The Kamala Harris presidential campaign is experimenting with running ads that follow a popular formula of viral social media posts popularized on TikTok and commonly referred to as “overstimulation,” “ADHD” or “content sludge” videos.
As explained on Know Your Meme, this genre typically involves a split-screen of at least two videos, with the top half being the “main” piece of media—like a clip from a movie or TV show—and the bottom half being totally unrelated but visually stimulating video, like vibrant gameplay footage from the mobile game Subway Surfers or a video of someone cutting colorful bars of soap. The basic idea is that in a world where people have instant access to all types of hyper stimulating media on multiple screens, and especially on TikTok where an infinite supply of short vertical videos that are algorithmically served to users in a way that maximally harvests their attention, watching a short Family Guy clip on our phones is not stimulating enough. We have a condition that has come to be known online as “brain rot,” meaning we need at least two videos playing at the same time to hold our attention for more than just a few seconds, or videos that are so potently absurd they can’t be ignored, like skibidi toilet.