In the first half of 2025, she racked up over 55 million views on TikTok and 4 million likes, mostly from tweens glued to their cellphones. Not bad for an AI-generated cartoon ballerina with a cappuccino teacup for a head. Her name is Ballerina Cappuccina. Her smiling, girlish face is accompanied by a deep, computer-generated male voice singing in Italian — or, at least, some Italian. The rest is gibberish.
She is one of the most prominent characters in the internet phenomenon known as “Italian Brain Rot,” a series of memes that exploded in popularity this year, consisting of unrealistic AI-generated animal-object hybrids with absurdist, pseudo-Italian narration.
