Ep 190: Bathroom Brainrot
Brain Rot in the Bathroom: How the Internet Finally Came for the Toilet
Welcome back to Privy, the bathroom podcast that continues to ask the important cultural questions—like why is the internet like this and how did the toilet get dragged into it?
As we kick off a brand-new year, instead of making New Year’s resolutions that immediately fall apart (looking at you, gym memberships), we’re doing something far more dangerous: trying to understand something we don’t understand.
This time, that thing is brain rot.
What Brain Rot Actually Meant (Before It Got Weird)
Believe it or not, brain rot did not start as a TikTok noise screamed into a microphone.
The term goes all the way back to 1854, when Henry David Thoreau—yes, Walden Thoreau—used it to describe the mental decay caused by focusing too much on trivial, meaningless ideas. In other words: spending all your time thinking about nonsense will eventually turn your brain into pudding.
Which, honestly, is a wild thing to predict before electricity was even cool.
Fast forward to the 2000s and 2010s, and brain rot evolved into a way to describe how it feels after scrolling too long: sluggish, overstimulated, and vaguely ashamed of yourself.
Then 2024 happened.
From Condition to Content
At some point, brain rot stopped describing what happens to your brain and started describing the content doing it.
Loud videos. Absurd edits. Nonsense words. Zero meaning.
If it’s flashing, screaming, and makes you feel dumber after watching it—that’s brain rot now.
This didn’t happen in a vacuum. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and gaming communities created a perfect storm where:
Everything had to be louder
Everything had to be faster
Silence became illegal
The result? A genre of content that exists purely to fill the void—often with Subway Surfers gameplay playing next to another unrelated video, just in case one screen wasn’t enough stimulation.
Enter: Italian Brain Rot
Then the internet asked an even worse question:
What if we made this… weirder?
Italian Brain Rot is a specific strain of internet nonsense built around AI-generated creatures with fake Italian-sounding names that mean absolutely nothing.
Examples include:
Sharks wearing sneakers
Toilets with mouths and legs
Pigeons fused with sirens
Poop plumbers who may or may not require chanting phone numbers to summon
None of it connects. All of it exists.
And kids love it.
Why the Bathroom Keeps Showing Up
Here’s where Privy becomes unavoidable.
Once you start looking, you realize a shocking amount of brain rot is bathroom-themed. Toilets. Urinals. Bathtubs. Faucets with faces. Toilets with feet. Toilets with other things coming out of them.
If this feels familiar, that’s because it is.
Italian Brain Rot is the spiritual descendant of Skibidi Toilet, which already proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt:
If you put literally anything inside a toilet, the internet will watch it.
The bathroom is the great equalizer. Everyone uses it. Everyone understands it. And apparently, everyone is now allowed to turn it into nightmare fuel.
Why Kids Love It (and Adults Hate It)
Italian Brain Rot checks every box for childhood appeal:
It annoys parents
It makes no sense
It feels secret
It feels rebellious
And because adults don’t understand it, that makes it even cooler.
Meanwhile, parents are asking why the same kids who find Walmart “too overstimulating” can happily blast nonsense audio directly into their ears for hours.
The answer, unfortunately, is choice. Kids tolerate noise they choose—and reject noise they don’t.
Which means the problem isn’t volume. It’s curation.
When Brain Rot Stops Being Harmless
Most of this content is just dumb fun. But problems arise when:
Kids repeat phrases they don’t understand
AI-generated “Italian” turns into real-language misuse
Inappropriate translations slip through unnoticed
The internet has never been great at moderation, and brain rot moves faster than adults can keep up.
Rule of thumb for 2026:
Don’t say things you don’t know the meaning of.
This advice has never gone out of style.
Final Flush
Brain rot isn’t new. The internet didn’t invent nonsense. Every generation has their version.
But when the toilet becomes a recurring character in AI-generated chaos, Privy has no choice but to investigate.
So as we head into a new year, here’s the plan:
Eat more vegetables
Touch more grass
Spend less time watching toilets scream fake Italian at us
And remember:
If the internet starts yelling nonsense from a porcelain throne… it might be time to log off.
