About

Brick Breaker Brainrot refers to a genre of short-format brainrot videos that combine the gameplay of brick breaker games such as Break Breaker and Brickmania with reaction videos that change depending on the in-game situation. The genre originated on YouTube Shorts in October 2022. In January 2024, brick breaker videos combined with prominent cat reaction clips such as Huh? Cat, Sad Cat Meowing and Chipi Chipi Chapa Chapa achieved virality.

Origin

Brick breaker is a genre of arcade video games spawned by the 1976 game Breakout in which the player manipulates a paddle to repeatedly reflect a falling ball at bricks until all of them are destroyed.

On October 5th, 2022, YouTuber^[1] Tikyo uploaded a Short video titled "MOST SATISFYING GAME OF YOUR LIFE" in which Brickmania gameplay was paired with two reaction videos that changed depending on the in-game situation, with an animation of Brawl Stars character El Primo set to "Bere Bere" by Alex Ferrari playing when the ball is breaking bricks. The video (shown below, left) garnered over 8,200 views in two years. On October 12th, Tikyo uploaded^[2] a similar short, which accumulated over 15 million views in the same period (shown below, right).

Spread

In the following months, Tikyo uploaded hundreds of similarly styled Breakmania videos paired with various pairs of reaction clips, with multiple examples gaining millions of views on YouTube. On October 15th, 2022, Tikyo made an upload^[3] that received over 41 million views on YouTube in two years, the channel's most-watched video to date (shown below, left). On February 15th, 2023, the YouTuber uploaded^[4] a video that received over 26 million views in one year (shown below, right).

In December 2023, YouTuber Megadote started uploading videos that followed the formula but used Many Bricks Breaker gameplay and cat reaction videos, such as Sad Cat Meowing, Huh? Cat and Chipi Chipi Chapa Chapa instead. On December 24th, 2023, Megadote made the first such upload,^[5] which accumulated over 12.6 million views in two months (shown below, left). On December 31st, Megadote uploaded^[6] their most-watched video to date that garnered over 44 million views in two months (shown below, right).

The trend maintained a presence in the YouTube Shorts section through the early months of 2024, with multiple YouTube users referring to the videos as brainrot.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References