Twitter Users Chase A New Form Of Clout In 'My Grandpa Was Such A Vibe' Meme Trend

Twitter has entered its sepia era. Since the start of the month, it has been covered in black and white. It isn’t a throwback to early Instagram selfie filters — but it is a nod to the highlight reel. People are taking some time to reminisce, showcasing older family members in their prime and even touching on important moments in history. The catch is that it’s not real.

My Grandpa Was Such a Vibe finds users proclaiming their admiration for the 1940s versions of everyone from Walmart Yodel Boy to Michael Cera.

Even by meme standards, it’s an accessible format, requiring only basic photo editing and a working knowledge of internet culture. More importantly, though, the reasoning behind it is what has confirmed its success. On one level, this comes from the ideas it parodies. The meme offers a continuation of the fake history tradition, which has gained traction over the years on platforms like Reddit and Facebook. The premise is usually that a famous historical event is related to a picture that, though humorously plausible, is not factually related to it. It’s not always necessary, but the images will often involve contemporary famous people.

"My Grandpa" takes this in a more navel-gazing direction, putting the focus on family history. Despite the fact that many of its iterations are essentially copypastas with different photos attached, it is a more subtle counterpart to what has come before it. Where fake history seeks to offer an entertaining but obvious spoof, this format makes you look twice before taking things at face value.

It riffs on a mixture of serious phenomena like colorized history, whereby older black-and-white images are manipulated to bring them back to their true color, and fauxtography when images are doctored or decontextualized to cause misrepresentation. In an era where we’re primed to question anything vaguely outlandish that we see on the internet, My Grandpa gives us a little extra reminder.

As well as this, it addresses types of posts that are fast becoming well-worn Twitter tropes. Many of those with substantial follower counts are no stranger to real throwback pictures of family members, sometimes attached with an anecdote, or to be used as a comparison to the user themselves.

Most often though, such images are presented as a simple flex, proving to their followers that the user’s family has clout, too. In this case, replacing a choice selection from the photo album with your favorite meme or celebrity makes fun of the practice, but it also presents a different kind of flex, one that shows a fluency of cultural understanding. While the obvious humor is an integral part of it, My Grandpa Was Such A Vibe has also found fame for its use as an outlet. Although its premise may focus on trickery, it’s also a means of displaying cultural tastes. In the case of those who use other memes as part of the format, there’s a nostalgic element there.

The fact that many of the examples that get used are long past their prime heightens the humor, but at the same time reveals that they may have made a more deeply held connection than might have previously been expected. The impact they have had enables their meta usage in the new format, acknowledging their place in internet history via placing them as part of an imagined family legacy.

On top of this, My Grandpa makes a tribute to stan culture. While its one-off image usage prioritizes the showing off pop culture knowledge over fandom, it also pays tribute to the feverish devotion these subcultures inspire. The way in which the meme can link to important historical events further comments on the ability of stans to make the object of their affections the center of the universe in every single circumstance (something which is also touched upon with wider fake history).

It is no revelation that you should always be skeptical of information you receive from social media, and that people have a habit of lying about their lives on the internet. My Grandpa Was Such A Vibe is the latest in a long line of formats to consider its effect. In the era of the deepfake, it could perhaps be argued that these memes make a light-hearted point on the state of the internet to come. On the other hand, it could just be that people like to sike each other out.

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