Looking back through old photographs often happens in a family living room, turning the pages of a loved one’s photo albums. But on TikTok, the nostalgic ritual is its own trend, and it’s set to the tune of Pink Floyd.
In a new trend on TikTok, users are showcasing their life progress by looking back to their childhood, comparing their baby photos to recent ones. While the captions vary across videos, it’s the music and lyrics that brings all of them together: Pink Floyd’s Time.
The trend uses the photo-carousel feature on TikTok as a template: the first photo is of the user at a young age, with the next one being a recent image. The first photograph has the beginning of one of the song’s lines typed on it, “The sun is the same, in a relative way,” followed by the “but you are older,” written in the recent photo.
For many users, the trend is a way to show that, despite years passed, key attributes of the user remain the same. Take content creator Eugenia McQuarrie, who posted a photo of herself at a beauty salon, with rollers in her hair. The photo is followed by a present day image of McQuarrie, wearing hair rollers as an adult.
A user replied saying, “diva since day one.”
Another user had a similar take on the trend, first posting a photo of himself as a kid, wearing a firefighter toy hat, cutting to his grown up version wearing a real-life firefighter uniform.
The trend has quickly gained momentum on the platform, with over 8.8 million views in the span of weeks, according to trend-tracking agency Masterhooks.
Part of the appeal is the trend’s versatility, allowing users to make it their own, turning to videos and edits, keeping only the soundtrack.
Sometimes it was the small mannerisms that remained unchanged by time, which users wanted to highlight. Like one user who first shows a video of her dancing as a kid in her living room, then cuts to her dancing at a party as an adult.
“Still the same vibe, how cute,” one user commented.
For others, nostalgia didn’t reach as far back as most. Ballet content creator Katelyn Power, for instance, posted a video of her dancing ballet four years earlier, cut to her most recent performance of the same dance.
A user commented, “Pink Floyd and ballet? I am in heaven.”
