Digital
April 24, 2026
The little fruit soap opera and the verticalization of the absurd
Playful content engages, but does not feed the cognitive repertoire and contributes to brainrot
This week my feed was invaded. But it wasn’t by hackers. It was a singular invasion, I would say: it was taken over by humanized fruits, in strident dialogues and unexpected scripts. What we are witnessing now with the so-called “fruit soap operas” requires an analysis that goes beyond aesthetic curiosity or simple strangeness.
Although I intend to discuss the format of vertical novelas as a macro trend in content consumption at another time, it is impossible to ignore how this specific recorte accelerates urgent discussions about retention and the quality of human attention in the digital environment.
I call a set of serialized narratives in short videos, lasting 2 to 3 minutes, produced with artificial intelligence, distributed on fast-consumption platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok, which capture attention with very low cognitive cost, “fruit soap operas”.
They function as microdramas: quick conflict, escalation in seconds, incomplete resolution, and an explicit invitation to keep watching, through a hook at the end. The aesthetic is playful. The content is absurd. The logic is industrial. And the combination is quite efficient, especially from the perspective of retention and remembering that we live in the era of the economy of attention. The success was such that there are already people selling courses on how to generate extra income by creating this content in AI.
The rise of vertical content (short social media videos) has transformed entertainment. Fruit soap operas represent the materialization of this change. Unlike traditional dramaturgy, which operates under a long-term fictional pact staged by humans, these productions use the technical efficiency of artificial intelligence to produce in large volumes.
The creation of characters like Moranguete or Abacatudo allows for a quick personification of archetypes that the audience identifies instantly, facilitating engagement with the content without the need for in-depth prior context. It is entertainment of impact, in which screen time is earned through shock and immediate curiosity.
The success of these videos brings a fundamental concept to digital culture: brainrot. Loosely translated as the rotting of attentional capacity, the phenomenon describes the chronic consumption of hyper-stimulating content that prioritizes technical retention over intellectual substance. In these short series, the retention strategy is sophisticated and often invisible to the average user. It hooks you in, but does not feed your cognitive repertoire.
Despite the playful, aesthetic, and almost infantilized character, and in contrast to this, these short stories caused me discomfort due to the heavy and complex themes they present, which go beyond the absurd, the chaotic, the surreal. Behind vibrant colors and animations that could attract a young and child audience, the stories frequently address perverse messages. Watching some episodes, I found messages loaded with misogyny, racism, fatphobia, aggressiveness, and reinforcement of gender stereotypes, in addition to themes like prostitution brought up in some of the videos.
The character Moranguete often appears hypersexualized, while Abacatudo plays the role of the “alpha male”, a misogynistic behavior associated with masculinist movements, added to toxic components that, under the guise of a fruit, create a zone of worrying ambiguity. In some videos, Abacatudo uses verbal aggression towards Moranguete because of the short clothes she wears.
Another point that draws attention: the deliberate use of disconnected captions. The text displayed often has no relation to the visual narrative; it serves as a tool for distraction and anchoring to deceive the platforms’ algorithm, keeping the user engaged while the video runs in loop.
We are faced with an engineering that uses the market’s most scarce resource, time, as a medium of exchange, without offering in return a value that justifies such cognitive investment. When the focus of content production shifts from utility to mere forced permanence, the digital ecosystem suffers a qualitative degradation.
In my search through the feed, I found recurring comparisons with traditional prime-time soap operas, which I consider technically inaccurate. On open television, there is an explicit narrative contract, in addition to regulation and visible editorial responsibility. The plots follow a longer period and are constructed by humans.
The short microdrama of social networks, on the other hand, operates in a way where absurdity is the main fuel. The danger lies not only in the content itself, but in the normalization of messages that might not be accepted in other communication contexts. The brevity of the format prevents the construction of narrative consequences, leaving only the impact of the conflict as a trace in the viewer’s mind.
I also found cases of brands and even public bodies that, attracted by the volume of views, try to capitalize on this phenomenon. They use the visual resources of these mini-series to “surf the wave” of viralization. In a more restricted analysis, I still have doubts about the value of associating companies and institutions with characters who are considered, at the very least, ethically ambiguous.
It is important to remember that, in a digital culture like ours, what we pay attention to is what we are validating as a model of, in this case, valuable content. By endorsing the playful that camouflages the perverse, we collaborate in sustaining a digital culture that prioritizes the hijacking of attention over the delivery of real value.
But there are still many other layers to be addressed, which do not fit into a single article. For now, I will stick with the provocation that, for me, is the most appropriate now: attention is a daily vote. The system distributes what it retains. And we reinforce what we watch. The question, then, is not just why this goes viral. It is what this is causing in our way of consuming, normalizing, and remembering. It is still worth questioning the reasons that lead us to consume the playful packaged by heavy and controversial themes. In this context of digital culture, we still have much to think about, elaborate, discuss, and decide. Much more than “hyping“.
