- People on Twitter have been sharing photos of themselves at age 20, sometimes intentionally posting bad photos.
- The trend was sparked on Monday, April 13, by a tweet from Twitter user @202natt, who asked generally what people looked like at 20.
- Photo trends like this have arisen before, like the early 2019 #2009vs2019 challenge, or the Instagram-based "Until Tomorrow" trend.
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The latest nostalgic Twitter trend is posting pictures of yourself at age 20, and people are taking to it with reckless abandon. The trend appears to have been sparked by a tweet from user @202natt, who tweeted a simple prompt on Monday, April 13:
The trend began to take off over the course of the week, with people quoting the original tweet and adding photos of themselves at age 20. At a certain point, however, the tweets became so pervasive that the original context of @202natt's tweet was lost: people were just posting photos of themselves without offering much other commentary, causing other people to first wonder why people were posting photos of their 20-year-old selves, and then proceed to post photos of their 20-year-old selves.
At a certain point, a few hashtags emerged for the trend, with people intermittently tagging their photos with #MeAt20, #20yearsold, and #Age20. Many were just posting them with no context, though. On Thursday, April 16, Twitter was full of people sharing photos of themselves with little to no context other than the fact that everyone else was doing it too. A few celebs like Lin-Manuel Miranda got in on the action as well.
Photo trends like this on Twitter aren't uncommon, and the trend's popularity isn't much of a surprise given the degree to which people are turning to social media for attention while social distancing. Past the current circumstances though, people love to post photos of themselves. For older millennials (or anyone else older participating in the trend), photos of themselves at age 20 represent an at least marginally different era. It's part time-capsule, part showing off your personal cringe.
The #2009vs2019 photo challenge from early 2019 was based on a similar principle of showcasing glow-ups over the duration of a decade. Posting a bad photo of yourself doesn't matter so long as people know that you've changed since, but at a certain point, photo challenges like this are just part of the fabric of social media. Take the "Until Tomorrow" challenge that's been spreading across Instagram recently, which involves posting bad photos of yourself and challenging everyone who likes them to do the same.
Even so, for some, there's no good reason to air out old pictures, and that's perfectly fine too.
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