Especially the stop motion animations, they were just absurdist / surreal, not unlike skibidi toilet and italian brainrot content.

If people were a bit more media savvy and less kneejerk or pearl clutching about it, they'd realize that it's nothing new. I don't actually know anyone clutching pearls about skibidi toilet, the worst is a somewhat indifferent "I don't get it". And not getting it is fine.

YUP, that's the specific bit(s) I was thinking of.

We also have SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM, eggs bacon sausage and SPAM.

wikings: SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM ...

Funny, complete and utter nonsense and probably a lot older than most of the people complaining about "modern" brainrot.

Yes. The only thing new about the modern variety is the velocity.

As memes get explained and even used (shudder) by he olds, they must be discarded.

> complete and utter nonsense

I don't think that it's complete nonsense. Or, it is deliberately absurd, but it doesn't come from nowhere. Monty Python debuted in 1969. They often took the mick out of the generation before them, who on the one hand Won the War and saved the country, etc. But who on the other hand by 1969 could also be mocked as aging, uptight, officious, stuck in the past, "we had it tough, you kids have no idea", etc.

So: Spam. It's processed meat in a can, more like a wartime emergency ration than anything else. Fresher foods were in short supply in the UK during and immediately after the war.

The sketch is elements of the Zeitgeist around them then. Which would have also included funny, costumed college musical numbers, from their time in the Cambridge Footlights.