You may have seen the term bandied about, you may even have heard one of the mind-numbing (yet infuriatingly catchy) songs, and if you have children of a certain age, it might be the latest obsession amongst their classmates. The question is, what exactly is Italian Brainrot?
The short answer is that it's a social media trend that has caught on like wildfire since emerging at the beginning of this year, featuring a large number of AI-generated characters - often with accompanying songs, or voiceovers in Italian.
Sounds harmless, right? Yet aside from the somewhat sinister implications of AI-created artwork making such a big impression on kids, there is cause for concern if you delve a little deeper into Italian Brain Rot - particularly if you’re a parent.
Allow us to explain exactly what’s going on…
WHAT EXACTLY IS ITALIAN BRAINROT?
It’s a social media trend featuring nonsensical characters generated by AI, often a hybrid of animals and other objects - a crocodile crossed with a bomber aircraft, a chimpanzee crossed with a banana, or a cat crossed with a shrimp. Some of the characters have their own songs or one-line stories explaining who they are/their catchphrases, often featuring lyrics (also nonsensical) in Italian. As its name suggests, it’s silly, puerile stuff - catnip for kids of a certain age, i.e. Gen Alpha.
WHERE DID IT ORIGINATE?
Like most memes and trends these days, it originated on TikTok at the beginning of 2025, with the character Tralalero Tralala - a three-legged shark wearing blue Nike trainers - created by a TikTok user called @eZburger401. The trend soon caught on, and more and more characters emerged - the sillier, the better - all with an accompanying gibberish narrative. The trend caught fire so rapidly that it’s already spawned a multitude of remixes, become a hugely popular Roblox game and inspired numerous memecoins (a cryptocurrency). Bizarrely, controversial Hungarian PM Viktor Orban even posted one - featuring Tung Tung Tung Sahur in his office - on his own TikTok page.
WHO ARE THE MAIN CHARACTERS?
The aforementioned Tralalero Tralala is one of the best known, but you also have Ballerina Cappuccina (a ballerina whose head is a cup of coffee), her husband Cappuccino Assassino; Lirili Lirila (a cactus mixed with an elephant); Brr Brr Patapim (a Proboscis Monkey crossed with a tree) and Bombadiro Crocodilo (the aforementioned crocodile/bomber hybrid), while Tung Tung Tung Sahur is a baseball bat-wielding plank of wood who originates from Indonesian culture.
SOUNDS LIKE HARMLESS FUN - WHAT’S SO DODGY ABOUT IT?
True, it’s totally harmless at surface level - and has become so huge that there is already talk of movie cash-ins, so prepare to hear a lot more about it. However, dig a little deeper and it gets sinister very quickly. While the narratives of each character are largely nonsensical gibberish - and in Italian, at that - the translated versions of others are deeply offensive. Tralalero Tralala’s lyrics refer to both God and Allah as being farmyard animals. Bombadiro Crocodilo is similarly dark, glibly making reference to "bombing children in Gaza and Palestine". Not really the sort of things you want your kids singing in the schoolyard.
WHAT ARE OTHER CONCERNS THAT PARENTS MIGHT HAVE?
Some people have expressed concern that watching Italian Brainrot videos on the likes of YouTube can quickly encourage the algorithm to send kids down a rabbit hole of much more sinister brainrot content that is certainly not age-appropriate, as this video demonstrates. The moral of the story is that it’s always worth keeping an eye on what your kids are watching or repeating - as innocuous as it may seem at first glance.
