Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

While Oxford University Press's 24 word of the year is brain rot.

The term is not new. Henry David Thoreau first used it in his 1854 book, Walden,

to refer to the devaluing of complex ideas in

favor of simple ones. Today, however, BrainRot has everything to do with screens. According to Oxford,

BrainRot is, and I quote here, the deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state as the

result of overconsumption of material,

particularly online content, considered to be trivial or unchallenging, end quote.

Now, the word of the year is not a prize from Oxford University Press.

According to the website, the word is chosen from a short list of six words that, and I quote here,

reflect the moods and conversations that have helped shape the last year, and quote.

The final word is chosen after input is given from experts as well as the public.

Tracking the word of the year is a fascinating way to mark recent Western history.

In the early 2000s, the process was more

prescriptive than it was descriptive. Winning words like carbon neutral and carbon footprint

marked the primary moods and conversations of experts more than it did wider society.

However, a few years later, words like staycation and credit crunch signaled the concerns of

those who were in an era of financial crisis. By the 2010s, as smartphones went into the hands

of most people, the words of the year and the runner-up words of the year reflected a world

that had been collapsed in two screens. The selected words went from the more benign, tweet or hashtag and selfie,

to more serious words like binge watch, doom scrolling, nomophobia,

...