Turning 30 is the point at which people are expected to "figure it all out." And indeed, many of those who say goodbye to their 20s begin a new chapter in their lives by getting engaged, pregnant, or tired of everyone around them.
The big 3-0 is often built up to be the biggest celebration after our "coming of age" 18ths. A time to get ambitious. A time to achieve. But while important career changes, 401(k)s, and the inability to party past midnight (not to mention the burning matter of "settling down") might sound anxiety-inducing, in reality, our 30s aren't something to be afraid of. They're when things start to get good.
But to get the full picture of what happens during this decade, let's look at the Instagram account Thirty AF. This millennial heaven shares funny memes, relatable tweets, and all kinds of content that perfectly capture the highs and lows during this period. So continue scrolling and check out some of its most popular posts!
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He used "You are a nerd" as an excuse to break up with her? Wow... He clearly had self-worth issues, assuming it meant he was not good enough for her.
The account is run by two pals, Chloe Jankowitz, 35, and Peter West, 34. "We've been good friends since day one of our freshmen year at Emerson College in Boston, MA," the guys told Bored Panda. "Since graduating in 2009, we've always lived far apart, in different states or sometimes in different countries."
"We have a very similar sense of humor and a way we've kept in touch is through sharing memes and videos with each other. In 2018, we decided to start Thirty AF as a fun way to share these jokes with a wider group of friends. We never really thought it would ever grow into anything more than a fun hobby, but eventually, it really started picking up and we decided to put more of our focus into figuring out what our brand was and finding creative new ways to engage our quickly growing following through reposted content and regular features that we created ourselves. We both have backgrounds in marketing and media, and found that our combined skills helped us create something that stood out from other meme accounts and build a fun and engaged community of 30 somethings."
I never answer if I don't know who's calling. The decent ones send a text after saying who they are and/or what it is about. I wish all people could do that instead of keep calling several times.
At the moment, Chloe and Peter have a whopping 1.6-million following and this huge fan army also has a few notable names, like singer Demi Lovato and actor Channing Tatum.
"When life changed dramatically for everyone in March 2020 and we all found ourselves spending a lot more time at home and a lot more time with our phones, we put even more energy into building Thirty AF. We grew by over 1 million followers in a single year, and it is now a full-time job for both of us," the duo said.
The project has also expanded to TikTok and recently got its first spinoff — a food account, called Hungry AF. "We run an online shop and release a yearly Nostalgia Box that is a fun mix of products from nostalgic brands like Dunkaroos and the Lisa Frank nail wraps from Orly, and also fun products featuring nostalgic references. Our 2021 box sold out in under 24 hours! We're also working on some very exciting things for 2022 including a touring pop-up event and a TV game show - we can't share a lot of info on that yet, but it is insanely exciting and something we never thought would happen!"
🤣🤣🤣 I'm putting on my footwear before attempting to put on my legings, twice!
Naturally, all of this effort demands a lot of time and energy. "The way we manage Thirty AF has changed a lot over the years. Much of the content that we post is submitted by creators."
"We love meeting creators and comedians who are new to Instagram and helping drive traffic to their pages; we have networked with a ton of incredibly talented creators over the years and share their content a lot. We keep a close eye on meme trends and will often share roundups of the funniest memes and tweets related to trending topics (the latest being the 'According to the CDC' meme trend). We're also part of a lot of online groups, particularly for millennials and different nostalgia groups, and a lot of content comes from there. We also create a lot of original content mostly for our stories and TikTok," Chloe and Peter explained.
For the stories, the account has a daily feature. "Followers apply to be featured as our daily single looking for love. We share their photo and info about them and encourage other followers to DM them. This has been going on for almost two years and a few engagements have come from it so far!"
There's also the semi-regular Small Business Saturday feature where Chloe and Peter share the businesses they love, as well as holiday gift guides. "We have a lot of friends who are business owners and have so much respect for millennials who have decided to reject the corporate hustle and create their own businesses, so helping support people like that, especially businesses run by women and BIPOC is super important to us."
"We also do regular story poll features like our Bop or Flop feature where followers decide if a song is a bop or a flop. When songs score over 65% bop, they are added to our Bop or Flop playlist on Spotify that has almost 40k followers," the two of them added.
Their latest story feature is Now That's What I Call Music brackets where followers rank albums from one of the Now That's What I Call Music. This gig takes Chloe and Peter an entire week and at the end of it, they announce what is the biggest bop. "People (including the two of us!) get so into it. We are starting our NOW 7 bracket next week, we're both rooting for Survivor by Destiny's Child to be the winner... But we'll see. Britney and NSYNC do seem to win a lot! We're going to bracket Now 1-10 and then do an all-stars round where the winning tracks face off against each other. It's really fun!"
Thirty AF's content touches on a lot of different themes but some of the most recurring ones are "self-deprecating humor that millennials relate to, commentary on issues facing millennials such as salaries ... not having the ability to own a home, some tongue in cheek 'okay boomer' humor (love you mom and dad!), finding relatable humor in issues like anxiety and depression, etc."
But the biggest hits are nostalgic posts for the 90s and early 2000s. "The past few years have been really weird and stressful for everyone, and looking back on the comfort of these things that we all bonded over as kids has provided a lot of comfort and connection during these turbulent times," Chloe and Peter said.
I was trying to remember the name of a song recently. All I knew for definite was that "Mountain" and "Sea" were in the lyrics. It took a bit of searching (yes on Google) to find it. FYI it was "Truly, Madly, Deeply" by Savage Garden.
"We really do try to read every message we get and reply when we can, and one of my favorite types of messages is a 'PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one who remembers [insert obscure TV/music/product/game reference from the 90s]' type of message and this always gives us ideas for posts and features. So much of the 90s feels like a bizarre fever dream, and being able to connect with other people in an 'OMG I remember that too!' moment is such a fun and, not to sound cheesy, wholesome way to connect," the team behind Thirty AF added.
"There is so much that is driving everyone apart right now and put effort into focusing on our differences, nostalgia is something that can, for a minute at least, make us focus on the things that brought us together as kids. And that has been a main and growing theme of Thirty AF and something we're excited to keep sharing!"
Wait what? Women can be happy and feel fulfilled by having a successful career?
Hardly. It has a learning curve, but if you know how to use it, it's very user friendly. It does require looking at the available options though. And editing PDF is not what it is intended for. You don't cry about not being able to edit images in it either. It is typical for my generation to believe everything should be so easy that no learning is required. And it even delivers there, because figuring out the absolute basics takes no time at all.
Load More Replies...I switched to Google Docs, then switched back to Word after Google tried to charge me for extra storage. I should just go back to pen and paper.
Microsoft charges you for storage and development too...
Load More Replies...It's a Microsoft feature. To be fair PDF is not a Microsoft product. It's Adobe that doesn't allow it to be edited in Word. That why you make a PDF. So no one can edit it.
True, but some software opens a PDF right up, lets you edit, and close. We had it on every desktop at work, and I can never remember what it's called.
Load More Replies...Microsoft Word: Doesn't work, still gets paid - what many people aspire to be.
Use styles. It took me 15 years to understand that many of the problems I had could be solved by the use of styles. Title1; Title 2...
Load More Replies...The thing that has always amazed me about Word is that if I move an image . 0072 cm to the left, the entire document reformats itself, never to return to the original format. Why? But, WHY???
Because in order to do that, you have to change the options of the image to not be in line with the document. If you don't, then you are messing around with everything around it. It's lodged in it. You have to specify margins to move it a bit, not draft there. The thing is, it's all there, people just aren't aware of what an editor can do. And all the bitching sounds more like people can't be bothered to figure the basics out.
Load More Replies...Edit your expectations. Word is a word processor, not a publishing tool. If you want to move images around, easily create adjustable columns, etc... use... Microsoft Publisher, Affinity Publisher, Adobe Indesign, Scribus, or LucidPress.
Well, if you want to use an expensive publishing tool, you pay thousands of dollars and need quite the instruction time to even get going. Word has many features most expensive packages are known for when used by basic document editing skills. But if you're rmaeriois about editing a large document, you might want to accept you have to invest some time in learning how to use it. Because most people have no clue. I'm just pet peeved that people are showing their stupid and expect software to magically solve and anticipate where they want their image or headers without defining what the hell they are doing. Doesn't just go for Word.
Load More Replies...Ugh, I hate that mentality. I don't know how to use it so it's stupid. Doesn't just go for Word or Excel. Maybe look up what you're doing every now and then. I have the same adverse reaction to people "asking for help", aka not willing to be bothered to look it up themselves, in a neighborhood group about screwing in a light bulb or wiping their ass. Look it up and marvel how it really works, don't.put your fingers in the socket while the power is on and complain about the booboo.
I have none of those problems, you just have to ask the medical oracle (starts with G and rhymes with oogle) for instructions.
I only use it when I need to make uniform text in text boxes. Otherwise Google Docs works just fine for me. To be fair, though, I'm a teacher and have unlimited storage.
Well, Microsoft Word was designed by boomers, right ? So it kinda makes sense that its career path has been similar to theirs.
In my field we have always used LaTeX, not word. Beautiful typesetting, zero chance of losing your work, can work on very large files, easy referencing, formatting, displaying maths and chemistry, etc. Also free. Everyone could just put in a little effort to learn LaTeX instead, but people are too lazy and keep using word.
Used to be one of the things I could do with ease. Then they upgraded it. It once took me three hours to create a sign for my store with holiday hours. I almost gave up and wrote it by hand.
Psh. I work for a major retail pharmacy chain...and they still have WordPad...haven't upgraded to Word, yet.
So true! Did you know even gdoc files won't be copied when you backup all your data on an external drive? Microsoft Windows tells you it doesn't recognize the files and skips every Google file. You have to manually find them and create word files out of it. In Google files. One by one. That's hard working when you backup 500Gb on data....
yeah, when they suckered Lotus 1-2-3 into surrendering their distribution rights, then failed to distribute, Microsoft said...Sorry but you trusted us!
That's why I only use Google docs. If somehow I need a 2nd option, I use WPS office. Works just fine.
If it weren't for the cost I'd probably still use it, but there's alternatives. Like just using WordPad, or OpenOffice (assuming that's still around)
This can't be right, Word is extremely easy to use AND extremely functional, not to say it's not that expensive. Y'all's just lazy or expect the doc to just edit itself magically.
I hated Word from its inception. I have a blank page on my resume that I CANNOT GET RID OF!
Yeah why don't we have good hackers that go in and erase peoples mortgages and student loans like undercover brother?
You mean we American want healthcare. Europe has healthcare (of course dental could be improved). We would like people to not live on the street. Family with kids to be able to feed them and pay school meals and also less violence
Boomers took everything, ruined everything, then blamed everyone else.
My mom always said "be quiet until they go away" if someone showed up without notice. I do the same with my kids, lol. Even if it's someone I know I want to be prepared to socialize. And if it's someone I don't know its creepy. It makes sense to not just open your door to anyone when it's so easy to call/text/email beforehand.
The older I get, the more I rely on professionals to do anything and everything for me. No more hanging my own photo frames.
Actually, this is sorta genius. I could have saved myself and my realtor a lot of time had I known one house we wanted to see had 6ft ceilings, another had shelf paper glued to the "newly finished floors," and a third had a basement floor on an angle making most of it unusable despite being listed as "finished" and "spacious."
I'd trust my kid to do the booby traps, but there's no way he'd buy groceries or do the laundry.
But that's the only perks you have. Eating what you want. Or drink soda or eat candy on weekdays (but in secret if you have kids).
Can you imagine the decompression alarm just went off, you're putting on your spacesuit, get to the helmet and are trying to stuff your three-foot-long tress up under your helmet before your oxygen runs out....
Note: this post originally had 102 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
I'm clearly the target group person exhibit A here. Loved every single post! Thanx
Well over the target group.... but they feel like my people...
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Load More Replies...I used to be embarrassed that I was a millennial. But we're hilarious!
Gen-X here with Millennial & Gen-Z children. These were bloody brilliant. I just might have to give some of these a go.
Wow!! When they say kids grow up fast...Enjoy these brainfart moments now youngins...cuz in your 60's it's a life standard requiring copious amounts of Chocolate 🍫!!
I’m not in the target group and am wondering why on earth you think the target group is Millennials. This is just generally funny! Can we be done with the ageism?
For the record: not all millennials are feminist, snowflakes or leftists.
For the record the majority are and that's a good thing. Signed, a former conservative who educated themselves.
Load More Replies...Have you considered throwing your sense or humor in the trash and starting over?
Load More Replies...Sure. Lets not bring issues that are destroying us. That will help...
Load More Replies...I'm clearly the target group person exhibit A here. Loved every single post! Thanx
Well over the target group.... but they feel like my people...
Load More Replies...This comment is hidden. Click here to view.
Load More Replies...I used to be embarrassed that I was a millennial. But we're hilarious!
Gen-X here with Millennial & Gen-Z children. These were bloody brilliant. I just might have to give some of these a go.
Wow!! When they say kids grow up fast...Enjoy these brainfart moments now youngins...cuz in your 60's it's a life standard requiring copious amounts of Chocolate 🍫!!
I’m not in the target group and am wondering why on earth you think the target group is Millennials. This is just generally funny! Can we be done with the ageism?
For the record: not all millennials are feminist, snowflakes or leftists.
For the record the majority are and that's a good thing. Signed, a former conservative who educated themselves.
Load More Replies...Have you considered throwing your sense or humor in the trash and starting over?
Load More Replies...Sure. Lets not bring issues that are destroying us. That will help...
Load More Replies...