A Guide for Adults Without a Connection to the World Around Us on Children’s Culture: “The Psychology of Dark Mango”
This week’s journey into the cultural subconscious of young people is darker than usual. Memes are more chaotic, Pokémon cards are harder to get, and ex-boyfriends are somehow worse than usual. From the inexplicable “dark mango psychology” to the TikTok horror parade, this week’s youth culture has the energy of an evil amusement park. Let’s dive into the darkness together.
What is “Dark Mango Psychology”?
To understand Gen Alpha’s “dark mango psychology” memes, you’ll have to go to some weird places and embrace brain rot: Gen A’s self-referential, online-only style of meme-making defies logical explanation, but I’m going to try anyway, so help me God.
In late May, TikTok user @rip_mango20 posted “Dark Mango Psychology Explained,” the first video on the topic. In it, a distorted voice asks, “Have you ever played Blox Fruits and risked your life while holding a bunch of mangoes in your mouth? Well, it’s called Dark Mango Psychology…” and so on, but no psychology is actually explained. You can watch the video here:
If this clip had been viewed a few hundred times, you might dismiss it as a self-righteous “am I nuts?” question, but it’s been viewed millions of times, so it means something to someone . Anyway, here’s my best attempt at explaining it, courtesy of knowyourmeme.com :
The character featured in the video is a variation of “trollface”, an online icon that has been around since 2008. Blox Fruit is a minigame in Generation A’s favorite gaming/playing platform Roblox . The line “Have you ever played X and risked your life?” is a reference to an anime called Blue Lock , which asks a question about playing soccer. “Mango” is a reference to this video , which features a song called “phonk” about mangoes based on audio extracted from this video . “Phonk” is a musical subgenre in which heavily distorted, lo-fi instruments play a slower variation of EDM music. (It’s unlistenable.) For reasons that defy explanation, this video has caught on among rotten-brained people, who have begun reworking the original post, adding other meaningless words like “mustard” and “marmalade” (references to even more obscure rotten-brained memes) and using the phrase “dark mango psychology” to describe something like — chaotic energy? It’s hard to say. I’m sure there are layers of meaning here that only people under the age of 15 can understand, but I did the best I could. Maybe it’s something you and I are not meant to understand, and we should just wait for it to pass.
What is the Person of the Year trend?
Let’s talk about memes made about people, specifically toxic man memes, a reliable source of bitter online comedy. The latest TikTok trend is called “Man of the Year,” and it’s not a celebration of men being awesome. Instead, women are sharing evidence of the abuse, manipulation, and general rudeness their ex-boyfriends have endured, all while a few bars of Lorde’s “ Man of the Year” are playing. It’s a simple idea, but these are some powerful videos.
A candidate for Person of the Year is this guy who remixed his girlfriend’s crying EDM song into a truly awful song:
Or this young gentleman who abandoned both his girlfriend and his child:
There is even a famous person of the year – Justin Bieber:
And the number of cruel texts is simply off the charts.
Sabrina Carpenter’s New Album Cover Causes Controversy
In other news from the front lines of the gender wars, singer Sabrina Carpenter has posted some photos and the title of her upcoming album, and it’s a total provocation. What could be the cover of Man’s Best Friend looks like this:
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On the cover, Carpenter plays against type, channeling her bubblegum pink pop princess image into something darker and more provocative. I’m sure the point is to cause a stir, and it’s clearly working. Top Instagram comments include: “Sabrina, this isn’t the murder you think… :/,” “Love Sabrina, but this picture – why is the man in it like that? This is not a very empowering image for women. I think it’s a mistake.” and “Explain to me again how this isn’t male-centered? How this isn’t satisfying to the male gaze?” I think Madonna in her prime would have literally murdered these kids.
It’s weird that anyone can still be outraged by pop stars creating images designed to stoke cultural anger and/or sell records, but I think internet critics are wringing their hands for no reason. We won’t know for sure until the album comes out in August to provide context, but judging by the single “Manchild” about idiots who can’t take care of themselves and the fact that Carpenter is a smart man, it seems like the intent is to poke fun at the “male gaze,” with the statement being, “Can you believe these dumbasses see us like this/want us to be like this?”
Plus, Spinal Tap did it first:
Generation Z is ruining bar crawls
Generation Z is bad at going to bars. Apparently, young people refuse to leave bar tabs open . This may be because they are more frugal than previous generations. Or it may be simple ignorance. “These kids never learned how to be real bar patrons,” a bartender told the New York Times .
The bartender is right, but I don’t blame Gen Z for their poor drinking etiquette (if that’s what it is). If it’s born of money consciousness, I get it: have you seen how much cocktails cost in 2025? If it’s ignorance, I get it, too. Going to bars can be confusing if you’re new to them. They’re loud, busy, chaotic, and governed by a set of practices and assumptions that no one is taught and that have no precedent in other types of transactions. Especially the bar bill: It’s not something we hand over our cards and just leave with any other type of shopkeeper.
I love that Gen Z is educating each other and expressing their feelings through TikTok videos like this one:
Viral Video of the Week: Pokemon Scalpers
Even this week’s viral video is dark and dystopian, but it’s also educational. Before I saw this week’s viral video, I didn’t even know Pokemon scalpers existed .
As you can see, Leo is a little kid who loves Pokemon, and he wants this special edition Pikachu with the kind of pure desire that only a teenager can have. So he and his mom and dad spent 151 days trying to beat the scalpers at their local kiosks so the little guy could get his sets. But they never beat the scalpers, and Leo never got his Pikachu.
In economic terms, speculators spend resources (time, money, Red Bull) to extract a free transfer of wealth from others without creating new value. This is classic rent-seeking behavior: manipulating the market to extract profit rather than to produce anything of value. As Adam Smith, the father of economics, put it, speculators are trying to “reap where they never sowed” — though Smith probably didn’t foresee a future in which the invisible hand of the market swipes a Pikachu card out of a child’s hand and gives it to a grown man who smells funny and doesn’t shave. That Leo won’t get his Pikachu is a negative externality — a cost borne by someone who isn’t a party to the transaction. His tears aren’t factored into the price of the secondary market, which is frighteningly effective at delivering disappointment.
Look, I know this isn’t the worst thing that’s happening in this evil world (honestly, I hope it’s the worst thing that ever happens to Leo), but maybe capitalism could give some time to kids who like Pokemon?