Becoming an adult is all fun and games until you realize your back hurts and now you need to figure out taxes. Soon enough, a solid Friday night involves a movie and some snacks, and midnight is seen as a pretty late bedtime.
The “I Am Thirty AF” Instagram page is dedicated to hilarious and painfully relatable Millennial memes. We got in touch with the page’s admins to learn more. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites, be sure to comment your thoughts below, and check out our previous article on adulting memes.
More info: Instagram
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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Bored Panda got in touch with Peter and Chloe, the pair behind “I Am Thirty AF” and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. We wanted to hear how they balanced humor and relatability in their content. “Humor is absolutely a big part of what we're going for, but I'd say the biggest thing that engages and connects our following of millennials/30-somethings is relatability. That relatability can and often does come through something we all find to be funny, but can also be anything from shared anxieties to commentary on what it is like being in your 30s to nostalgic experiences we all have in common from growing up in the 90s/00s.”
“The Internet is FILLED with things that are pulling us apart, creating division, and making us feel alone. We are trying to be a space that is the opposite of that. When feeling down and overwhelmed after perusing the comments section of a news article, you can come on over to our page and connect with people about how weird it was that so many 90s toys had a feature that allowed said toy to piss itself or wondering how we all knew how to draw that weird S thing when the internet really didn't exist yet (truly- this one is so bizarre- followers from all over the world have commented saying they grew up drawing it too... where did it come from?!).“
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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“You can laugh over the shared experience of being 30-something and suddenly finding the idea of going to a loud bar at 11 PM to be the LAST thing you'd like to spend your night doing when only 5 years ago it sounded like a fun night out. You can bond with absolute strangers over the shared experience of our parents straight up lying to us as kids about how turning on the overhead light in the car was ILLEGAL at night (turns out it very much is not),” they shared. For those interested in bonding over more millennial humor, feel free to peruse Bored Panda’s other articles getting older.
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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“Do you have a moment of panic that your identity will be stolen if you forget to take your receipt at the gas pump? Turns out you're not alone! These tiny bits of life that maybe you've never really put much thought into before are things we love to bring to the forefront on our page and get people talking about shared experiences and fun things that connect us rather than pull us apart.” These days, as millennials age a bit more, their concerns have expanded, with the average US thirty-something being $28,000 in debt.
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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Some readers may know that “I Am Thirty AF” graces Bored Panda’s Funny section pretty frequently. The page has been around for a while. That’s why we wanted to know how Peter and Chloe handle challenges in maintaining the page and coming up with new content. “Social Media is constantly evolving and how people engage with these platforms and the types of content we post changes too.”
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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“The types of content that really resonated with our following in 2020 probably won't have the same impact today. We were very much a covid born brand and so much of what we were focusing on back then was centered around the fact that a lot of us were suddenly spending a lot more time at home and on our phones than we had previously. We collaborated a lot with small businesses to try to help them reach people since they had to shut the doors of their shops for so long.” This is, incidentally, quite in line with research that suggests that Millennials are and probably will be digital natives.
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“We also spent a ton of time creating interactive content and games for people to spend their time on while stuck at home. For example, we bracketed every NOW! That's What I Call Music album from NOW 1 through NOW 20 and then faced off the winning track from each NOW bracket in an all-stars round to determine the greatest bop of all time (Baby One More Time, of course). This process spanned over a year and a half and people got really into it! By the time we did our final round, we had over 200K people voting every day.“
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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“But life is really different now than it was in 2020/2021 and content that takes a bit of time to engage with and requires you to keep coming back every day, like voting all week long in a 20-frame bracket series- isn't something people seem to have as much time for now, so we've switched things up! We're focusing more on live events, getting out and connecting with our followers at FUNNY AF! comedy shows (so far just in NYC and LA but we're expanding!) or this global scavenger hunt called Nostalgia Grabs that we run where we hide packages filled with nostalgic treasures for people to find (starting up again this spring- keep an eye out!). This is honestly such a fun job because we keep reinventing how we spend our time and what we post, and it keeps it interesting and entertaining for both of us as well as our following.“
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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We also wanted to know what criteria they had for selecting and posting content. “Giving credit and connecting with creators is a really important focus for us. We also try really hard to share content that isn't alienating or triggering to people. We absolutely have blindspots and mess up from time to time, but we are constantly monitoring DMs and comments and do take feedback from followers/use that feedback to shape what we share moving forward.”
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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“For the past year we've shared a different themed roundup every morning featuring a carousel of 10 memes all on a single topic, the topic can range from experiences in a grocery store to Disney movies to books we read growing up. These have been really fun and take a lot of time putting together/coming up with the themes we'll feature each day. A lot of the criteria recently for the content we post is finding things that fit into different themes we're building carousels for! We have a lot of fun with these and post them every morning between 8 and 9 AM Eastern... check them out!”
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Image credits: iamthirtyaf
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So if you enjoyed this approach to memes, Peter and Chloe left us with some parting thoughts. “We're growing! Check out our food page iamstarvingaf, our work page iamemployedaf, and our new mental health-themed page iamokayaf! We're also pretty active on Threads- see you there!” And if you want to keep checking out more of iamthirtyaf’s memes, Bored Panda has got you covered.
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