Italian brainrot as a GenAI meme: The evolution of slop and brainrot aesthetics in the digital cultural economy

Brainrot is a meme genre that collects the detritus of the internet, both aesthetically and intellectually speaking. It is a catch-all term for low-quality content that is produced online in an attempt to claim a stake in the attention economy. Slop is a term that has gained traction in the last year as a way to refer to the constant and overwhelming output of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Slop is engaged with lazily, sloppily and spontaneously, not created with the aim of embodying a particular aesthetic mode, but rather mimicking others. Recently, both terms have collided during the viral internet meme genre of “Italian Brainrot”. However, brainrot and slop stand in completely different aesthetic lineages and thus represent completely different modes of production and distribution. This article provides an analysis of the evolution of brainrot and slop as aesthetic phenomena by placing them in the context of meme culture and expanding on their role in the digital economy. It argues that the difference between brainrot and slop is crucial to make going forward, as we see more and more slop content being circulated by both platforms and users. Spam has become the key logic of production in this GenAI-fuelled slop economy, which threatens to flatten and homogenise cultural expression. Brainrot content in meme culture, however, is presented here as the antithesis of the slop economy due to its aesthetic creativity and ongoing acts of cultural remediation.