The Brainrot Industrial Complex(jshamsul.com)
jshamsul.com
The Brainrot Industrial Complex
https://jshamsul.com/essays/2026-04-12-brainrot-industrial-complex
23 comments
And of course it's an AI-generated article.
Hi! I’m the author of this essay. Here is my AI usage manifesto: https://jshamsul.com/essays/2025-12-13-my-ai-usage-manifesto
(Although I might revisit the part on coding, I do find having LLM write scaffolding / unit test code somewhat useful)
“Writing is something you express, not delegate.” Is still something I feel strongly about.
I decided to share this here because I wanted to know what the HN community thought about it.
I see that this has been flagged. I am not familiar with the rules here. I’ll refrain from sharing “self-promotional” links here.
(Although I might revisit the part on coding, I do find having LLM write scaffolding / unit test code somewhat useful)
“Writing is something you express, not delegate.” Is still something I feel strongly about.
I decided to share this here because I wanted to know what the HN community thought about it.
I see that this has been flagged. I am not familiar with the rules here. I’ll refrain from sharing “self-promotional” links here.
I’m starting to feel that comments about an article being AI-generated are super low value AND super low effort. Who cares? Soon most of the text you’ll be dealing with is gonna be AI generated. But there’s still good and bad AI generated content — start judging it by its merits.
It's a lot easier to look at the whitespace and paragraphs, realize it's a LLM, plug it into Pangram to see that it gets 100% (unsurprisingly), and click to close; than it is to read it with a sucker's good faith and realize that it never says anything concrete or meaningful or unpredictable and contains only junk like canned etymologies or cliche quotes.
“Soon most of the text you’ll be dealing with is gonna be AI generated.”
No thanks. Myself and many others will continue to seek out real thoughts written by human writers.
Your mindset and willingness to flippantly dispose of human communication is deeply concerning to me.
Your days should not be spent deciding if the machine generated data you’re constantly consuming is of a specific calibre.
No thanks. Myself and many others will continue to seek out real thoughts written by human writers.
Your mindset and willingness to flippantly dispose of human communication is deeply concerning to me.
Your days should not be spent deciding if the machine generated data you’re constantly consuming is of a specific calibre.
It's fun to see the false idea that intelligence and thinking are what make humans human begin to collapse in real time. It's one of those structural pillars of human identity invented by some philosophers too lost in their own grandiosity from quite some time ago that we've all mistaken it for gospel. That notion was false to begin with, but I think a lot of us forgot that. So it'll be interesting to watch how that invented part of "being human" is eroded away, or rather is going through a revolution.
The reality is that being human stands independent of that idea.
Thoughts and ideas of course will continue to be the domain of humans, but as curators/extending our intellectual creativity beyond just the mere craft of writing. So even that story, that humans are thinking beings, will continue on for the foreseeable future.
The reality is that being human stands independent of that idea.
Thoughts and ideas of course will continue to be the domain of humans, but as curators/extending our intellectual creativity beyond just the mere craft of writing. So even that story, that humans are thinking beings, will continue on for the foreseeable future.
>It's fun to see the false idea that intelligence and thinking are what makes humans human begin to collapse in real time.
As soon as LLMs start thinking please let us know!
As soon as LLMs start thinking please let us know!
If they weren't producing things that are indistinguishable from human produced products people wouldn't be against them.
On the contrary the reason people are against them is that the things produced are distinguishable from human created products. E.g. pushback against "slopification."
The pushback against "slopification" is an ad hoc justification that is nebulous and vague enough for people to use to feel superior about their opinions and ideas, but has no genuine grounding.
But even if we consider the slopification argument, don't factories produce slop as well? Fast fashion is notorious for producing slop. But at the same time factories also produce are cars, shovels, housing, screws, etc. are they "slop"? How about computers? And other advanced manufacturing? Still slop?
Even if we consider the slopification argument, it isn't strong enough.
The use of AI to produce slop is a non-argument. On the same level of argument that an open internet would produce scams, proliferation of pornography, and gross commercialization/ads. All true, but still a lot of new value was unlocked from n order effects.
But even if we consider the slopification argument, don't factories produce slop as well? Fast fashion is notorious for producing slop. But at the same time factories also produce are cars, shovels, housing, screws, etc. are they "slop"? How about computers? And other advanced manufacturing? Still slop?
Even if we consider the slopification argument, it isn't strong enough.
The use of AI to produce slop is a non-argument. On the same level of argument that an open internet would produce scams, proliferation of pornography, and gross commercialization/ads. All true, but still a lot of new value was unlocked from n order effects.
Your comment is too dismissive for me to bother responding more than this.
Your entire point stands on being dismissive of an entire emerging industry. An emerging industry that has the fastest adoption rates, the fastest growth rate, and where millions of people using it on a daily basis.
YOU need to provide the evidence for your truly absurd claims.
In order for you to be right everyone else needs to be wrong.
The capital markets, the investors, the companies, the hundreds of millions of people using it on daily basis, they ALL need to be wrong.
YOU need to provide the evidence for your truly absurd claims.
In order for you to be right everyone else needs to be wrong.
The capital markets, the investors, the companies, the hundreds of millions of people using it on daily basis, they ALL need to be wrong.
If AI-generated wasn't a reliable synonym for classifying bad content, I'd consider that.
edit: actually I wouldn't. I do not want to interact with an internet that is dead. AI-edited or consulted, that's fair. Generated—no thanks.
edit: actually I wouldn't. I do not want to interact with an internet that is dead. AI-edited or consulted, that's fair. Generated—no thanks.
In the case of this article, the calling out also seems to be without merit.
From the about page: ” When I’m not writing code, I write prose, short and long, ranging from personal anecdotes in tech to philosophical musings on how technology shapes culture, society, and the individual self.”
From the about page: ” When I’m not writing code, I write prose, short and long, ranging from personal anecdotes in tech to philosophical musings on how technology shapes culture, society, and the individual self.”
Of course this comment response is AI generated. The snake eating its own tail.
Is it?? I need to update my calibration then. What tipped you off?
I recently saw these collectible cards for sale, targeting kids. I wish them a quick and painful insolvency.
https://www.blue-ocean.de/neuroblast-brainrot-party/
https://www.blue-ocean.de/neuroblast-brainrot-party/
Corollary: we should collectively stop referring to WWW clients as “browsers” because the metaphor no longer fits. They are Web Grazers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browsing_%28herbivory%29
So it's agrued that the modern internet functions as a "brainrot industrial complex" (title of the article), deliberately designed to hijack our attention and degrade our ability to think clearly for profit... My counter-point is, isn't everything so these days? Internet just happens to be the main communication channel. Even the local, in-person meetings I've had in the last 10 years or so, are full of distractions, attention-seeking and misrepresentation.
Yes people should make an explicit effort to reclaim their focus, but maybe not directly with digital tools? "Start in the physical world" would be my humble advice.
I strongly believe the digital world is just a multiplier for everything, including our defects. So we should just start at the source.
Yes people should make an explicit effort to reclaim their focus, but maybe not directly with digital tools? "Start in the physical world" would be my humble advice.
I strongly believe the digital world is just a multiplier for everything, including our defects. So we should just start at the source.
This names something valuable and frames it in an original way. It expressed caring for younger generations and encourages effort to meet the young with presence. It gives practical advice on how to practice attention. In present time this is enormously valuable.
I see it being flagged in realtime, please wake up HN.
I see it being flagged in realtime, please wake up HN.
This article is brainrot.
It is ragebait with no clear idea on actual steps to take against the brainrot industrial complex.
It states that we can't or shouldn't even bother thinking about what to do about it instead it offers super generic unhelpful self-help guideline that is almost impossible to do since we must fight the brainrot industrial complex every ms to make it while they just have to win once an hour (or less) to keep us occupied.
I'm all for describing problems without even trying to find solutions.
But this is worse: this pretends to offer a solution so we get the kick of feeling good without actually accomplishing anything.
True brainrot crap article.
[Edit:] Spelling and formatting
It is ragebait with no clear idea on actual steps to take against the brainrot industrial complex.
It states that we can't or shouldn't even bother thinking about what to do about it instead it offers super generic unhelpful self-help guideline that is almost impossible to do since we must fight the brainrot industrial complex every ms to make it while they just have to win once an hour (or less) to keep us occupied.
I'm all for describing problems without even trying to find solutions.
But this is worse: this pretends to offer a solution so we get the kick of feeling good without actually accomplishing anything.
True brainrot crap article.
[Edit:] Spelling and formatting
Hi, I am the author of this. Perhaps I should make the last section “What can we do about it?” more detail, then again the piece is not title “How to defeat The Brainrot Industrial Complex.”
My intention is more pointing out that this attention-grabbing, dopamine-inducing phenomena that we are seeing today is not accidental, it is by design, it has become an industry.
We are living in the system that we did not design. Personally, I am still figuring out how we can live in this machine without being consumed by it. To use the system, not the system use you.
> “pretends to offer a solution so we get the kick of feeling good”
I sincerely think that the first step we as individual can take is to be more intentional in our digital consumption, as what I mentioned in the piece.
I understand to some, there is a need to spell out in detail, I’ll do that next time so it does not sound like a super generic self-help guideline.
My intention is more pointing out that this attention-grabbing, dopamine-inducing phenomena that we are seeing today is not accidental, it is by design, it has become an industry.
We are living in the system that we did not design. Personally, I am still figuring out how we can live in this machine without being consumed by it. To use the system, not the system use you.
> “pretends to offer a solution so we get the kick of feeling good”
I sincerely think that the first step we as individual can take is to be more intentional in our digital consumption, as what I mentioned in the piece.
I understand to some, there is a need to spell out in detail, I’ll do that next time so it does not sound like a super generic self-help guideline.