I need to be honest with everyone who’s reading this article right now: I’m a serial procrastinator, especially when it comes to gift-giving.
Even if I know weeks or months in advance of an event that I need to get a gift, there are many times when I’ll wait until the day before to get something. Why? Partially because I’m terrified of getting someone the wrong thing, and partially because I’m afraid that getting them the right thing will cost me my entire bank account.
However, this Christmas, things are different. I know exactly what I’m going to be getting at least one person — specifically, a certain Generation Alpha sister of mine.
From the creators of the incredible artistic touchstone known as Skibidi Toilet, we now have the “Skibidi Toilet Mystery Toilet” toy, sold at Amazon, Walmart, Target and probably a ton of other places. And it’s a great gift, one that I’ll most likely be purchasing for my sister.
Unfortunately — and despite my usual negative feelings about Skibidi Toilet — only the first part of what I wrote above is a lie. Skibidi Toilet isn’t an artistic touchstone; nevertheless, the toy is a legitimately good thing to buy for some people, and society is better off because of its existence.
How could I offer such bold praise to toys based on Skibidi Toilet, a series that has allegedly destroyed the attention spans of an entire generation? Because those same toys are — paradoxically — going to help us save the very same attention spans their creators helped destroy.
One of the most basic concepts in psychology is that of classical conditioning, or the idea that a mind can be trained to associate an — on its own — meaningless stimulus with a certain automatic response. We see this in many everyday contexts: a dog starts salivating when it hears a bell that indicates it’s time to eat, a person starts grinding their teeth when they are under stress without even realizing it, and so on. It’s a pretty basic psychological response; one which we have observed clearly through experimentation for more than a hundred years.
So, how in the hell does this relate to Skibidi Toilet?
Let’s apply the idea of classical conditioning to Skibid Toilet video consumption. When a Skibidi Toilet addict watches a TikTok, Reel or Short, they will — over a long enough period of time — develop certain automatic responses that prepare them to watch more of the short-form content, fomenting their addiction to it.
This happens by the same means that a person comes to salivate at the thought of food; someone has a positive experience with food, so they develop an automatic response to prepare for more of it. In the same way, a Skibidi Toilet-enjoyer releases certain neurotransmitters to prepare for more Skibidi Toilet.
The key is to use these automatic responses to make kids want to play in the real world instead of flicking through TikTok every day. These Skibidi Toilet toys help us do that because they take the stimulus — the characters of the make-believe world — and make kids want to play without needing screens to do it.
Look, I know you might think this is just some insane marketing campaign or that I’m a crackpot, but the reality is that Skibidi Toilet is here to stay, whatever the rest of us think of it.
It’s time to embrace the change and start using it to our advantage. Will you join the side with the power of the Skibidis? Or will you let an entire generation fall into oblivion because of your carelessness?
Buy someone a Skibidi Toilet for Christmas and help Generation Alpha reclaim their attention spans, one brain rot toy at a time.
Kaleb Blizzard is a philosophy sophomore and opinion writer for The Battalion.
