Amogh Dimri

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
Last Halloween, I answered a knock on the door to find a young trick-or-treater dressed as a toilet. Not just any toilet—Skibidi Toilet, a disembodied head that pops out of a toilet and is a villain of the eponymous YouTube miniseries about an army of such creatures conquering Earth. I was visibly puzzled and asked him a series of questions.

When he learned one night this summer that the United States had bombed Iran, the content creator Aaron Parnas responded right away, showing what’s bad and what’s good about using TikTok for news. Shortly after 7:46 p.m. ET on June 21, he saw Donald Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the air strikes.

When he learned one night this summer that the United States had bombed Iran, the content creator Aaron Parnas responded right away, showing what’s bad and what’s good about using TikTok for news. Shortly after 7:46 p.m. ET on June 21, he saw Donald Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the air strikes.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.
The month of May marks the first anniversary of my college graduation—or, as I call it, the inevitable and dreaded start of my adulthood.