This year has ushered in a box office boom, with hits such as Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine and Despicable Me 4 grossing over a billion dollars each. Great cinema is back in vogue, proclaim the critics, with a sense of almost tangible triumph.

Perhaps they should reserve some of their smugness for later. Hundreds of millions may be flocking to the big screen, but billions are staying home, captivated by a renegade low-budget franchise about grotesque talking toilets.

Skibidi Toilet, a YouTube series that originated with an 11-second viral clip, is always just a click away. And it has found unprecedented popularity among Gen Alpha, the children born after the year 2010, with over 65 billion combined views last year.¹ Some call it the entertainment of the future.

The series, which narrates a conflict between evil toilets with human heads and insurgent humanoids with televisions, speakers and CCTV cameras for heads, is some of the most-watched content on the platform. And its viewership blows traditional media out of the water.

No wonder Hollywood has wasted no time staking its claim. Alexey Gerasimov, the Russian-born Skibidi mastermind, is working with an independent Hollywood entertainment studio to expand the series into a multi-movie franchise with a series of lucrative merchandise lines.

But what gives this surreal, outlandishLooking or sounding bizarre or unfamiliar., inaneLacking sense or real meaning. invention its towering appeal? Skibidi Toilet seems incomprehensible to anybody over the age of 14. The Russian authorities are investigating it for alleged psychological harm to children. It has been labelled "brainrot humour", a form of super-saturated internet comedy repeated so much that it loses all meaning.

Not everyone agrees with this ungenerous assessment. Some experts say that it is the result of Hollywood's fixation with reboots and decades-old IPIntellectual property (IP) is a term used to describe anything created using the mind, such as a story, invention, or piece of art.: young people are just excited to see something fresh, something which speaks to their interests instead of nostalgia. Skibidi Toilet, however you may regard it, is certainly a new idea.

It is not the only example of the "brainrot" lexicon taking hold of young minds. Unorthodox terms like "gyatt", "rizzler", "fanum tax", "aura", "sigma" and more have crashed from obscurity to everyday speech through internet viralityThe tendency for something to be circulated very quickly on the internet..

Some say that Gen Alpha is building an identity through this absurdistThe theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless. and, as some have called it, meta-ironicA way of joking considered neither sincere or ironic. humour. The fact that every other generation is almost uniformly baffled and disgusted by Skibidi Toilet is fodder for youngsters, who are trying to define themselves in opposition to their elders. It is like a secret language, something that belongs to them alone.

Perhaps the reason Skibidi Toilet seems so strange to many - The Guardian called the outraged media response a "moral panic"² - is that we have yet to adjust to a generation raised by the internet. 

One third of children aged five to seven years old in the UK use social media unsupervised, while 90% of children aged 10 to 15 years go online every day. More than one in five of these children spends more than seven hours a day online.³ We are entering unchartered territory.

Is Skibidi Toilet an apocalyptic event in humanity's development, ushering in a new age of vapidityThe quality of being vapid, or uninteresting. and absurdismThe philosophical theory that the universe is irrational and meaningless.? Some might say yes. But for others, it is an archetypal example of generational warfare. Perhaps Gen Alpha is simply trying to create its own brave new world.

But is it just brain-rot?

Yes: We should be scared of this meaningless, asinineExtremely foolish or stupid. humour. It is part of a sinister internet culture which breeds dependence, obsession and apathy, and it is preying on young minds for clicks because they are the most vulnerable. 

No: Every generation has its own "cringe" surreal humour. It is natural for young adolescents to be obsessed with puerile images such as toilets. Leave the kids alone!

Or... We should not be worried about Skibidi Toilet because it is "brainrotting", but because it is scary and nightmarish, desensitising young children to violence. YouTube should have blocked anyone under the age of 16 from watching it.