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"One of the great things about awkwardness is that it is both universal and timeless," Mike Bender told Bored Panda.
He began the blog with his childhood friend Doug more than a decade ago, after he saw an awkward vacation photo hung in his parents' house.
The buddies understood there had to be plenty of other people who also had similar silly photographs and decided to create a friendly place where everyone could come together and share their images.
Mike and Doug kicked off the project by posting a few of their own childhood photos and those provided by friends, and the site quickly took off and became an instant internet classic.
However, after all this time working on it, Bender said, "I don't think the definition of awkward has changed. To me, it will always be defined by anything that makes the viewer uncomfortable in some way."
Krystine Batcho, Ph.D., who is a professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and studies nostalgia, says, "Viewing a childhood photo, someone might realize how very young they had been when they experienced a transformative event. They might suddenly understand how vulnerable and innocent they had been.”
"The recognition of who they were then can impact their current self-esteem or change their understanding of how their past contributed to who they had become."
According to Batcho, whether positive or negative, old photos often make us nostalgic for meaningful portions of our lives.
"Research has found that personal photographs decreased induced negative affect more effectively than did generic images and suggested that greater emotional benefit was due to the ability of personal photos to elicit personally relevant memories and nostalgia," she explains. "Bittersweet nostalgia has been associated with a heightened sense of coherence and self-continuity, as the connection between past and present is strengthened."
Personal photos trigger more vivid memories that contain richer perceptual-sensory information, allowing us to re-experience the past in a deeper way.
"The sense of being in the past can help to distance someone from current problems, sadness, or feelings of hopelessness or despair. The reverie facilitated by the perusal of personal photos can yield insights into the meaning and purpose of one's life," Batcho continues.
