Brain Rot, AI Slop, and the Enshittification of the Internet:
A Media and Cultural Studies Symposium
Date: Friday 5 December
Time: 10:00-16:15, followed by a launch event for Entertained or Else: Boredom and Networked Media (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
Location: ARU Cambridge (East Road, Cambridge CB1 1PT)
Recently the terms Brain Rot and AI Slop have emerged as media buzzwords that telescope a range of anxieties surrounding the democratisation of Gen AI tools and the tidal wave of cultural detritus and fabricated content that this has unleashed across our social media feeds. Gathering together speakers from Media and Cultural Studies disciplines, this symposium will critically examine these phenomena in light of the wider financial, attentional, and affective strategies of digital capitalism.
Event Schedule
10:00-10:30 – Arrival and Coffee
10:30 – 12:00 – Session 1
Tina Kendall:
Top of the Slops: A Guided Tour through Brain Rot and Slopcore
Maria Gemma Brown:
Slopworld: Examining the Cultural Economy of Slop through Young People’s Experiences of Advertising on Social Media Platforms
Tony Sampson:
The Struggle for the [User] Experience of Disappointment
12:00 – 12:45 – Lunch
12:45 – 14:15 – Session 2
Xichen Liu:
Excess by Design: Brainrot, Abjection, and the Uncontainable Waste of Digital Capitalism
Daniël de Zeeuw:
Meaning in Operation? NPC Streaming’s Gestural Economy
Alan Warburton:
Beyond Slop
14:15 – 14:30 Coffee Break
14:30 – 16:00 – Session 3
Adrienne Evans:
Doomscrolling for Hope? Digital Feelings in Permacrisis Contexts
Ludmila Lupinacci and Idil Galip:
The Gimmick of Generative Culture: AI Slop, Brainrot, and the Aesthetics of Capitalist Contradiction
Carolyn Pedwell:
Artificial Intuition, Abduction, and Computational Common Sense
Followed by a launch party for Entertained or Else:
Boredom and Networked Media (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
Sponsored by the Centre for Media, Arts & Creative Technologies (MACT)
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
