When I saw that “brain rot” was the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2024 Word of the Year, I was only half right when I guessed that “brain rot” is the side effect of Gen Z’s addiction to social media. I did not expect to see Gen Z adopt the term to describe the “vibe” they feel while binge-watching or “doomscrolling” TikTok videos. Nor did I expect to see a “democratic socialist” exploit Gen Z’s addiction to win the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Six weeks later, Zohran Mamdani’s appeal to young radicals seems not just plausible — but inevitable.
Like many of his supporters, Mamdani hails from that class of radicals whose back stories include attendance at elite private schools and colleges where they learned that to be “on the right side of history” they must be on the left side of politics and support candidates like Bernie Sanders who was the first “democratic socialist” to bewitch young voters with a pledge to upend “unfettered capitalism.” With Sanders’ role reduced to that of jetting about railing against oligarchs, Gen Z needed a new idol, a young firebrand who would represent what The New York Times once dubbed “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.”
Into the breach steps Mamdani, beaming “rizz” (charisma) and promises of free child care, free bus rides, rent control, city-owned grocery stores and higher property taxes for “richer, whiter, neighborhoods.” And it wasn’t just Gen Z’s would-be freeloaders who fell for Mamdani’s gambit. A New York Times analysis notes that Mamdani had a more than 35-point lead in swank Brooklyn neighborhoods — where homeowners have prospered in our free market economy. If the residents of Brooklyn’s so-called Commie Corridor know that Mamdani is on record defending “the abolition of private property” and “seizing the means of production,” they are either too rich or too daft to care.
Just as daft are the Jewish New Yorkers who support Mamdani, 60% of whom are Gen Zers who call themselves “Jews for Zohran.” As the son of a Columbia University professor who’s on record defending suicide bombers and condemning “Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Mamdani had a head start becoming anti-Zionist and adopting the hard left’s aim to “globalize the intifada.” When NBC news anchor Kristen Welker pressed Mamdani to condemn the phrase, he responded with a weak, “That’s not language I use.” But Mamdani’s disclaimer hasn’t stopped Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman from pledging “hundreds of millions” to defeat an anti-Zionist in the city that has the largest Jewish population this side of Israel.
Before July 28, critics had focused on Mamdani’s contempt for Israel and our free market system, but in the wake of last week’s Park Avenue bloodbath, his (allegedly former) contempt for the NYPD has also made headlines — along with clips of Mamdani struggling to walk back the statement he issued following the 2020 death of George Floyd: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
In his first public appearance following last week’s slaying of an NYPD officer, Mamdani repeated his claim that he is “not running to defund the police,” but New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul remains unconvinced. Like New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Hochul has yet to endorse Mamdani and has even admitted, “Everybody’s concerned about what will happen to the policing of the city” if Mamdani is elected mayor.
Hochul’s “everybody” does not include Gen Z’s victims of “brain rot” because their new idol has mastered the art of online seduction. When 19th-century writer Henry David Thoreau coined the phrase to describe people who “level downward to our dullest perception,” he did not know that “brain rot” would one day be a source of pride for the disciples of a cocksure young socialist.
If Gen Z succeeds in its mission to elect a socialist as the mayor of New York City, Comrade Mamdani will see to it that the Big Apple is sliced, diced and redistributed.
Nan Miller is professor emerita of literature at Meredith College and lives in Raleigh.
