Let’s talk about Italian brainrot: Why Gen Alpha loves gibberish

Despite the name, these memes aren’t exactly Italian. More importantly, they aren’t necessarily made to be understood—though that’s what we are attempting today.

Italian brainrot continues humanity’s obsession with the absurd with AI-generated mash-up characters, such as Tralalero Tralala (a Nike-wearing three-legged shark) or Ballerina Cappuccina (a ballerina with a cappuccino drink for its head). These characters are often accompanied by viral audio clips, in pseudo-Italian, that seemingly give context to their origins and meanings. As with any meme, though it may be inherently nonsensical, it’s made meaningful when its consumers, in this case, Gen Alpha, agree on a shared context.

An internet for the absurd

For the uninitiated, brain rot refers to “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” from overconsumption of online content, which is considered “trivial or unchallenging”. Brain rot may also refer to such content that leads to this deterioration.

The term may be new—it was Oxford Word of the Year for 2024—but the phenomenon isn’t. Think back to the early 2000s, when pages of useless websites flooded the internet. There was a website dedicated to cats bouncing; ‘that’s the finger(dot)com’ toggled between a pointer and an inappropriate gesture; or a French website that featured three talking heads that repeat the phrase, “Ouais mais bon” (loosely translates to “yeah, but good”). These webpages continue to exist in the corners of the internet even today, regularly featuring on listicles of ‘websites to kill boredom’. In 2012, the “uselessweb(dot)com” became a repository of sorts for most of these ‘brain rot’ websites.

The proliferation of such content in the pre-algorithm age suggests two things:

Ever since the internet has existed, users have created content to escape the monotony of everyday life. Between news alerts and work emails, content that offers no-effort engagement has an undeniable allure.

And second, it’s not just Gen Z and Gen Alpha that love meta humour. Most of us love to be “in” on the joke. Having access to an obscure part of the internet gives a sense of belonging. In that sense, understanding meme references is a community-building exercise.

This rejection of meaning has evolved in the AI age into Italian brainrot, and Gen Alpha has agreed on a shared context for each of these characters. If you were to dig deep, there are origin stories to most characters. For instance, Tralalero Tralala, which started this entire trend, refers to an apparently nonsensical pseudo-Italian phrase that appeared in a Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson meme. Tung Tung Tung Sahur, a bat-wielding animated wooden log, derives its name from the tradition of beating drums before the pre-dawn meal during the month of Ramadan. Then there’s Brr Brr Patapim, a tree-monkey hybrid that derives its origin from a meme lore.

Kids have always loved nonsense

Now, why did these memes become so viral? I posit that these memes are no different from characters that have long appeared in children’s literature. Case in point: Lewis Carroll’s books are replete with both semantic and logical absurdity. There’s a character named Humpty Dumpty, who is a giant anthropomorphic egg, or Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who mirror each other.

Or take, for instance, the English rhyme “a ring, a ring o’roses”, which in the Indian context turns into “ringa ringa roses”, with a nonsensical “haisha, huisha” at the end. Kids — which is exactly what Gen Alpha are, born between 2010 and 2024—in their learning stages, are quick to absorb catchy, rhyming, musical phrases from the content they consume.

The most popular usage of these characters appears in ranking battles, where users rank the Italian brainrot characters on their supposed power. This, in turn, has influenced offline culture, with brain rot figurines, toys and cards appearing in markets.

The phenomenon is not dissimilar from Pokémon cards, whose names can also have obscure etymologies that make sense only in that universe. A ‘Pikachu’ is an electric mouse, a ‘Bulbasaur’ is a plant-shaped lizard.

The characters also feature in plot-driven storytelling on YouTube, creating a universe of Italian brain rot, where the memes interact with each other, creating different origin stories and development arcs. A YouTube report on Culture and Trends stated that over 4,50,000 uploads in 2025 featured these characters. There’s an entire “Italian brainrot wiki” that details every character and their story.

So, while Gen Alpha has spawned an entire culture for itself, adults are having a hard time catching up. The characters, their absurdity, are not inherently problematic. As we discussed above, this has always been the case. Some educators have warned that this could influence language and vocabulary. However, the counter-argument goes that silly and nonsensical words can, in fact, help children learn language by focusing on decoding sounds rather than relying on learned vocabulary. Writers like Carroll, Dr. Seuss (made up words like “wocket”, “glupitty-glup” and “schloppity-schlopp”) and Roald Dahl (“Trogglehumper”, “scrumdiddlyumptious”, “gobblefunk” etc) are taught to children for this very reason.

However, what is concerning is the darker associations many have made with these brain-rot characters. Some have suggested that phrases like Tralalero Tralala signal profanity, characters like Bombardiro Crocodilo make light of war crimes, and others are believed to be rooted in racism or misogyny. There is little study as to whether kids make these associations, given that in popular culture, these characters are stripped of their original meanings and repurposed, remixed to suit the content’s narrative.

As Fabian Mosele, creator of several Italian brain-rot videos, writes, “Let’s not overthink this… not having a coherent storyline and being extremely dumb has been the red line in dank memes”.

With AI “democratising” creativity, Mosele contends, “The fun of creating a whole fictional world with a community of shitposters instead of big media conglomerates, is what made the joke so funny in the first place.”