I got a marketing email about brain rot from a mainstream news brand, advertising their own app as the solution. Slightly ironic – but that’s not the point.

The point is they used the term brain rot as though everyone already knows what it means. Because they do. This is a mainstream problem now.

People are hijacked by platforms, pulled away from what they actually intended to do the moment they opened their laptop, or picked up their phone.

Here’s the important bit.

It’s not your fault.

It’s by design. The system is working exactly as intended. We’re not weak, we’re swimming against a current engineered by very smart, very well-funded people whose entire business model depends on keeping us there.

That’s worth sitting with for a moment.

I’ve built a Chrome extension to hide the X and LinkedIn feeds until I say I’m ready. Something I clearly needed, as I was getting pulled in every time I opened them.

So what do we do about it all? I’m not going to pretend there’s a clean solution.

But there is a direction.

What I’m working towards is being online more on my own terms, not someone else’s. Three things that guide it: freedom (being online by choice, not because you’re pulled there), intention (protecting your time and attention, because they’re finite), and earning (independence still needs to pay, or it’s just a hobby).