Welcome back to your weekly youth culture roundup, where I decode exactly what these crazy kids are getting up to. If you’ve been feeling out of touch, don’t worry. I got you covered with everything from World Cup memes, to Generation Alpha slang, to college students outsourcing romance to artificial intelligence.
Ditto AI replacing Tinder
Younger people are using AI to take online dating to new, weird places. Ditto AI is a college-based dating platform that ditches the swiping and profiles of apps like Tinder. Instead, users fill out a survey and the algorithm gets to work finding a match. When a suitable partner is discovered, the app then sets up a date based on the interest of the couple. The idea is to circumvent the “too many choices” aspect of modern matchmaking. Instead of a flood of matches or rejections, Ditto AI sets up a single date, eliminating hours of scrolling, message app small talk, and having to make decisions about what you’ll actually do on your date.
According to the company, Ditto AI does more than just match up people who like the same things. The company claims it “brings your ‘profiles’ to life as agents,” that “interact, learn, and evolve.” The company promises it will “simulate interactions with everyone in your school, city—even the entire country,” until it finds the right person for you.”
Ditto AI doesn’t offer this service yet, but the logical extension is a conversational LLM AI agent to help people on a date know what to say to each other to eliminate the awkward conversations of the first date. The future of dating is a couple sitting across from each other feeding one another lines perfectly crafted to appeal to the other person, until eventually we cut out the middlemen and let the AI agents date each other while we all run away screaming to live in a jungle.
What does TSPMO mean?
This slang acronym means “this shit (is) pissing me off.” It’s mostly used by members of generation alpha, and generally just in comment sections.
(If you’d like more definitions of Gen A and Z slang, check out Lifehacker’s slang glossary.)
Viral video of the week: influencer vs. grocery store
This week’s viral video depicts influencer Catherine Ebs making a trip to a Sam’s Club grocery store. Okay, maybe not the most compelling content in the world, but Ebs’ incredulous reaction to the perceived deficiencies of the small town market caught people’s attention and inspired hilarious responses. Check it out:
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And here’s another parody for good measure:
What do you think so far?
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It’s hard to see what, exactly, Ebs is even reacting to—it’s a normal supermarket—but influencers can be strange. Maybe she was expecting a display of hand-foraged mushrooms or something. In any case, the internet was quick to rally in defense of normal people shopping in normal grocery stores, with comment sections roasting the influencer mercilessly enough that she nuked the original video and doesn’t seem to have posted anything since. Too bad, because I’d love to hear her explanation.
Erling Haaland wins World Cup meme war
His team may have been knocked out of the World Cup contest, but Norway’s Erling Haaland has become the star of World Cup 2026 anyway. Haaland basically dragged his mediocre national team to its first ever quarter-final spot in the contest, scoring seven goals of Norway’s 13 goals in five games, but Haaland’s online fame has as much to do with his charisma and personality as it does with his skills on the pitch. Over the last few weeks, Haaland’s Instagram follower count has grown from around 50 million to nearly 70 million followers. Fans are in love with his Viking style, both on the pitch and off, and the way he spent the World Cup drinking in American culture by doing things like buying his entire team cowboy hats, and leaving the U.S. with a taxidermied whiskey raccoon:
Lionel Messi loses World Cup meme war
Argentinian soccer superstar Lionel Messi is regarded as one of the best players in history and Argentina is favored to take home the cup, but Messi’s losing the 2026 meme war. Yeah, he has over 500 million Instagram followers, but the backlash is real.
Messi’s been given the nickname “FIFA’s Princess,” and nicknames are hard to shake. The perception is that Messi has a special place in the heart of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and that refs are fixing games to make sure that Argentina doesn’t get defeated. There’s no proof or anything, but when has that ever stopped sports fans, especially when there are funny memes to be made?
