A Brief Guide to the "2009 vs. 2019" Social Media Photo Craze

The New Year is off to a terrifying start. After years of laying low, content with occasionally complaining about mulch on neighborhood message boards, Generation X and Baby Boomers are Fully Online. No longer satisfied with ruining the 2016 election by sharing memes about Pizzagate, they've moved to creating their very own original #viral #moments. In this case, the first #viral #moment of 2019: The How Hard Did Aging Hit You Challenge.

Said challenge is exactly what it sounds like—people post side-by-side photos of how they look in 2019 versus what they looked like some number of years ago. (Some users went with their first-ever Facebook photo, while others went back 10 years, to 2009.) Its origins are difficult to parse, as is the case with all Internet trends, but Facebook appears to be the social platform on which things took off. Facebook's "Memories" feature is a likely culprit for inspiring the madness, since it bombards users with long-forgotten photos that no rational person would ever want to see again.

How Hard Did Aging Hit You has since metastasized into the Glow-Up Challenge, and spawned a handful of hashtags—#10YearChallenge and #2009vs2019—that are readily searchable on Instagram and Twitter. That this thing began without a hashtag is hardly a surprise, as effective use of hashtags is the last bastion of the Internet that those generations have yet to crack. But that day is fast approaching, and we ought to be prepared for the worst when it arrives.

In the meantime, the splintering of the challenge from How Hard Did Aging Hit You to the Glow-Up shows how different age groups are taking in the moment. For 20-somethings who choose an embarrassing teenage photo and prop it up next to a mirror selfie, the development from pubescent mess to Instagram success is self-evident. But that sort of participation depends on one's willingness to allow the world to see you at 16, which, no thanks. (One GQ employee, who has asked to remain anonymous, opted out of the challenge on the grounds that he was unwilling to share a college freshman ID featuring his Jedi braid. It ruled, though).

There are a few clear winners of this challenge: Older Millennials and younger Gen Xers get to flaunt a photo of themselves in their 30s versus a photo in their 20s, both of which are periods that entail relatively low embarrassment risk. Silicon Valley billionaires with blood boys can show off their decade of hard work. And, there's this:

As always, Pharrell wins. May we all aspire to be Pharrell.