It certainly was an unforgettable year.
A cringey pandemic-era New Jersey yearbook has gone viral on TikTok for its Zoom-captured images. At the time, classes were held online as students, teachers and the rest of the world holed up at home and waited for COVID-19 to wane.
“POV: you were class of ’21,” reads the text on the clip, which has collected 2.7 million views since it was posted this week.
On the juniors’ class page, the traditional headshots were replaced with selfies and, for some, the iconic circular Zoom icon with their first initial inside. Group photos of clubs were captured on video calls.
The most atrocious editing fail may be the screenshots of the administration and faculty.
While their images were clearly grabbed from a video call, there was no cropping — viewers could very clearly see the chat box flooded with comments and the tool bar options for sharing the screen and recording the call.
The Post has reached out to the TikToker, who goes by @milaabandzz, and Union County Vocational Technical Schools in Scotch Plains, NJ, for comment.
The 14-second clip — captioned “covid really changed everything” — garnered a raucous response in the comments.
Viewers couldn’t help but laugh at the hodgepodge of screenshots and selfies that fill the yearbook, while others urged the owner to keep the book safe and cherish it as a piece of nostalgia.
“Bro got a collection of screenshots,” joked one person.
“Zoom pictures are killing me,” agreed another.
“This is so sad omg,” wrote someone else.
“LOOOOL THE LETTERS FOR THE PHOTOS??????” exclaimed another viewer.
“Lmaoo honestly the very specific to the time and will be a legit relic in the future, don’t ever lose it!” advised one user.
Nearly 93% of people in households with school-age children reported their kids engaged in some form of “distance learning” in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic got underway, a Census survey found.
In NYC, schools reopened in September 2020 with in-person classes for some, but remote learning for most. It was difficult to find a fan of remote learning in NYC as the pandemic wore on.