Brain Rot Wins 2024

And Martha Stewart is the answer to all our problems

Oxford University Press just released their word of 2024, which is actually a Gen Alpha phrase!

Oxford defines brain rot as, "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” Aka too much social media make you dum-dum.

If you happen to have a conversation with some Gen Alpha’s that phrase is likely to come up just after they have hit pose 28 and called you a skibbity Ohio toilet.

Dictionary.com has also selected their word of 2024 —Demure. Okay, Jools Lebron and a TikTok taking 2024 by storm. It really makes me wanna cry?

But, I suppose I’ve been more than a little emotional lately. Probably the holidays, or losing my job after almost a decade, or my ovaries shriveling up and dying. I have been a little afloat and looking for new footing. And that’s when I found ‘Martha.’

I became a Martha Stewart Living magazine subscriber in middle school. I was entranced. I decorated mixtape covers and school notebooks with illustrations on how to dead-head roses and diagrams on how to fold a fitted sheet.

I will never be a Martha Stewart. I still do not know how to do either of those things. My home is in constant need of a wipe down, and my fitted-sheet folding method could be submitted to a study on mental illness. Truthfully, so could my top sheet folding skills. And I’m okay with that.

But my love of Martha was never about wanting to be Martha. It was how she took the mundane things and made them important, meaningful and aspirational. The mundane is meaningful! And as I was watching her documentary, I’m so grateful for that reminder.

So here are some of the things I took away from the Martha Stewart doc on Netflix ‘Martha’ that are going to help me sail through. Maybe you can use these reminders too.