By Juke Bots — 21 Jul 2025

The "Italian Brainrot" Trend

What Is "Italian Brainrot"?

"Italian brainrot" is a viral internet phenomenon that exploded in early 2025, recognizable for its surreal, AI-generated characters with outlandishly Italian-sounding names and absurdist, incoherent narratives. These memes typically feature chaotic visuals—such as a sneaker-wearing shark or a crocodile fused to a bomber plane—set to synthesized Italian voiceovers and dramatic, often nonsensical, background music. The comedic value lies in their deliberate nonsense, overstimulation, and “post-ironic” humor that appeals especially to Gen Z and Gen Alpha1 2 3.

The trend originally began within Italian meme communities, but quickly spread internationally. According to meme historians, one of the first mega-viral incarnations paired a TikTok nursery rhyme called “Trallallero Trallallà” with an AI-generated video of a great white shark in Nike shoes4 5. Characters like Ballerina Cappuccina (a ballerina with a cappuccino for a head), Bombardiro Crocodilo (a crocodile-plane hybrid), and Chimpanzini Bananini (a monkey-banana mashup) exemplify the recurring, grotesquely lovable cast at the center of the trend1 6 7.

Italian Brainrot on YouTube

On YouTube, Italian brainrot appears in a diverse array of formats:

Character Compilations: Videos showcasing multiple “brainrot” characters in quick succession, with each’s bizarre lore and catchphrases.
Lore Explanations: Creators dissect the expanding universe of brainrot characters, often narrating their origins and evolving in-jokes8.
Reaction Content: Popular YouTubers react to particularly viral or unhinged brainrot clips, critiquing their nonsensical humor and highlighting the memes’ infectious catchiness910.

YouTube’s algorithm, favoring bizarre and highly shareable content, has helped drive brainrot compilations to millions of views, solidifying characters like Tralalero Tralalá and Tung Tung Sahur in internet folklore118.

Where Else Does the Trend Thrive?

TikTok

TikTok is ground zero for the brainrot trend, with its short-form, fast-scrolling video format an ideal breeding ground for these memes. The platform’s culture of remixing and viral challenges results in endless variations, from DIY brainrot character generators to mockumentaries that flesh out the “lore” of these surreal figures. Hashtags like #italianbrainrot routinely rack up millions of views, and even mainstream brands have adopted the style for advertising campaigns6 4 5 1.

Instagram

Instagram serves as a hub for meme aggregators and fans, hosting compilations in Reels and carousel formats. The visual intensity and overstimulating nature of Italian brainrot lends itself well to Instagram’s meme culture, where users share the most outlandish character edits and quick skits1 4 7.

Other Spaces

While not as dominant, Italian brainrot also appears on:

Reddit, in meme and absurdist humor communities, often as image dumps or lore discussion threads12.
Twitter/X, where viral threads remix original content, usually accompanied by viral audio and screenshots.
Brand Marketing, with companies like Duolingo and Ryanair mimicking the meme style for their own viral campaigns4.

Why the Obsession?

The heart of the trend is overstimulation, randomness, and absurd humor. “Brainrot” itself has come to represent content so bizarre and overstimulating that it intentionally “melts your brain”—an effect embraced by Gen Z audiences who seek novelty and irony3 13 14. The accessibility of AI tools for generating images and voiceovers means anyone can participate, making Italian brainrot both a community in-joke and an ever-expanding universe of AI-driven absurdity.
THE MUSIC
The style of Italian music associated with the "Italian brainrot" trend is often referred to as Italian Brainrot Rock. This emerging internet genre playfully blends the deep emotional and experimental elements of 1970s Italian progressive and psychedelic rock with a modern digital aesthetic beloved by online communities.

Italian Brainrot Rock draws inspiration from classic Italian progressive rock bands such as Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM), Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, and Area. These groups were known for their long, intricate tracks featuring surreal or existential lyrics, innovative musical structures, and an emotional intensity distinctive to the Italian prog-rock scene of that era. The current trend revives this classic sound but recontextualizes it through internet culture, producing an almost hypnotic, immersive listening experience that feels simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary. Fans describe it as music that "rots their brains," referencing how obsessively engrossing and cerebral the tracks can be.

Beyond Italian Brainrot Rock, the music popularly used in the brainrot meme videos features quirky, eerie, or playful synth sounds and melodies, sometimes called Italian Brainrot Funk or simply "brainrot background music" on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. These often incorporate AI-generated audio with surreal lyrics and nonsensical phrases, capturing the absurdist humor of the meme itself. For example, the viral tune "Tralalero Tralala" combines catchy electronic beats with whimsical and repetitive vocal lines about strange characters, reflecting the meme's surreal style. The music typically echoes the aesthetic of Italian folk or vintage sounds but filtered through a highly artificial, computerized lens.

Ultimately, "Italian brainrot" music sits at a crossroads between:

Style	Characteristics
Italian Brainrot Rock	1970s Italian prog & psychedelic rock revival, emotional, immersive, nostalgic, experimental
Brainrot Background Music (Funk/AI)	Synth-heavy, catchy, eerie or playful, AI-generated, meme-oriented, surreal and nonsensical lyrics

This blend of classic prog-rock sensibility with absurd internet culture has created a new musical niche appreciated on TikTok, YouTube, and streaming platforms, accompanying the viral visuals of the Italian brainrot meme phenomenon

Origins, Impact, and Spread on Social Media