Lifestyle
Brain Rot Comes for Italy
The first thing you need to know about Italian brain rot is that it isn’t strictly Italian.
The second thing you need to know is that any discussion of what it means will most likely make you seem very uncool (you’re just supposed to get it) and will probably involve a lot of head scratching.
You have been warned.
A little etymology, to start. Last year, the Oxford University Press designated “brain rot” the word of the year. The phrase refers to the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swathes of “trivial or unchallenging” content online. It can also be used to describe the content itself; in other words, the term refers to both the cause and the effect of intellectual deterioration.
The Italian brain rot subgenre emerged in January, when absurd characters generated by artificial intelligence started to show up in TikTok feeds. The characters melded animals or humans with inanimate objects, and many were tagged with the hashtag #italianbrainrot, which now has over 3 billion views. The memes have some vague Italian-ness to them — either their names sound Italian or they touch on stereotypical (or reductive, depending on who you ask) Italian cultural markers, like coffee, and are often accompanied by A.I.-generated audio of what sounds like a heavily accented Italian man’s narration but, when translated, is often nonsensical.
That the memes are tagged brain rot is a cheeky acknowledgment that the content is “ridiculous” and “mumbo jumbo,” said Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of communication at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. It is also, he added, a recognition of the ridiculous universe being created by and for those who would be considered extremely online, with a nod to the broader proliferation of “A.I. junk” or slop.
First, there was a shark with feet wearing Nike sneakers, called Tralalero Tralala (the TikTok account associated with the first iteration of that character has been deleted). Then came Bombardiro Crocodillo, a military bomber plane with a crocodile head. Among the most recent, and most popular, entries into the cast of characters is Ballerina Cappuccina — a ballerina with a cappuccino cup head, created in March by Susanu Sava-Tudor, a 24-year-old in Romania. The entire trend, Mr. Sava-Tudor said in an email, is a “form of absurd humor” that is “less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.” So far, the original Ballerina Cappuccina video, in which Mr. Sava-Tudor spelled the character’s name Balerinna Cappucinna, has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok and 3.8 million likes.
The lyrics to the Italian soundtrack attached to the video, when translated, are as follows:
Cappucina dancer, mi mi mi
Is the wife of the Cappucino Assasino,
And she loves music, la la la
Her passion is the lo lo lo dancer!
The sheer randomness of the meme is the point, Mr. Ophir said. “What users get from it is the sense that they are in the know,” he said, “that they know something their mom doesn’t know.”
As the trend has grown into an entire universe of brain rot characters, TikTok users have given them back stories or thrown them into adventures together, said Philip Lindsay, a middle school teacher in Arizona who explains emerging language trends of Gen Z and Alpha on TikTok. Ballerina Cappucina, for example, now has babies with other Italian brain rot characters. “It’s not one person making all of this — it’s kind of turned into this big internet collaboration,” he said.
In the decentralized universe, dark undertones have already started to emerge, Mr. Ophir said. There have been complaints that some of the content is attached to racist or Islamophobic soundtracks; some of the videos that feature Bombardiro Crocodilo, for example, have soundtracks that claim the plane is on its way to bomb the children of Gaza and Palestine. While it’s unclear how widespread those types of videos are, it is possible the characters could become “weaponized,” Mr. Ophir said. “We’ve seen this before with Pepe the Frog, which was just a funny internet meme with no big meaning behind it and then it was appropriated by the far right.”
Though the Italian brain rot trend started earlier this year, it’s in recent weeks that Mr. Lindsay has noticed his students really engaging with the meme, even in their offline lives: Their drawings or doodles feature the characters, they discuss which character is their favorite and they randomly yell out their names, almost as exclamations. Like “skibidi toilet” before it — the wildly popular YouTube shorts series that eventually turned into Gen Alpha slang — this meme is slipping into their day-to-day vernacular.
“Maybe at some point there will be meaning to it,” Mr. Lindsay said.
The illuminated bell tower of the Basilica Minore dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo stands at the heart of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, as evening settles over the valley. Once a small village of farmers and shepherds, this storied town has evolved into the “Pearl of the Dolomites,” a renowned luxury destination. Surrounded by the limestone peaks of the UNESCO World Heritage Dolomites, the town’s historic center remains a “living room” for celebrities and high society.
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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Walking the main thoroughfare of Cortina D’Ampezzo is a glamorous experience. It is as if every designer brand has decided it needs to be represented in this small town more than 4,000 feet up in the Italian Alps. In a few short steps, you pass shops for Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and more. Among passers-by, fur coats are in fashion.
Cortina has been in the international spotlight in recent weeks as a host to many of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. But this storied town has a much longer history of fame and fortune that has led to various nicknames like Pearl or Queen of the Dolomites.
A window display for the luxury fashion brand Fendi illuminates a central street in Cortina d’Ampezzo, adjacent to a large outdoor sculpture of a skier. The town’s main thoroughfare is a glamorous hub where premier designer brands like Dior, Gucci and Prada are represented.
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Valerio Muscella for NPR
On the mountain slopes nearby, skiers stop for hot chocolate or an alcoholic spritz at an Alpine lodge where they are served by Riccardo Fiore, the grandson of the region’s winter sport champions. His grandmother, Yvonne Rüegg, is an Olympic gold medalist in giant slalom. His grandfather was the trainer of Alberto Tomba — one of history’s greatest Alpine skiers, who learned on these very slopes. “Tomba still stops by here all the time,” he says.
Riccardo Fiore, grandson of Olympic gold medalist Yvonne Rüegg, poses inside his family’s Alpine lodge in the Dolomites.
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American actor Sylvester Stallone (right) and director Renny Harlin on the set of Harlin’s film Cliffhanger.
Leonello Bertolucci/Sygma via Getty Images
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Leonello Bertolucci/Sygma via Getty Images
A large-scale photograph of Italian skiing legend Alberto Tomba, wearing a traditional fur hat and reading a sports newspaper with the headline “Immenso Alberto,” is displayed in a wood-paneled interior in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Tomba, one of history’s greatest Alpine skiers, learned to race on these slopes under the guidance of local trainers, further cementing the town’s status as a historical cradle of international winter sports.
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For Fiore, there’s nothing unusual about serving drinks to famous individuals. He names well-known Italian politicians, actors and singers he has spotted in the lodge. And there are international names who visit Cortina, too — Sylvester Stallone, who filmed scenes from the 1993 action movie Cliffhanger here, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake and Ridley Scott, to name a few.
“Many celebrities you barely recognize,” he says. “They try to disguise themselves, as they don’t want to attract too much attention.”
Nonetheless, Cortina has earned another nickname — the “celebrities’ living room.” The Hotel de la Poste bar, with its wood-paneled ceiling and walls, was a favorite haunt of American writer Ernest Hemingway. A small plaque honors him on a wall by the corner table he occupied for countless hours in the 1940s. And the hotel has preserved the room he stayed in — visitors can look in to see his typewriter.
“His room is a time capsule,” says Servane Giol, author of The Queen of the Dolomites, a book about the history of Cortina.
“I found some amazing letters from Hemingway explaining how he was a bit against ski lifts, because he believed it was better for the legs to be warmed up by climbing the mountains and skiing down,” Giol says. “This really made me laugh; to think that somebody could be against ski lifts.”
Servane Giol, renowned expert in Venetian art and lifestyle, poses in the historic wood-paneled Stube of the Hotel de la Poste. Giol, who has dedicated her work to preserving the cultural and aesthetic heritage of the region, sits beside an old painted pendulum clock, a symbol of the hospitality and Ampezzo tradition that the hotel has represented since 1804.
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American writer Ernest Hemingway, wearing a hunter waistcoat, stands behind a bar counter and pours gin in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1948.
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Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Members of the U.S. Olympic teams walk during the procession into Cortina’s huge ice stadium for opening ceremonies launching 11 days of competition in the 1956 Winter Olympics.
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Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Giol says Cortina, once a small village of farmers and shepherds, became famous in the 1920s, when it was visited by the then king of Belgium, who loved to climb the jagged limestone Dolomite peaks that surround it. His daughter then married an Italian crown prince. “Between the 1920s and the 1940s, Cortina was actually the chicest place to be. You’ve got very glamorous royal families,” she says.
It became a destination for Italy’s wealthy. And then in 1956, Cortina hosted the first-ever Winter Olympics to be televised. Archive footage shows grainy black-and-white images of the opening ceremony, described by the news anchor as the “spectacle of peace.” Olympic participants from 32 countries took part in the Games that saw athletes speeding down the mountain slopes or shooting down the bobsled track built at the edge of the town.
The television broadcasts internationalized Cortina’s fame. Hollywood films were shot here — including the first Pink Panther movie, as well as the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, with actor Roger Moore as James Bond. It includes a high-octane chase, as Bond skis down the mountainside pursued by assassins on motorbikes who shoot at him, the bullets zinging past as he slaloms and performs a somersault on skis.
English actor Roger Moore poses as 007, with a Lotus Esprit Turbo, on the set of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in March 1981.
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Keith Hamshere/Moviepix/Getty Images
Today, the Dolomites are a UNESCO heritage site and their beauty attracts celebrities and huge numbers of other tourists — many lured by images shared on social media of the turquoise Alpine lakes and stunning peaks.
And more crowds came in February and March to watch the Olympics and Paralympics. This time, the Games relied almost entirely on artificial snow. As winters become shorter and warmer because of climate change, there are also questions about the future of this ski resort town.
Ludovica Rubbini, co-founder of the Michelin-starred restaurant SanBrite, inspects a wheel of artisanal cheese inside the establishment’s aging cellar. The “agricucina” project emphasizes the traditional preservation and maturation of local dairy products, showcasing the deep connection between the restaurant’s kitchen and its own farm production in the Dolomites.
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A table setting awaits customers at SanBrite restaurant.
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A waiter provides tableside service for guests in the dining room of the Michelin-starred restaurant SanBrite. The establishment, known for its “agricucina” philosophy, combines a refined mountain atmosphere with traditional Cortinese architectural elements, emphasizing a direct connection between local ingredients and high-end hospitality in the heart of the Dolomites.
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But Cortina is changing, too. More people come for summer hiking and for unique fine dining, like that offered by Ludovica Rubbini and her husband, Riccardo Gaspari, whose restaurant SanBrite has earned a Michelin star, as well as the guide’s “green star” for the sustainable agricultural and locally grown ingredients the couple uses on its farm.
In the cozy restaurant, where dried flowers hang from the walls and lights include lamps used during the 1956 Olympics, waiters tell guests at this fine-dining restaurant about the cows that provided the home-churned butter that is served in large pots for sourdough bread.
The dishes are inspired by the mountains and woodland of the area. They include a Jerusalem artichoke cigar served on a bed of moss and filled with the cream of the artichoke, mushrooms and marinated shallots. And a dessert made to look like a frozen lake, with a panna cotta base and layer of frozen water and elderflower, and yogurt powder as a dusting of snow.
“We were out for a walk, and Riccardo crouched by the frozen lake tapping it and examining it,” Rubbini says, remembering the day her husband was inspired to develop this perfect winter dessert.
The snow-capped peaks of the Tofane massif are framed through a window of a rifugio, a kind of traditional mountain hut, decorated with typical heart-patterned Ampezzo textiles. These high-altitude lodgings serve as essential rest areas for skiers and hikers, offering a blend of rustic hospitality and panoramic views that define the winter experience in the Dolomites.
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Universal Studios Hollywood has begun peeling back the curtain — or opening the garage? — on its new “Fast & Furious”-inspired coaster coming to the park this summer.
The coaster will feature four heavily detailed miniature cars as ride vehicles. These four-seaters — mimicking a Dodge Charger, Mazda RX-7, Nissan Skyline GT-R and Toyota Supra, all complete with pull-down lap-bars and working taillights — were unveiled at a media event Wednesday.
But perhaps the most exciting news out of the event is just how meaty of a coaster Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift looks to be.
Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will launch this summer at Universal Studios Hollywood and boast ride vehicles that are miniatures of actual cars. The show building is themed like a warehouse with a vibrant, spray-painted mural.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
The attraction, the second outdoor coaster at the park after the more kid-focused “Harry Potter” ride Flight of the Hippogriff, was timed at running about two minutes around the track, which goes over and under the park’s famed hillside escalators. Hollywood Drift will reach a top speed of 72 mph.
While a representative for the company said the coaster is intended to reach that 72-mph milestone at various points on the ride, it’s worth noting that it’s still in testing mode and the final speeds and run-time may change. Still, the fact that Universal has been able to pack such a mighty experience into a tight piece of real estate should be positive news for coaster enthusiasts.
By comparison, the family coaster Flight of the Hippogriff is only about a minute, whereas Disney California Adventure’s Incredicoaster comes in at more than 2 and a half minutes. It’s not uncommon for modern coasters today, due to their increasing emphasis on speed and thrills, to last only about a minute.
A look at the ride vehicles and inside mural in the passenger load area of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
Though packing storytelling into a fast-moving outdoor ride is always a theme park challenge, Universal is doing what it can to make guests feel as if they’re sitting in actual tiny, authentic cars. Check, for instance, the brightly orange Supra, or the black, vintage-style Charger. Each car will be equipped with onboard audio and has unique details, right down to the different placement of the odometers on the dashboard.
One question: Do those odometers actually work and measure speed? A Universal rep declined to answer, but no matter, as most guest will likely be focused on the scenery outside the vehicle, such as the next-door golf course or bird’s-eye views of the park.
An artist rendering of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, the park’s first high-speed outdoor coaster.
(Universal Studios Hollywood)
The coasters will board two at a time inside the red brick, warehouse-themed show building, which features spray-painted murals from artist Tristan Eaton. Each coaster train holds four cars. There will be a single rider line for solo guests, and the coaster will boast 360-degree rotation, which is meant to create the sensation of a car drifting. The track is 4,100 feet and will take guests on a hillside journey between the park’s upper and lower lots.
The “Fast & Furious” saga spans 11 films, and will soon be recognized with an exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum. “A Fast & Furious Legacy: 25 Years of Automotive Icons” opens March 14 and will feature various movie-used vehicles and stunt cars. Among the cars on display will be an early ‘90s Supra driven by Paul Walker’s character Brian O’Conner, one of the vehicles Universal mimicked for the roller coaster.
Norris karate chopped and kickboxed his way through more than a dozen action films in the 1980s, before leaping to TV in Walker, Texas Ranger. He’s pictured above in California in October 2003.
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Jeff Golden/Getty Image
Martial arts star Chuck Norris, who fought his way to fame in such 1980s action movies as The Delta Force, Code of Silence, and a trilogy of Missing in Action films, has died. He was 86.
In a fight, Norris tended to lead with his right…foot.
He all but trademarked a roundhouse kick that villains never seemed to see coming. He’d plant a heel in someone’s gut, spin once to knock him off balance with a boot to the chest, spin again to catch the guy’s shoulder with his instep, maybe throw in a punch just to vary the rhythm, and finish him off with a high kick to the head.
It was art, and widely imitated, but it did not kick off his career at first. He was knocking around martial arts competitions and teaching celebrity clients in Hollywood, including Priscilla Presley, Bob Barker, and Donny and Marie Osmond, when his pal Bruce Lee gave him his break in films by inviting him to play one of many villains in 1972’s The Way of the Dragon.
The film fetishized Norris’ hairy chest opposite Lee’s smooth one, and he gave a little smirk when he flattened Lee with a roundhouse kick early on. But it was Lee’s film, and by scene’s end, Norris was toast.
That could’ve been it, if one of Norris’ celebrity students, Steve McQueen, hadn’t suggested he take acting lessons. Norris did, and scored the leading role of a put-upon trucker in Breaker! Breaker!, an action flick shot in just 11 days.
It made money, and in a string of indie hits that followed, Norris established himself as America’s first homegrown martial arts movie star. At which point, Hollywood studios came calling with bigger budgets, and titles like Forced Vengeance, Silent Rage, Lone Wolf McQuade, and Invasion U.S.A. In that one, Norris played a mercenary combatting a Soviet-led terrorist army that lands in Florida at Christmastime, taunting foes with lines like, “If you come back in here, I’m gonna hit you with so many rights, you’re gonna beg for a left.”
He karate chopped and kickboxed his way through more than a dozen action films in the ’80s before leaping to TV, where he played Sergeant Cordell Walker, a decorated Vietnam veteran with Cherokee ancestry who championed the “Code of the Old West” in about 200 episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.
Though a mostly non-verbal tough guy was his go-to role on screen, offscreen he established philanthropies for children and veterans, became a nationally-syndicated health and fitness columnist, got active in Republican politics, and wrote about 10 books including not just martial arts manuals, but two memoirs, two novels, and a conservative activist handbook called Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America.
At his home in Texas, he continued to work out and train well into his 80s. And though mostly retired in recent years, he was amused to find himself the subject of internet memes, “Chuck Norris Facts” that celebrated his supposed toughness with hyperbole and exaggeration.
“Did you know that I got bit by a king cobra?” he asks in one video, adding with a chuckle, “and after five days of agonizing pain, the cobra died.”
Digital edited by Jennifer Vanasco; audio edited by Matteen Mokalla.
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