Explaining The Italian Brain Rot AI Trend
Meet Ballerina Cappuccina The Viral AI Star
In the first half of 2025, one AI-generated cartoon ballerina with a cappuccino teacup for a head managed to rack up over 55 million views and 4 million likes on TikTok. Her audience? Mostly tweens glued to their phones.
Her name is Ballerina Cappuccina. She presents a smiling, girlish face, but her songs are performed in a deep, computer-generated male voice singing a mix of Italian and pure gibberish. She is one of the most famous characters from the internet phenomenon known as “Italian Brain Rot,” a series of memes featuring surreal AI-generated animal-object hybrids with absurdist, pseudo-Italian narration that exploded in popularity this year.
The trend has largely baffled parents, which only adds to the delight of young people who now have a new cultural signifier that is almost illegible to older generations. However, experts and fans agree that the trend is worth paying attention to for what it says about the youngest generation of tweens.
A Universe of Nonsense
The very first Italian brain-rot character was Tralalero Tralala, a shark sporting blue Nike sneakers on his fins, whose videos were scored with a crude, curse-laden Italian nursery rhyme. From there, a whole universe of characters emerged, including Bombardiro Crocodilo, a crocodile-headed military airplane; Lirilì Larilà, an elephant with a cactus body and slippers; and Armadillo Crocodillo, an armadillo tucked inside a coconut.
Content creators have built entire storylines around these characters with intentionally ridiculous songs. The videos have become so popular that they’ve launched catchphrases into the mainstream culture of Generation Alpha, which includes anyone born between 2010 and 2025.
Fabian Mosele, a 26-year-old animator who works with AI, calls themselves an “Italian brain rot connoisseur.” After they created their first piece of content in this style, their video of the characters at an underground rave garnered about a million views overnight and has since surpassed 70 million. Even as the initial hysteria has cooled, Mosele says the characters have become a permanent part of pop culture. “It feels so ephemeral,” Mosele said, “but it also feels so real.”
The trend's influence has spread to the free online platform Roblox, where one of the most popular games this summer was “Steal a Brainrot.” The goal is simple: steal brain rot characters from other players. In the non-virtual world, fans have created physical toy replicas and even staged real-life plays.
Why It's Not Supposed to Make Sense
While some videos have gestured toward real-world issues, the overwhelming majority of the content is intentionally silly and absurd. According to Mosele, the consumers of Italian brain-rot content don't care how the images relate to the narration, and they often don't bother to translate the nonsensical Italian.
“It’s funny because it’s nonsense,” Mosele explained. “Seeing something so dark, in a way, and out of the ordinary, that breaks all the norms of what we would expect to see on TV — that’s just super appealing.”
The Rise of Brain Rot Culture
Italian brain rot is part of a larger trend. “Brain rot” was named the 2024 Oxford University Press word of the year, defined as the numbing of one's intellectual state from the “overconsumption of trivial or unchallenging material.” This can describe both the content itself—like the animated series “Skibidi Toilet” featuring toilets with human heads—and the effect it has.
While the term sounds alarming, especially amid growing concern about the harms of social media for teens, some experts believe the fear is misguided. Emilie Owens, a children’s media researcher, says it's normal for older generations to view youth trends with suspicion, pointing to past panics over comic books, television, and even novels.
Owens argues that the very things people criticize about brain rot—that it is unproductive and pointless—are precisely what make it so appealing. The trend is a direct rejection of the intense pressure on young people to constantly self-optimize. “It’s very normal for everyone to need to switch their brains off now and again,” she said.
