A Disconnected Adult’s Guide to Kid Culture: Why Ditto AI Could Be the Next Tinder
Welcome back to your weekly youth culture roundup, where I decode what exactly these crazy kids are up to. If you’ve been feeling out of touch, don’t worry. I’ll cover everything from World Cup memes to Generation Alpha slang and students handing over romantic relationships to artificial intelligence.
Similarly, artificial intelligence is replacing Tinder.
Young people are using AI to take online dating to a new, innovative level. Ditto AI is a dating platform aimed at students that does away with the swiping and profiles found on apps like Tinder. Instead, users fill out a profile, and the algorithm begins searching for a suitable partner. Once a suitable partner is found, the app sets up a date based on the couple’s interests. The idea is to overcome the “too many choices” problem common in modern dating systems. Instead of a flood of matches or rejections, Ditto AI sets up a single date, eliminating hours of swiping through profiles, chatting on messengers, and deciding what to do on a date.
According to the company, Ditto AI does more than just match you with people who share similar interests. It claims to “bring your ‘profiles’ to life as agents” who “interact, learn, and grow.” It promises to “simulate interactions with everyone in your school, city—even the entire country” until it finds the perfect match.
Ditto AI doesn’t offer this service yet, but a logical next step would be a conversational AI agent with an LLM license that would help people on dates figure out what to say to each other to avoid awkward first-date conversations. The future of dating is a couple sitting across from each other, finding the perfect phrases to go with each other, until eventually we cut out the middleman and let AI agents date each other, and we all run screaming to live in the jungle.
What does TSPMO mean?
This slang abbreviation means “this pisses me off.” It’s most often used by members of Generation Alpha, and usually only in comments.
(If you need more definitions of Gen A and Gen Z slang, check out Lifehacker’s slang glossary .)
Viral Video of the Week: Blogger vs. Grocery Store
This week, a video of influencer Katherine Abs going to a Sam’s Club grocery store went viral. Okay, maybe it’s not the most engaging content in the world, but Abs’s incredulous reaction to the small-town market’s perceived shortcomings captured people’s attention and sparked a slew of hilarious responses. Check it out:
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Here’s another parody to complete the picture:
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It’s hard to tell what Abs was reacting to—it was, after all, a regular supermarket—but influencers can be weird. Perhaps she was expecting a display of hand-picked mushrooms or something similar. Either way, the internet quickly came to the defense of regular people shopping at regular grocery stores, and the influencer was so mercilessly mocked in the comments that she deleted the original video and apparently hasn’t posted anything since. It’s a shame, because I’d really like to hear her explanation.
Erling Haaland won the World Cup in meme warfare.
Even though his team was eliminated from the World Cup, Norway’s Erling Haaland still emerged as the star of the 2026 World Cup. Haaland effectively carried his mediocre national team to their first-ever quarterfinal appearance at the tournament, scoring seven of Norway’s 13 goals in five games, but his online popularity is as much about his charisma and personality as his on-pitch prowess. In recent weeks , Haaland’s Instagram following has grown from around 50 million to nearly 70 million. Fans are raving about his “Viking” style both on and off the field, as well as the way he spent the World Cup embracing American culture, such as buying the entire team cowboy hats and leaving the United States with a whiskey-fueled stuffed raccoon.
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Lionel Messi lost the meme war at the World Cup.
Argentine football superstar Lionel Messi is considered one of the best players in history, and Argentina is considered the favorite to win the cup, but Messi is losing the 2026 meme war. Yes, he has over 500 million Instagram followers , but the backlash is very real.
Messi has earned the nickname “The FIFA Princess,” and nicknames are hard to shake. There’s a theory that Messi holds a special place in FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s heart, and that referees rig matches to prevent Argentina from losing. There’s no evidence, but has that ever stopped sports fans, especially when it makes for funny memes?