Brainrot

This week, The Pidgin keeps its wits about it and takes on something that's been plaguing our online spaces, and how we interact with them: brainrot. Mind-numbing and addictive, born on TikTok and leaking into real life, brainrot has come to be a quintessential part of contemporary culture. And we're turning it on its head. For our community section, Maggie Stewart talks to sociologist Niobe Way, to Stanford psychologist Judy Chu, and to some of her own male friends, to understand what the internet phenomenon of the TikTok Rizz Party reveals about modern masculinity, and boyhood. Up next, in our culture section, reporters Martiza Roberts and Emilka Puchlaski go to an Everyone Asked About You Concert, and they get the feeling that emo isn’t dead, but concert etiquette might be. And for science, we stay on our social science kick, and we have WPRB usual suspect Margo Mattes interviews a sociologist from the Toronto Metropolitan University about the experiences of older adults with social media.

This episode of the Pidgin was hosted and produced by Teo Grosu, reported, and recorded by Maggie Stewart, Margo Mattes, Emilka Puchlaski, and Martiza Roberts, and edited by Teo Grosu, Zachary Vernon, Maggie Stewart, Amelia Carneiro-Zhu, Margo Mattes, and Natalia Maidique.

(1:54) The TikTok Rizz Party

(27:10) Emo Isn't Dead, But Concert Etiquette Might Be

(44:11) Not Your Mama's Brainrot