I Was Deeply Ashamed of My School Photo. Then It Went Viral And Millions Of People Saw It

When I posted my eighth-grade school photo on TikTok and Instagram a few weeks ago, I expected to get some laughs out of my family and friends – and maybe even a couple of strangers. I didn’t expect the photo to be shared hundreds of thousands of times or be seen by over 20 million people.

The photo features me in 1989, smiling hopefully at the camera with a curtain of long brown hair covering about a third of my face. I’d practiced the look for weeks in my bedroom mirror with the goal of...