Adultescence
The perpetual act of an adult who behaves like an adolescent.
‘Brain rot’ is the new word of the year. They say it reflects the main cultural trend and challenge of 2024. Slop, demure, romantasy, dynamic pricing, and lore were the runner ups.1
As if we had any doubts left of the effects of the encroachment of excessive quantities of low-quality content online on the human brain. That’s how social media has grown out of initial online connections—weed-like hooks eroding peace of mind and sanity.
Some of us knew that all along.
Henry David Thoreau recorded the first use of ‘brain rot’ in Walden. Alright, it may be the word of the year, but I say we missed an even bigger opportunity to name (and thus see clearly) another phenomenon— adultescence.
The perpetual act of an adult who behaves like an adolescent has replaced the sobriety of the competent in our narrative.
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Another term I’ve seen to describe a similar phenomenon is ‘man-child.’ But I’d like to put the emphasis on the fact that these behaviors come from persons who’ve outgrown diapers a long time ago.
Gone is the wisdom of the elder. Rancor, vindictiveness, jealousy, and insecurity take center stage. Public discourse has turned into a competition among whoever exaggerates, misleads, shouts and stomps the most.
By the way, a combination of low-quality content (text and images) and low-quality behaviors (body and verbal language) is used as fodder for artificial intelligence (AI.) Which gives me license to add emphasis on artificial and subtract it from ‘intelligence.’
When left to their devices, these very temperamental persons with an inflated view of their own talent or importance2 leave a mess wherever they track. We’ve all gone through adolescence, many have/had one or two adolescents at home.
I’m quite certain you can visualize what I’m talking about. A room in disarray for someone else to pick up after (usually mom), broken and discarded stuff, and the attitude. This is the time when we fight with our parents/experts and idolize each other.
Then we grow out of this phase. We become adults.
When that happens varies. Some of us have to take on responsibility earlier than others. An older sibling in a single-parent home, for example. An orphan, and in general someone who faces hardship.
Some others, however, are shielded and cottoned to from their infancy, through adolescence, and into adulthood. Hence they don’t acquire an appreciation of what it means to earn (beyond things) respect and trust. They’re taken as given.
Related:
The Cult of Personality—How confidence turned into arrogance.
The image of the hero in culture has shifted accordingly, to accommodate adultescence. It’s not a matter of force winning over wit, fame over cunning, or pride over patience. No, those are classical concepts that belong to another era.
What we have is a new religion that dispenses with the gods of the Olympus altogether. Why go through intermediaries when you can go direct? After all, isn’t that what the digital revolution promised?
Extreme consumerism is a way to encourage adults who behave like adolescents. It makes it normal to replace reflection and effort with the acquisition of more things. The algorithm in social media rewards extreme behaviors, too.3 Instant gratification.
Adultescence grabs attention, burns entire news cycles, and leaves a trail of cultural and intellectual exhaust(ion.) Some days those loud voices seem to take the oxygen right out of the air we breathe.4
And that’s exactly why we need to pay more attention to the work of people like Michela Murgia, Peter Brook, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thyla Tharp, Mina, Theodore Zeldin, Marshall McLuhan, Umberto Eco, Gianni Rodari, Carlo Rovelli, Alessandro Barbero, Italo Calvino, and Giacomo Matteotti.
They’re the persons who know the value of words and definitions, of poetry, art, creativity, mastery, and connection; how to understand media; why to keep around unread books; the power of fables; the order of time; how history can help us make sense of the present; why literature matters; why resistance is important—and help us see it and feel the importance of that value to humanity.
There’s an expression—‘when I grow up’—people sometimes use playfully. Kids (and one adult) use it in a song of the musical Matilda.5 In that context, ‘to grow up’ means both ‘becoming an adult’ and ‘being an adult,’ as in ‘grow up, stop crying!’
What adultescence requires as antidote is intelligence (if not telekinetic powers) to overcome the challenges that neglectful persons and a cruel head-person throw our way.
We can (and should) shift part of the 12 hours a day we spend in front of TVs and computers (apparently that number is just at home) and pick up a book to read in a comfortable chair like the one above.
Books6 have all kinds of positive side effects.
They can save us from ‘brain rot,’ too.
Source: Oxford University Press.
As many things in culture, this expression derives from another that casts the unsavory, unpleasant, and unwelcome connotation to a female. The term seems to describe a certain set of behaviors of the ‘prima donna,’ the leading woman soloist in an opera company. That should tell us something about mainstream narrative.
Adolescents have begun to reject social media.
Niall Ferguson (with Sean Monahan in The Free Press recently) says “To understand politics and even geopolitics you have to understand culture, which is sometimes—often—upstream of both. And to understand culture you have to understand, well, vibes. Specifically, vibe shifts.”
Matilda the Musical is a stage adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1988 novel. Music and lyrics are by Tim Minchin; book by Dennis Kelly. Matilda Wormwood is a gifted girl who uses her intelligence and telekinetic powers to overcome challenges from her neglectful parents and a cruel headmistress.
Not all books, of course. But at least in a book there’s enough space for the mind to elaborate. Whether we read them with it already made up, or to learn what we actually think about a topic. Well, that’s up to us.