The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: What Are Aura Battles?

This week's trip into the culture of young people is filled with bad ideas and stupidity, but it's that specific kind of stupidity that's the sole purview of youth-unserious, frequently baffling, but ultimately harmless. Old people are just as stupid, but our stupidity has consequences. Debating whether ditching basic hygiene to be more attractive is dumb as dirt, but it's not going to crash the housing market, and no one really dies in an aura battle. So here's what's going on with the young people and what it all means.

What are aura battles?

To Gens Z and A, "aura" is, essentially, coolness or charisma ("rizz" if you prefer). An "aura battle" is a public contest in which the person with the most aura, as determined by crowd and/or comment section reaction, is the winner. It's a little like a breakdance or rap battle, but without the talent.

The trend seems to have originated in Latin America in the beginning of 2026 and quickly spread worldwide. It's recently come to the U.S. Here's Mr. Poo Poo and Latavious Quavious squaring off this past weekend in NYC at what was billed as the "first-ever American aura championship."

I've been watching Aura Battles for the last hour or so, just to see if I can determine what adds up to "aura," and I got nothing-it seems like most of the "battle" is doing bad versions of meme dances. But I'm not dismissing aura battles; the first breakdance battles were probably pretty rough too, and anything that gets kids outside and hanging out with each other is cool.

Viral video of the week: The final round of the American Aura Battle championship

It's unlikely, but aura battles could develop into an organic artistic expression of the soul of the younger generation. If so, the video below is history being made, the equivalent of the first time Cool Herc set up two turntables to play break beats. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the final round of the first-ever American aura battle championship.

(I feel like Applewood got robbed, tbh.)

Cat in the Hat memes inspire international warnings, FBI investigations

Police departments, school districts, and other authority figures from Baltimore to Donegal are sounding the alarm over a terrifying new trend of...kids posting memes about The Cat in the Hat.

The often AI-generated videos cropping up on TikTok and the like feature someone dressed as the famous cartoon cat and cryptic warnings. They sometimes include scary music. This has led to online rumors that there's a Cat in the Hat serial killer on the loose. There isn't, but the trend did lead to an incident that's at least a little real. In Constantine, Mich., a user called "catinthehat" reportedly issued threats against specific students, prompting state police and the FBI to get involved.

Still, authorities all over the world locking down schools, stepping up police patrols, and threatening to arrest people over a meme seems more than a little silly. I get that school shootings are scary, but maybe shrugging at the easy availability of firearms and freaking out over Cat in the Hat memes isn't the best approach to stopping them?

What is pheromone maxxing?

Completing this week's triptych of idiocy is "pheromone maxxing." -Maxxing, as I'm sure you know, is doing something a lot. Pheromones are chemicals that some animals release that influence the behavior of other members of their species, so pheromone maxxing is trying to influence the behaviors of others through your stink. Supposedly, young men in the "looksmaxxing" community are skipping showers and not washing their clothing in an attempt to make young women like them more. It's difficult to determine how widespread the belief is, but there are at least a few would-be influencers unironically advocating for the practice, although the vast majority's online response is basically, "ew."

So is there anything to it? While humans do produce chemical odors in response to emotional states, they aren't actually "pheromones" like in the animal world, and the number of smelly, single men at comic book conventions provides strong corollary evidence that not showering is a bad strategy for attracting potential mates. On the other hand, there's this guy's TikTok, where he reports he stopped using cologne and started getting more and more compliments. I believe him, because can you imagine how horrible his cologne was?

How the Lesbian Space Princess is uniting online fandoms

Lesbian Space Princess is a (barely) animated 2025 movie from Australia. Written and directed by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, and according to some online, it's bringing about world peace.

LSP tells the story of Princess Saira from the planet Clitopolis and her battle with the Straight White Maliens. Even though it has a critical rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, it wasn't well-known outside of Australia. But recently, people started posting clips of the movie online. Because everyone (except critics, apparently) thinks it's bad.

Right-wing people hate-post LSP as an example of "overly woke" media; lefties hate-post it because it's so on-the-nose and terminally online that it's painfully unfunny. Fans of Hazbin Hotel post about LSP because it's way worse than their favorite franchise. So do Marvel fanboys. Before long, Memes like this-

-started popping up featuring the phrase "Just this Once," as fandoms realized that they at least share this one thing in common. The Great Truce of 2026 is bringing Naruto and One Piece fans together. Football fans are coming together with futbol fans. It's so widespread, the belief is growing that Lesbian Space Princess badness is so complete that it's bringing about world peace.