TikTok published its newsroom feature describing the annual “august” trend in 2021.
The feature, titled “Trending on TikTok: August slipped away,” was published on September 10, 2021. It described users looking back on summer memories with Taylor Swift’s 2020 song “august” as the soundtrack.
The timing is significant because the trend was already associated with the end of summer by the time TikTok documented it. The posts commonly used rapid montages of photos and short clips, turning ordinary camera-roll memories into nostalgic stories.
The year can be confused with 2020, when Folklore and “august” were released, or with later years when the trend returned seasonally. The song debuted in 2020, but TikTok’s newsroom account of the recurring trend appeared in 2021. That distinction separates the song’s release year from the platform’s published documentation.