscription, and we could listen to RJs conducting fake prank calls on their colleagues standing in the next room!
(The writer’s views are personal)