“It may be that, as the 3rd-century Alexandrian Neoplatonist Origen speculated, these Italian Brainrot figurines were among the ‘special class of beings that have voluntary control over their own visibility, and thus are able freely to “offer themselves” to sight at will’. For how else could you explain their power over us? They look like absolute shit, yet we can’t get enough of them. But if Origen was primarily concerned with objects that command our attention mostly thanks to the solicitude of angels, it is sooner a demonic force that has unleashed this legion of chimeras on us.”