Is ‘Italian brainrot’ the stupidest internet trend yet?
From Minecraft movie mischief to crazy clowns, the internet has seen no shortage of ridiculous trends - but this one may take the cake.
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Bombardiro Crocodilo, bum bum bini Guisni and of course who could forget Tralellero Trallala. No you’re not losing it, these are just some of the central names gaining popularity as part of the latest internet craze ‘Italian brainrot’.
For those unfamiliar the trend combines crude AI mashups with (very) loose Italian to make ridiculous scenario videos.
Among the most popular examples include a crocodile/bomber plane hybrid named ‘Bombardiro Crocodilo’, a Great White shark with four added legs wearing Nike shoes called ‘Tralellero Trallala’ and a cybertronic war goose that goes by ‘bum bum bini Guisni’.
Italian Australian Joe Carrozzo said he found the trend mean and unfunny.
“We don’t talk like that! I’m not a damn bambini guisni or whatever the f**k it is, I’M NOT A BAMBINI,” he said.
“On a serious note people are having a cheap laugh at the expense of the Italian people, it’s disappointing to see - they include just enough real Italian in these videos to make it seem genuine but it’s a big misrepresentation of my people.”
Social media linguist and etymologist Adam Aleksic or ‘etymologynerd’ told his 2 million followers across Tiktok and Instagram that, in order to understand the trend, it can’t be taken on face ‘brainrot’ value.
“If you want to understand the Italian brainrot memes that are trending right now, I think you have to read it through a postmodernist lens where you consider how we construct truth in the context of AI and the algorithm,” he said.
Mr Aleksic said the trend “inherently calls to attention… the confusion between what is real and what stands in for the real”.
“When we mix something authentic like the head of a camel with something clearly impossible like the body of a fridge, the resulting dissonance highlights the coexistence of what we can trust online with what we can’t.
“At the same time the entire image is AI-generated, so it’s all fake, but it’s often mixed in with real-world events. For example the trending audio for Bombardiro Crocodilo is about the actual situation in Gaza.”
He added that Italian brainrot is challenging our assumptions about what is true and what is acceptable discourse by classifying “the impossible along with the real, creating an absurd disharmony which we then use to generate humour”.
“These memes are our way of fighting back, of saying we don’t accept your classifications,” Mr Aleksic said.
Philosophical redefinings aside, UNSW School of Psychology research director Dr Susanne Schweizer emphasised the research around brainrot is still in its early days, but warned those more at risk of addictive behaviours may be vulnerable to its more negative mental effects.
“Not everybody who goes on the internet and scrolls for a couple of hours will get hooked on the content. But for those people who have that vulnerability… it can become more problematic and become associated with emotional distress,” she said.
“When our mind’s hooked on something, on a specific content or a specific thought and it becomes really difficult to disengage from that, that’s what we call repetitive negative thinking. And that’s actually a hallmark risk factor for most emotional disorders.
“It can be that in those instances, something like scrolling can make those symptoms appear more quickly or to a kind extent they may otherwise not have appeared.”
Dr Schweizer also pointed to an experimental study by Sophie Lee from the Black Dog Institute which suggested ‘doomscrolling’ social media may have potential as a mood regulator.
“[Dr Lee] showed that across participants, [doomscrolling] increased their mood and it led to more positive mood, but it had no effect on the onset of a neutral mood state. So when they were in a neutral mood state, it didn’t decrease their mood, but it did enhance positive mood states,” Dr Schweizer said.
“So there is an argument, many of us actually use it for motion regulation purposes. When you’re stressed or when you’re exhausted or when you’re upset and you just want to distract yourself, then it seems to be at least from that study that in some, [doomscrolling] will have emotion repairing effects that actually leads to better mood.”
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Originally published as Is ‘Italian brainrot’ the stupidest internet trend yet?
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