Commencing next year with a capacity of 67 students, acceptance onto “Critical Approaches to Brainrot in the Modern Age” is expected to be highly competitive.
The UCL Anthropology department, ranked fourth globally, aims to explore our “relationship with the material and digital worlds”. The new module, integral to the modernisation plan for UCL200, aims to ensure higher education remains relevant for future, less cognitively present, generations.
Named the Oxford Word of the Year in 2024, “brainrot” has been identified by the department as a “key skill” for the future “when we only interact with AI Chatbots”.
The module plans to explore a range of key topics, from post-modern split screen Minecraft parkour videos and “Tralalalero Tralala”, to pre-historic artifacts such as “Quandale Dingle” and “Hawk Tuah”.
Aiming to gauge reactions among second-year Anthropology students, The Cheese Grater was able to locate one student able to form a semi-coherent sentence:
“Fr I am lowkey cooked so I’m on that sigma grindset to lock-in this year and so I don’t crash out Chat told me this module would be goated for grademaxxing.”
[Translation pending until Google Translate officially recognises Brainrot as a language. The Cheese Grater has contacted the Linguistics Department, who have urged that the statement should remain in its authentic form.]
To cover costs for the new module, the department has decided to remove less relevant modules such as “Anthropology of War” and “The Anthropology of Violent Aftermaths”.
When approached for a statement, a department spokesperson told The Cheese Grater:
“We have seen a decline in students taking modules with ‘negative aura’, these topics unfortunately do not perform well on TikTok. You’ve reached your free GPT-5 limit for today, Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus for continued access to GPT-5, faster responses, and priority availability.”
Following the module’s announcement, Professor Onika Burger, a senior Anthropology department faculty member, organised a petition to withdraw the module.
Burger has expressed concern that this module will “exacerbate the inevitable cognitive decline of future generations”.
The petition, however, has only garnered 4 signatures as students are unable to understand these complex words and have forgotten how to use a pen.
The department is also exploring options for new master’s degrees which provide further specialisation such as “MA Reels and Shorts”.
