![The Wayland Police Department have issued a warning on the rise of scammers during the holiday season. “Hang up [the phone]. if you get a text and you do not know who it's from, just delete it. Don't click on any links, nothing,” Wayland police chief Edward Burman said. “Every single one of them is a scam.”](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_0954_720-e1734676255647.jpg)
![WHS’s Connect Program ran its annual holiday gift drive to fulfill the wishlist of children enrolled in the Dorchester based non-profit daycare organization, the Yawkey Center. This drive brought the town together and impacted both the students in Connect, as well as the greater Wayland community. “You could see how helpful the town was and how our community came together and wanted to help out a community that wasn't our own [and] kids who were less fortunate than we were,” senior and Connect Program member Jordynn Lee said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/screenshot_2024-12-20_at_12.21.24___pm_720-e1734734228474.png)
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the most widely accepted English dictionary in the world, has chosen its word of the year: “brain rot,” defined as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
The slang word topped other contenders such as “demure,” “lore” and “romantasy.” In the end, “brain rot” culminated over 37,000 votes, surfacing as the 2024 word of the year.
“I don’t think ‘brain rot’ deserved to win,” sophomore Lexi Greeley said. “I feel like it’s a bit of an immature word, and it doesn’t deserve to be word of the year.”
Other members of Wayland High School argue differently.
“I don’t know enough about the OED’s purpose in choosing the word of the year, other than to bring attention to the importance of that idea that the word represents,” English teacher Charlie Keene said. “This is something that people are interested in right now, and it offers a new level of commentary.”
The word is generally used on social media platforms, especially TikTok, to describe the cause and effect of online content. It refers to low quality or high volume content watched by consumers just for the sake of having something to watch. In addition, “brain rot” is the effect this content has on people and the condition induced upon users as a result.
“I think that [brain rot] is more about volume than quality,” Keene said. “It’s more about being inundated with information, which makes it difficult to figure out what information is important to you and what information to think critically about.”
The word has spread from social media platforms and wriggled its way into peoples’ daily lives. Furthermore, “brain rot” was chosen to be seen as a commentary on the habits of younger generations.
“I think the OED does a good job of focusing on not just words, but the ideas they represent that are relevant for the time in which they’re chosen,” Keene said.
President of Oxford Languages Casper Grathwohl said in a statement that the selection of the word “demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of social media that they’ve inherited.”
Although the use of “brain rot” peaked in September of 2024, the first ever recorded use was in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden. While offering commentary on the modern tendency to inappropriately simplify problems with multiple possible solutions, Thoreau wrote: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
For students, “brain rot” is less of a virus and more of a fad.
“It’s words that Gen Alphas created to be funny, and then it became a trend,” Greeley said. “Words like ‘alpha,’ ‘sigma’ and others that I hear in the hallways.”
