BookXcess Fights Doomscrolling With ‘Brain Un-Rot Library’

By Danial Martinus • 02 Apr 2026 in Pop Culture

Thirsty for JUICE content? Quench your cravings on our Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp

You’ve probably come across those TikTok videos that feature a narrator talking about something (usually a post from Reddit), while a completely unrelated video plays in the background. This is all intentional, as you may know, since people have extremely short attention spans.

It’s all thanks to brain rot and doomscrolling, which have effectively conditioned us to seek instant gratification as opposed to waiting patiently for something. But BookXcess is aiming to change that… by posting brain rot videos. They’re fighting fire with fire, kind of.

Welcome to the Brain Un-Rot Library

Comprising 100 select titles, The Brain Un-Rot Library essentially gives short summaries of books in the style of brain rot videos, hoping to encourage Gen-Z and others to pick up a book and read more.

The experimental campaign aims to reverse the effects of brain rot, specifically the decline in reading focus caused by endless doomscrolling.

@bookxcessmade him my fake boyfriend and now i’m the problem The Boy You Always Wanted Use UNROT10 for 10% off in our stores #redditstories #reddit_tiktok #reddit #wildconfessions #redditreading #familydrama #pets♬ original sound – BookXcess Official

“Our own research shows that people spend an average of six hours per day on their phones. Short-form video and endless scrolling are designed to make us increasingly hungry for flashy content and quick rewards,” says Prof. Stijn Massar, National University of Singapore.

“That means many people now don’t have the patience to sit through a 90-second video, let alone read a book. The Brain-Un Rot Library uses the addictive format of brain rot, re-engineered to foster engagement with the compelling narratives from real books, by real authors.”

While you might be inclined to think it’s an asinine attempt at getting Gen-Z to read, the campaign couldn’t have come at a better time. New research shows that average attention spans on digital devices have declined from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds in 2024.

It makes sense, since we’re constantly bombarded with stimuli in the form of notifications, short-form videos, and infinite scrolling.

More worrying is the fact that this reduced attention span is also making kids less intelligent, with Gen-Z now being the first generation in history to have lower average IQs than their predecessors (previous generations have always shown an improvement in IQ over the one preceeding them).

But hey, if you’re trying to stop the brain rot and you’d like to pick up a physical book, BookXcess is rolling out a physical version of their Brain Un-Rot Library across all BookXcess stores nationwide. The first one, which you can visit now, is at the Sunway Library in Kuala Lumpur.

To watch BookXcess’ brain rot book summaries on TikTok, click here.