Teenage wasteland. Last week, on my daily check-in with the kids over on the CCP’s memetic superweapon, I discovered the viral TikTok filter Teenaged Look, which makes an older person look like their younger self. As you might expect, public reaction to the tool was tremendous. In viral video after viral video men and women confronted a rough semblance of their teenaged selves with stunned silence, laughter, and what appeared to be genuine tears as creators grappled with feelings of excitement, nostalgia, and regret. On Twitter, the most popular videos were collected in a long, viral thread, and framed as a new AI story, in which technological advances — in this case, one user suggested, 3D facial reconstruction made possible by neural networks — are creating a future the average person isn’t emotionally equipped to process. But the feelings I experienced while playing with the filter weren’t exactly new, and I found them more than welcome. In a sense, Teenaged Look opened a portal to my youth, and connected me back to some vein of previously forgotten exuberance. The experience was fascinating, and moving. Most importantly, it helped me remember the main thing: we need to be living forever.

First, a few examples of the filter I found particularly evocative: