Something else to worry about?

As 2024 comes to a close—already a humdinger of an annus horribilis, what with wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East plus Trump getting elected—lexicographers at the Oxford Dictionary have designated “brain rot” as the Word of the Year. They defined it as “a supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” Something like binging on marshmallows instead of real food. Artificial intelligence-generated online garbage also has picked up its own name—slop—which is often circulated by spammers to make a buck. Got to admire the creativity of the English language.

An associated problem is “fractured attention,” caused by the daily bombardment of slop or spam, which some scholars have identified as a “primary trouble of our times.” A six-week workshop called “How to Build an Attention Sanctuary,” offered at the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn, promises participants to “rediscover the joy of undivided attention”—presumably to read a book or whip up coq of vin for dinner—for a fee of $560.

All this sounded like so much argle-bargle until I began to think about my own experience. After the election and like many of my friends, I swore off reading news. It was too upsetting to read multiple postmortems of the disastrous performance of the Democratic Party or speculations about all the horrors that supposedly await the country under Trump. So I fumigated my email inbox against political updates generated by newspapers or magazines under the guise of “breaking news” and also a number of other ridiculous sites dealing with architecture, self-improvement, kitchen “hacks” and other internet debris I had accumulated along the way. Wish I could program an “unsubscribe” key on my computer.

But as I did that, I found myself spending considerably more time, maybe up to a couple of hours a day, on Facebook, to fill the newly available time. It all started with postings about the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral, an astonishing five-year feat by legions of crafts people. I learned about gargoyles, stained glass, organ pipes, Gothic construction and medieval carpentry to name a few, if only in one- to three-minute video clips, which are hardly an immersive learning experience.

Stew and I have long had an interest in Gothic cathedrals, which to us represent a pinnacle of engineering, and secular and religious art and serve as silent witnesses of the history of many European countries. Notre-Dame is the grandmom of them all. We were in Paris during the celebrations of the 850th anniversary of its construction, and then again early this year when we arrived shortly after a new golden rooster had replaced the one at the tip of the spire that had burned and collapsed in 2019.

Problem is that Facebook’s algorithmic tentacles lured me to dozens of other Facebook pages only remotely related to Notre-Dame: Real estate and shopping in Paris; the best “undiscovered” restaurants; out-of-the-way art museums; chateaux outside the city; bicycle tours of other parts of the country and even several online courses to supplement my vestigial high-school French. And in moments of curiosity or naughtiness, I began “following” pages devoted to dachshund owners, collectors of succulent plants, exercises for seniors and photo pages of comely young men wearing only tiny Speedos and big smiles. Then there were “friend requests” from people most of whom I didn’t know but claimed to be friends-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, in ever-thinner sausage links of Facebook “friendships.” Some people I know claim to have hundreds of such “friends” who in reality are not even anonymous faces in a subway.

Fortunately, I escaped the online scourge of Instagram which is supposed to be an even more addictive time-waster than Facebook. I did try to sign up but was rejected for “posting inappropriate content,” before I even had a chance to post anything at all. A definition of “internet influencers” defines them as people with more than a million Instagram followers. I won’t qualify.

Newspaper and magazine articles, and I suspect online postings, warn parents about brain rot in children who spend too much time online, but I suspect it’s a nearly universal among adults too. Both our gardener Félix and housekeeper Rocío always keep their cell phones within reach and I often spot them checking emails or something. Félix’s son Edgar, 13, came with him on Friday, armed with his own cell phone. When waiting on line for some service, I bet half the customers will be staring at or scrolling their cell phones. Never ones to miss a potential profit opportunity, some software developers have come up with apps to combat “excessive” online use, however much that may be. There’s an irony there somewhere.

The internet undoubtedly is a great research tool. The Oxford Dictionary folks could add “Lemme Google that!” to their list of ubiquitous phrases. But random meandering online is a too-common time waster, and I don’t claim being immune to its attraction. Though I have sharply limited my Facebook outings I can’t claim I’m completely “cured”, just like I haven’t forsworn marshmallows. In fact, I might grab a bag of them—a really small bag, I promise—next time I go to the grocery store.