Origin. On 8 November 2023 Rockstar said the first trailer would arrive in early December. Hours later a games journalist posted two photos of himself, one from 2013 and one from that day, captioned "what I looked like when GTA V came out vs now". Know Your Meme confirmed the format the next day.
How people use it. Real before-and-after selfies, plus joke versions with famous characters who visibly aged. A voice actor's version gathered 6,500 likes in a day, and a Metal Gear Solid edit passed 17,000.
Example. A school photo from 2013 on the left and the same person on the right, now with a beard and the tired eyes of someone with a mortgage.