Italian Brainrot: the AI memes only youngsters understand

In a Japanese store offering pocket-money novelties, a display features toys, stickers, and keyrings inspired by a worldwide team of AI-created characters that nearly every child recognizes — and hardly any adults.

A shark on foot wearing large sneakers, an orange with strong arms, and a spinning “Ballerina Cappuccina” with a head shaped like a mug are part of the bizarre figures in the online trend known as Italian Brainrot

“At first it’s not funny at all, but it kind of grows on you,” 16-year-old Yoshi Yamanaka-Nebesney from New York told.

“You might use it to annoy someone and find that funny.”

The name nods to the stupefying effect of scrolling through mindless social media posts, especially over-the-top images created with artificial intelligence tools.

Shouty, crude and often nonsensical Italian voiceovers feature in many of the clips made by people in various countries that began to spread this year on platforms such as TikTok, embraced by young Gen Z and Gen Alpha members.

The dozen-plus cartoonish AI creatures have fast become memes, inspiring a stream of new content such as “Brainrot Rap”, viewed 116 million times on YouTube.

A YouTube Short titled “Learn to Draw 5 Crazy Italian Brainrot Animals” — including a cactus-elephant crossover named “Lirili Larila” — has also been watched 320 million times.

“There’s a whole bunch of phrases that all these characters have,” said Yamanaka-Nebesney, in Tokyo with his mother Chinami, who had no idea what he was talking about.

School-age Italian Brainrot fans can be found from Kenya to Spain and South Korea, while some of the most popular videos reference Indonesia’s language and culture instead.

“I went on trips with my boys to Mexico” and people would “crack jokes about it” there too, Yamanaka-Nebesney said.

Internet trends move fast, and Italian Brainrot “hit its peak maybe two months ago or a month ago”, said Idil Galip, a University of Amsterdam lecturer in new media and digital culture.

Nurina, a 41-year-old Indonesian NGO worker, said her seven-year-old loves the mashed-up brainrot world.

“Sometimes when I pick him up from school, or when I’m working from home, he shouts, ‘Mommy! Bombardino Crocodilo!'” — a bomber plane character with a crocodile head. “I know it’s fun to watch,” said Nurina, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

“I just need to make him understand that this is not real.”

Some videos have been criticised for containing offensive messages that go over young viewers’ heads, such as rambling references in Italian to “Bombardino Crocodilo” bombing children in Gaza.

“The problem is that these characters are put into adult content” and “many parents are not tech-savvy” enough to spot the dangers, warned Oriza Sativa, a Jakarta-based clinical psychologist. The best-known Indonesian brainrot character “Tung Tung Tung Sahur” resembles a long drum called a kentongan, which is used to wake people up for a pre-dawn meal, or sahur, during Ramadan.