Terror of Brain Rots and Labubus

My 6 year old has a scary obsession and capitalists are minting it.

If you haven’t heard about either “Brain Rot” or “Labubu” before, don’t worry — it is just a sign that you are a mature and sensible human. If you have already heard about it that means you already know what this post is about and I appreciate your sympathy.

Recently when a popular Indian podcaster asked a 10-year old influencer, what kind of content her generation is into? Her prompt answer was “Brain Rot”. No this isn’t the name of a cartoon show rather “ Brain Rot” is exactly what it means — the short and shallow content on YouTube which doesn’t leave the viewer with any productive thought, rather contributes to actual rotting of the brain. That said, Kids today are obsessed. “ Ballerina Capuccina “, “Skibidi Toilet” are some of the popular brainrot, which I had no intention to know about, but because of my 6 year old I do, which scares me.

Of course while watching her favourite craft videos, this is the additional content is getting exposed to. Not only this, this content is also something that she connects over with her friends. These are her conversation starters. I am not proud of her prowess in this area and I know need to take strict actions here. I have understood that as a parent only I may have some vested interest in my kids content consumption habits, the world around me is just trying to mint money and they see kids as just easy targets to sell any nonsensical content. Nobody really cares what kind of generation we are bringing up with this kind of content. The onus is on parents no excuses.

Trouble is Brain Rot doesn’t stop online, rather it has festered the physical world too. Take a curious case of “Labubus”. These are literally monster dolls, which few influencers started spotting as a paid collaboration and in no time became an obsession on the internet. We were travelling recently and to my horror, every park, every souvenir shop, even ice parlours were spotting these horrible Labubus. These are quite expensive monster dolls which kids are obsessed with. To make matters worse these were also fake versions of these dolls which were widespread. Throughout the trip it got really difficult to keep my kid away from them, these dolls were everywhere, when we visited a park there were people wearing Labubu costumes. You couldn’t enjoy a place without encountering them. Most of my effort went into keeping my kid away from them.

After a lot of cajoling, ignoring and fighting I ended up buying one for my kid. Now that creepy doll happily sleeps right next to me every night.