The world is reopening. Time is a flat circle. Friends is back on TV, and society—or at least the trio of Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, and Diddy—has decided to fully lean into the chaos of living in an era that’s not our own. The most recent iteration of celebrity time travel is Diddy’s Thursday afternoon Instagram post, which features an image of him and Lopez holding hands from their dating days back in 2000. The caption? #TBT. Nothing else.
The post lit up the internet, with commenters chiming in with things like “Don’t get me excited” and “Bye, Ben.” Diddy’s post comes on the heels of the ongoing nostalgia-fest that has been dubbed”Bennifer 2.0.“Ben Affleck and Lopez, who famously dated from 2002 to 2004, have been spotted together several times over the past month, hanging out in the wake of Affleck’s separation from actress Anna de Armas and Lopez’s split with Alex Rodriguez. Desperately needing something inconsequential to focus on, we’ve all been vibing like it’s 2002 again, so why not dial it back a couple years to 2000?
Hey, I get it. Times were (mostly) simpler back then. We survived Y2K. No one had ruined the allure of McDonald’s Monopoly. Lopez was riding the high of On the 6, and we were blasting Diddy’s “Satisfy You,” featuring… well, let’s just say we were blasting “Satisfy You,” ok? And yes, the two of them got arrested the year before for possession of a weapon after leaving the scene of a nightclub shooting, but that’s turn of the century s***, baby! It was a good time to be alive.
I say, for the rest of the year, let’s keep turning the clock back a little at a time. Let’s start Friends over. Give me those golden years where Demi Moore and Bruce Willis ruled the world. For God’s sake, give me a Julia Roberts rom com. Let’s keep running from reality, damn it.
If Diddy can invoke the past with a photo and a hashtag, then the rest of us can manifest a trip in the space time continuum.
