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?
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.
Honestly English is not even in the top 10 of difficult languages
Load More Replies...While English spelling is indeed stupidly outdated (preserving pronounciation from 400 years ago), that's a really bad example, because that word is a loanword from Dutch/Low German and we actually pronounce that ch in it...
The real problem with English is precisely that it steals words from all over the place. We don't have consistent spellings because we've stolen bits of multiple other languages and mushed them all together. We have Latin roots and Greek roots and Germanic roots and words stolen directly from French, and I'm sure a dozen other things. There is a logic to the etymology of any given word, but no coherence to the language as a whole.
Load More Replies...I would love to give up on a yacht somewhere at the Caribbean
Load More Replies...But not for learning english, for being able to learn dutch. F**k i am trying to learn it but its breaking my brain. Too many exceptions
Load More Replies...I have English as second and German as third languages...
Serious question, I am just curious. Language as a whole (reading, writing, speaking, understanding); Which language out of English and German do you find easier to learn?
Load More Replies...It's the same word in German so no big deal. Definitely don't feel like a superhero 😂 But I do feel sorry for people who have to learn German as a second language
German was my 4th language and it was difficult to learn. Ich spreche Deutsch aber es ist schwierig!
Load More Replies...I learned English as a second language. I'll accept being called a superhero although I think it's a bit too much. But people learning French as a second language also are. Let me present you the word for water : Eau, spelled with E, A and U, three vowels that don't sound at all like the word eau in French but which absolutely sound like the only letter O. :D
English is one of the easiest languages to learn. You want to translate "do" to Portuguese? There's 59 choices. Good luck
⚠️TW FOR PPL WITH FEAR OF LONG WORDS⚠️ What about hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia??
Have you ever heard how they pronounce it in English? Literally "Yat".
Load More Replies...Nah the real challenge is 🈹🈴🈲🉐㊙️🈵㊗️. Which btw I have no idea wth it means. It was on my emoji keyboard. But the point remains the same 😂
OMG, take that back! (Kidding, I have no idea either except I bet some white zen-wanna-be has a tattoo of it)
Load More Replies...Or "colonel" ... or island" I kept pronouncing it "ice-land" and people where like: no, the S is silent....me: then why is it there!!!??? XD
Because mediaeval French partied with mediaeval Latin and birthed the word "isle" in the 15th century. Island didn't have an s in it until someone a century later pointed at isle and said "put an s in the old word iegland", which is actually a completely unrelated word etymologically.
Load More Replies...English is kinda fun to learn actually even thought the spelling does not fit with how you say it, in Czech you learn the alphabet and you can read anything
Same with Dutch. The spelling looks crazy at first but totally logical.
Load More Replies...Chinese grammar is easy (as in: grammar can always be sacrificed for pattern), characters require pattern recognition (which is why Chinese dyslexia is actually different from western and you can have both like I do), and the homonyms are fun. It's very different to western languages though so you can't rely on the same word patterns as you get in English.
Load More Replies...Hydraulics, receipt, feud/fuel, height, night/knight, Tuesday, Wednesday, too/to/two/tow, quit/quiet/quite/quilt, guest/quest, might/mite,
Yacht is spelled " jacht" in dutch, i talky talky english very well thanks you vurry mutch
by the way, did you notice that the original poster is one of the bravest actors to ever appear on the TV screen? He spent ten years playing a character with a 'funny' speech impediment. Without knowing anything more about him, I'll bet he has problems finding work, because of all the people who think that was really him, as opposed to acting.
Actually, I didn't! I am very bad at recognizing tv-stars / celebrities and remembering their names. Thank you!
Load More Replies...All of the "-ugh" parts used to be pronounced the same, it's why they're spelt the same.
Load More Replies...We were all used growing up to see the word "yacht", but try learning French! The whole language is "yacht".
Brazilian here... Somebody please tell me why Gloucestershire pronunciation makes no sense to anyone, except my beloved brits 😂😂😂
We french. We basically did that to your language (no yacht, but mostly the rest). No thanks needed.
Why does ph make the f sound when f makes the f sound just fine by itself?
Watching Bugs Bunny. he said, " I have an athlete's Fizz-e-q." Also spelled physique. Go Bugs!
When you know the alphabet and when a word morphs, Welsh is quite easy.
Load More Replies...LOL. My husband is Danish and was complaining about English spelling, especially words with a silent "K" (knife, knight etc) Then he discovered that those particular wards originated from old Danish.
U try learning polish you physically can't pronounce some words unless you learn them as a small child
Load More Replies...Seriously! I can't imagine learning English, with different meanings and spelling for one word.
When polish language it's your first then it's easy ;) W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie ;)
The word yacht is a word "borrowed" from the German language. What person trying to learn English would need to use that word. Chances are they're trying to learn for work or immigration. They ain't rich and won't ever need to use it.
Read rhymes with lead and read rhymes with lead, but read doesn't rhyme with lead and read doesn't rhyme with lead. ....Lovely language.
yearh and trying to guess how a word is spelled is nearly impsible, you just have to know. somtimes ough augh sounds exactly the same eg. the ending of of course and because sounds similar, but is spelled differently. Likewise it is pick your best guess when detertermining if it should be "believe", "beleave" or "beleeve", there is no way to hear it, so look it up if you don't know. Door, blood and doomed, all have the oo-combination, but is in no way pronounced in a similar way. Ironically the people who says why don't people just learn English, are the ones too laze to learn a foregin language, and have no idea about how hard it is. I think I only succeeded in it due to the massive amounts of English pop-songs, PC games and movies having infested my nation, and the vigorious teaching of it all trough shcool.
The other day I was very tired and forgot how to spell “of”. Those few moments of utter confusion will haunt me for a long time…
It might be a bit challenging to learn a language that started in 1066 with French-Norman soldiers trying to talk to German Anglo-Saxon barmaids and then continues to grow by picking up any useful word it finds.
Anyone here ever read the chaos, I almost gave up on talking at all after reading that.
Liquorice -> Lick-our-ice? Liqueur-ice? Like-o-rice? Nah, it's likr-ish. I hate the word and the sweets
Thou, tough, though, through... Similar spellings, completely different sounds.
"-ugh" used to be one sound, the spelling reflected that. The pronunciation has changed.
Load More Replies...They usually use proper words too, not ones that require asterisks. As there are over 171,000 words in the English language they have plenty to choose from.
Although I thought I was through the flu, my rough cough was not throughly better.
Thankfully that word is the same in french but the though, thought, through, throughout still have me struggling
The pronunciation went dancing around other languages, the spelling decided to stay home instead.
Load More Replies...Xenon, cynical, psychic, turmeric, couscous, gyrate, oxymoron, mesosphere, all sorts of words must be hard to figure out
The only words there that are not Greek are tumeric (unknown) and couscous (Arabic).
Load More Replies...Try learning 3 other languages as a must onto of English. China is a bitch when it comes to this.
And conjugations! While learning spanish ones on a chart, i tried i make an English chart and grew a lot of respect for anyone who ever managed to learn how to communicate with this mess
Nope... I gave up trying to figure out Spanish. English is just a mind f*ck.
because babies are too expensive with out health care. welcome immigrants, our jobs and housing on the left. free food and gov healthcare on the right.
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....
The photo is dated December 7th 2019. I think this dog knows what 2020 will bring and is getting his existential crisis in early.
Why compare yourself to anyone else? There's always someone above and someone below. I am just glad I'm better than past me and hoping future me is learning something from current me's mistakes
Amen, sister. I am with you, in my bed, in my PJs, reading Bored Panda and enjoying my life.
Y'know, apropos nothing in particular, it's common for tiresome know-it-alls to pretend they're "playing devil's advocate" when really they're just assholes who like the sound of their own voice and never listen to anyone else. For some reason that comment seems to belong here.
What? You mean they don't do it by choice? Oh, what a surprising nonsense! /s
My New Year's resolution was to become a paperless household. ie to stop hoarding paper (documents) and to get online billing where possible. Today I noted my income remains pretty much the same as 2013. Of course I knew this but theres nothing like a piece of black and white paper to bring home the truth.
The male equivalent of a thornback is a bachelor, and if they got a bit of grey hair they are called a silver fox.
I was the weirdo and they're still like, so.... sorry I wasn't very nice to you in school but this is my chance for redemption! I can totally help you be rich AND a stay at home mom, like me! Like, sorry, Rachelle, I don't need you to ruin my life twice but thanks anyway
I enjoyed the wide leg jeans moment. My friend once accidentally trapped a pigeon under hers.
If I were Britney and saw this, I might call for a restraining order.
Well one is in college and one works at the local grocery store and one works at Chipotle during the day and at a pierogi shop at night. They all live in my house and none of them drive. 😆
Bored panda made a full article on this.. Apogee of recycling... https://www.boredpanda.com/recruiter-schedules-job-interview-fired-programmer-same-employer-live-tweeting/
Clubbing in your 40's: punching your pillow with a closed fist until it's in a position that *might* not break your neck before morning
I have to print out the documents I was emailed and mail them to a mail processing centre where they'll be scanned in and sent to the people who will work on them as digital copies, but you must print and mail them. Yup, the government.
It's because hitting the same milestones as earlier generations hasn't been something we've all been able to achieve. I'm in my late 30s. I own my own business, have a car, a house, and a partner but still feel like a teenager because I've only hit those milestones in the past 4 years. Things still don't feel stable though. And I've been lucky in part because I'm an older millennial.
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...
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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...
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