Brainrot vs. hopepunk in 2025
Let's reclaim our attention and build the world we want — one meal at a time
“Brainrot” was the word of the year for 2024, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “referring to low-quality, low-value content found on social media and the internet, as well as the subsequent negative impact that consuming this type of content is perceived to have on an individual or society.”
The good news is that brainrotten 2024 is behind us. Maybe we’re ready now, finally, collectively, to decide for something else. Could that be? After all, the NY Times’ number one prediction for 2025 was that this year will be “a turning point in the war for attention.” The war framing is Times-typical and unnecessary. But I’ll definitely be doing all I can to make 2025 a “moment when many ‘Marie Kondo’ their minds and see what joy might be sparked by clearing out the meme clutter.”
Let’s go hopepunk! That’s the new word I was excited to learn while researching fellow speculative fiction authors who also believe in subversively gentle world change. Maybe, the world doesn’t need more alarmism, panicky POVs, and doom-n-gloom, but fresh aspirational narratives that help us envision new ways of living.
As Frameworks Institute states in this post, “There is a critical mass of Americans who are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, but struggle to envision a different future.” Algorithms don’t center the quiet voices that are already animating elements of that vision, but each of us each can choose to find them, read them, share them.
“True attention takes the unlivable and makes it livable. It is a lung that replenishes the air it breathes. If suddenly you feel that you can live and breathe in the place where you are, you or someone around you has committed, enacted, or bestowed attention. This is our work.”
- From the Twelve Theses on Attention
We can’t reclaim our attention alone. We need each other and we need to make attention the center of attention. I’d love to hear what you’re experimenting with to open the channels to the new. If you’re looking for concrete ways to get started, I’ll share one simple but transformative idea below.
A hopepunk challenge: 100% phone-free meals
Dining, in a leisurely way, to conversation and even candlelight is a life-giving ritual. We can create it whether we’re eating food we just cooked, pizza, takeout, or leftovers.
When we feast together, we nourish ourselves on each other’s attention. Conversation is a practice, and family dinner is a great time to exercise it. But it’s hard to get a good conversation going when phones are at hand. Our attention is constantly undermined, the depth of our connection sabotaged when smartphones invade the dinner table.
Even a seemingly innocuous “let me just X” phone phub can cause a brain-drain in the conversation, as the checker’s attention is pulled in random directions through incoming texts and notifications.
My invitation for 2025: 100% phone-free dinners! 100% means 100%: meals that are enjoyed without checking a fact, choosing a song, taking a photo, making a note, sending a text. Try putting your phone in the next room — or maybe an Aro box. And enjoy mindful eating, deeper fellowship, new textures of conversation.