brainworm

A tune that keeps replaying in one's head or that one keeps thinking about, especially if unwanted.

A prompt — usually directed at yourself or someone online — to pause and evaluate whether a belief, fixation, or recurring thought is actually reasonable or whether it's a brainworm doing the talking. Performing a brainworm check means stepping back from a spiraling idea and asking: is this a real, defensible position, or has the algorithm fed me this take so many times that I've absorbed it as truth? The term is part audit, part intervention, and part self-aware humor about the internet's ability to rewire everyone's thinking without their consent.

A person, account, content creator, or media outlet whose primary function — whether intentional or not — is to implant obsessive, irrational, or radicalizing ideas into other people's heads. A brainwormer operates through repetition, emotional provocation, and algorithmic exploitation, flooding their audience with takes so consistently extreme or absurd that followers gradually normalize them. The term carries judgment: being called a brainwormer means you are actively spreading infectious bad thinking, not just holding unusual views.