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[he/him] Queer, trans, disabled, disgruntled. Former librarian, future dust.
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At least in British primary schools, according to The Guardian: "‘That’s so AI!’ What gen Alpha’s biggest insult tells us", 9/24/2026.
Readers with easy access to school-age children can verify that this usage is indeed "everywhere" in the UK, and tell us whether it's also appearing in other Anglophone countries.
This 9/22 Substack "Gen Z’s new favorite insult" by (American) Racheal Janfaza suggests it might have originated on this side of the Atlantic:
Spend five minutes with a tween or teen and you’ll probably hear them say something along the lines of “that’s so AI.”
What they *really* mean is that something looks fake, that someone is being fake, or that someone is acting robotic, i.e. showing little emotion.
That's a bit different from what The Guardian article says about the meaning:
The kids – gen Alpha – have noticed that certain qualities of AI-generated slop, such as the way it’s superficially convincing but ultimately cheap and of dubious value, can be found in lots of other things: knock-off merchandise, exaggerated claims, excuses your parents make. If something is considered somehow suspect, then it is also, by definition, AI.
Here's an (American) LinkedIn post by Rita Goodroe from a month ago, commenting on the same usage. And I should have noticed this from Cory Doctorow's 9/14/2026 article "But do you use keyboard shortcuts? AI people are WEIRD":
That’s weird for the obvious reason that for most people “AI” is a synonym for “low quality.” No one ever said “My kid’s math teacher was replaced with AI” in a happy tone of voice. No one ever said, “Oh, great, they replaced their customer service department with AI chatbots!” My teenager and her friends use “That’s so AI” as a shorthand for “That’s low-effort shit.”
The glosses across these different sources are different but still generally consistent.
In forums on Reddit, women share tales of having perimenopause and menopause symptoms misdiagnosed or dismissed as mental health disorders, early-onset dementia, or autoimmune issues, resulting in months or years of unnecessary testing. They discuss sudden mood shifts of rage, and panic, and how they are routinely labeled by their doctor as primary psychiatric conditions rather than hormonal fluctuations, leading to unnecessary antidepressant prescriptions.
Severe brain fog, memory lapses, and sleeplessness from night sweats — all common signs of menopause or perimenopause — often terrify women into believing they have a degenerative cognitive disease before considering that these seemingly disconnected symptoms might be related to perimenopause or menopause.
There’s a particular cruelty buried in the new Medicaid work requirement rules recently proposed by the administration, and it’s received almost no attention. It’s not just the law itself, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion last summer. The problem is the regulation implementing those cuts, which goes further than the law requires.
When OBBBA passed, Congress was explicit: People with disabilities were exempt from work requirements. The bill’s own champions, including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), promised repeatedly that work requirements would not affect disabled people, and that Medicaid cuts were about “strengthening Medicaid for those who truly need it.” The law backed that up with a broad exemption for people who are “medically frail.”
I want to talk about one of the greatest ironies sitting right in the middle of the grocery aisle.
If I asked you who the largest supermarket operator in the United States is, you’d probably know the answer. By far, it’s Walmart.
But if I asked you which supermarket chain consistently scores the lowest in customer satisfaction across the U.S., you might be surprised to learn that it is also Walmart.
Here is the real paradox: According to an industry study widely reported in the grocery press, Walmart is also ranked as the single most trusted supermarket in the United States.
How on earth do you square that? Walmart is the largest seller of groceries, has the lowest customer satisfaction scores, and yet enjoys the highest trust scores.
The answer is simple: Price.
What motivates people right now? It’s keeping money in their pockets. We’ve been through a brutal cycle of inflation that, unfortunately, has heated back up and feels much uglier than it did a year or two ago. As everyday people struggle just to pay their bills, the price of groceries has come front and center.
Because of this pressure, market share is moving fast.
People are abandoning traditional grocers and flocking to stores that promise relief. Walmart is the obvious winner here, but they aren’t the only ones taking a massive bite out of the market. Costco Wholesale is right on the edge of becoming the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain. At the same time, hard-discounters like Aldi and Lidl are rapidly vacuuming up market share. It is all about price right now.
So where does that leave the historical, traditional supermarket chains?
Take a company like Kroger, which operates across the country under roughly two dozen different regional banners. Kroger has found itself at an enormous competitive disadvantage because it historically hasn’t been able to compete on price against these low-cost giants.
But they aren’t sitting still anymore. Kroger is officially bringing the battle back to the competition.
To stop losing customers, Kroger is slashing prices on thousands of items. And they are placing special emphasis exactly where Walmart, Aldi, Lidl, and Costco focus: private-label goods.
This is where the grocery fight is being won or lost right now. Americans are buying store brands in much larger numbers than they ever used to, bringing our shopping habits closer to the rest of the world.
When a massive player like Kroger decides to fight it out on price, it is incredibly good news for you and me. We have been so beaten up by food inflation. Having traditional supermarkets go toe-to-toe with alternative players like Costco, BJ’s Wholesale, and Walmart’s Sam’s Club means prices have to come down.
If you want to know how to absolutely throw your money away today, it’s simple: buy name brands.
Buying name brands in the supermarket is usually an emotional decision, not a financial one. We tell ourselves, “Well, my mom always bought this brand,” or “I only trust this specific detergent.”
Let me let you in on a secret: In my own home, we don’t have brand names almost at all. If you look inside my grocery buggy, you are going to see store brands across the board.
I will admit to one exception. Those of you who watch our show on YouTube know I love my soft drinks. I have never found a store-brand soda that I am actually happy with, so I willingly overpay for my favorite brand. But other than that single vice? It’s house brands all the way.
The real battleground for lowering your cost of living is in the grocery store aisle. I am glad to see Kroger jump into the ring, because when supermarkets fight for our business, our wallets win.
The post Grocery Prices Are Forcing a Major Change appeared first on Clark Howard.
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