On Brand Childhood Stories

About

On Brand Childhood Stories refers to a tweet that went viral in July of 2018 asking other users to share stories from their youth that best represent the person they grew into. Thousands of Twitter users responded, many by quote-tweeting the first example and sharing their stories.

Origin

On July 7th, 2018, Twitter user @prinxeMu^[1] tweeted:

What's the most On Brand™️ story you have from your early childhood.
Mine is when my mom told me not to touch the electric stove when it was red, because that meant it was hot, so I made direct eye contact with her and slapped my hand down on the stove top.

The tweet gained over 7,700 retweets and over 70,000 likes, as well as over 7,100 direct responses (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, thousands of Twitter users shared similar experiences of quirky and bizarre stories they had from their childhood that they felt were emblematic of the people they grew into. Some popular examples include a tweet from The New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum relating a story in which she feared she'd suffer a fate similar to Violet Beauregard in _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (shown below, left), and a tweet from online personality Rob Whisman telling a story about how he was disqualified from a spelling bee for doing a WWE celebration (shown below, right).

The spread of the stories were covered by websites such as Select All^[2] and Mashable.^[3] There, popular embedded tweets include a post by @ShadowTodd that gained over 25 retweets and 340 likes (shown below, left). A tweet by user @huummus gained over 48 retweets and 800 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References