#PLEASEDELETETHAT comes from a brief period when Facebook was still somewhere you dumped 137 photographs from Saturday night on Sunday morning. Instagram was new, hashtags weren’t marketing tools yet, and nobody was thinking much about algorithms, personal brands, future employers, or whether a terrible photograph might still be circulating fifteen years later.

Eventually, someone would find a picture they didn’t remember being taken and comment, “Please delete that.” Usually they meant it. Everyone else typed “LOL.” Then another photograph went up.

There is something both affectionate and uncomfortable about that freedom now. We hadn’t yet decided which version of ourselves was safe to leave behind. We assumed the person holding the camera was our friend, and whoever saw the photograph probably was too.

It was a small window of friendship, embarrassment, trust, anxiety, and freedom before we learned how closely to watch ourselves.