“You are better than a brainrot affinity.” – Millie Cain raises a thoughtful conversation on how we interact with music and whether social media has led us to devalue art and its content.

Whether sincerity is owed to music is not a debate I will be settling today – nor a question I believe I can answer. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t rotate based on reciprocity, meaning that what might be owed has not been given. How worthy is your work if it is not taken seriously? If it is taken with a laugh and a poke and thrown back in your face? 

The death of earnestness is one I mourn. A severe lack of counterculture to fuel an approach synonymous with post-postmodernism – we are breaking away from irony and cynicism and into a world of overflowing optimism & radical acceptance. 

While we can take into account those who do make art for fun, entertainment and amusement, this is especially popular in short form media content & has began to create an overwhelming build up of an audience expecting such. This is not a genre though, and for this audience they are beginning to expect that all they consume can be taken and viewed with a lens of ridicule that is undeserved. 

Streaming platforms also steal some integrity in this argument. Many artists discuss the importance of their audiences listening to their albums in order, in the arrangement they have painstakingly poured over for hours. To then be taken, spliced into separation and viewed as singular pieces. This brings forth the ‘clickbait’ or eye-catching content pulse that has begun to drive marketing pursuits generally. 

Finding and clinging to fixed ideas such as cannibalism as a metaphor for love was one such popular idea; must we be lured in by the grotesque and hideous to somehow understand? Buying into horror stories of wars being fought far away from our homes for content must be disciplined and those who pursue it, educated. 

Brain rot culture on tiktok is suffocating newsfeeds and art releases. We are currently in an ‘irony epidemic’, a term coined by Ethel Cain in a recent rant about such matters. A potentially post-post-ironic tone is being set and completely overshadowing critical thinking. Since when was taking genuine care and appreciation for art or music or film ‘cringe’? 

To explicitly state: having fun and making jokes in funny scenarios is always lighthearted and welcomed. With personal trauma, humour is a hugely successful tool for coping and comfort. Wrap yourself in that & in the warmth of your privacy. However, truly serious matters are being tainted by brainrot culture. Repeated comments / phrases that may have singularly been hilarious in one context, but are now being wielded as a crutch by people to avoid actually meaningful engagement with the media that is thrust before them. 

Our society on the whole have typically consumed media for escapism and we are so fortunate to have so many spaces to do so. To sit and listen to an album in its entirety with no distractions can be a fun, evocative, and lighthearted experience but it can also be reflective and appreciated as a dark piece of media. 

Fans are finding a severe lack of pensive discussion about art they appreciate. Yes, we understand your favourite artist ‘ate’ – we’ve seen it written a thousand times somehow. How did it make you feel? How did this carefully curated and meticulously crafted experience genuinely affect you? 

By having no sense of nuance and just taking sensitive and delicate topics at face value, we are losing personal opinions, swayed by senseless online reviewers who project their own media tractive dreams onto albums.

We can wade through desolate wasteland of content to try and find debates and discussions and shared ideas. Appreciation and awe feel rare and special in the waves of mindless, addled typing.

As previously mentioned, Ethel Cain is an artist of harrowing music; her album’s ‘Ptolemaea’ & ‘Hard Times’ are difficult to listen to, to feel and they push real introspection forwards. But after all, art and music can and should make you feel uncomfortable, and that is okay. To have such a diverse range of music available to us at all times is a gift, not something to avoid. Are we so detached from humanity that we cannot see and feel what is being placed in front of us? As adults, and in the older half of Gen Z, we do not need to censor ourselves from sensitivity. You are better than a brainrot affinity. 

Humanising artists is a change that must come soon. God forbid you actually might be annoying when you scream over people and shout them down. When you dissect their work into whatever is the most eye catching event. Instead of delving into their process and psyche, we delve into silly edits and stolen ideas. Artists do not owe you content. 

We will never be sated – despite the abundance before us. Listen deeply and truly, even to share that experience with those you love and sit and well in things that make you feel. And please, I beg you, create an opinion, hold it, mould it to your desire, but hold what is yours and don’t let it be tainted by consumerism. 

Words by Millie Cain