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Rated and Slated: Things We Hate and Love Online This Week

Warning: this column can deactivate key cognitive brain regions.

By Adam Christopher Smith

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Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.

So apparently there’s this new scientific study shows that online videos can mess with your brain, which is obviously nonsense:

brain-rot videos literally suppress activity in the parts of your brain responsible for cognitive control, the systems that help you resist impulsesfascinatingif used properly, short-form video seems almost perfectly designed as a cyberweapon: capture attention, weaken… https://t.co/v5yX7fBmRn pic.twitter.com/doYiEmFt1u— vittorio (@IterIntellectus) August 18, 2026

brain-rot videos literally suppress activity in the parts of your brain responsible for cognitive control, the systems that help you resist impulsesfascinatingif used properly, short-form video seems almost perfectly designed as a cyberweapon: capture attention, weaken… https://t.co/v5yX7fBmRn pic.twitter.com/doYiEmFt1u

I mean, who could possibly believe the suggestion that brainrot videos “literally suppress activity in the parts of your brain responsible for cognitive control, the systems that help you resist impulses?”

It’s not like I recently went to a music festival and, instead of enjoying Turnstile and Lorde, just held my mobile phone up in front of my face and watched videos of Tommy Lee playing bongos for a chimpanzee.

No, I also spent a significant amount of time with my headphones in, listening to ambient reimaginings of Limp Bizkit tracks.

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But none of this influenced my behavior negatively. It’s just a coincidence that I gorged myself on oysters and Chardonnay until I shit my pants and had to be hosed down while screaming about how “my body is a machine for turning natural wine into a natural disaster.”

Further research is clearly needed. Don’t worry nerds, I got you.

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