There’s a TikTok user who goes by Tamara who is marking 2026 using 365 buttons.
How is Tamara doing that exactly? No one is sure. That’s the whole point.
This slightly confounding practice was introduced to the world this month, when Tamara — who did not respond to an interview request — posted a comment on a TikTok video, explaining that the buttons were a way of being more conscious of the passage of time.
When other users asked follow-up questions, wondering what they were supposed to do with their buttons, Tamara rebuffed them.
“Hey, so it actually only has to make sense to me for me to do it and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else,” Tamara wrote. (That video has since been removed from TikTok and with it, these comments.)
Tamara’s retort, and her unwillingness to explain further, quickly became an “if you know you know” joke that has spread widely, thanks partly to the fact that no clarity was given about how buttons might help soften the unstoppable march of time.
Soon, the TikTok account for the Philadelphia Eagles had posted a video of a bucket full of team buttons asking “Alright, Tamara, now what?”
In a post on the same platform, the account for the Empire State Building declared a new motto for the year: “Hey, so it actually only has to make sense to me for me to do it and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else.”
Jason Saperstone, a 23-year-old publicist in Manhattan, posted a TikTok video trying to explain the layered and somewhat confusing origin of the buttons meme. In the video, he begins by explaining how the meme originated in the comments of a video from a TikTok user posting about her desire to “rebrand” for 2026. The buttons discourse, though, had quickly usurped the original point of the video.
The ambiguity of the TikTok comment, Mr. Saperstone said in an interview, probably helped it grow as a trend.
“It would have been so simple to get the answer, but not giving the answer and just making it so much more complicated for no reason, which kind of makes it hilarious,” he added.
Opacity has become a hallmark of popular memes online, where esoteric jokes like “6-7” have recently proliferated among younger generations. What does “6-7” mean? Much like “365 buttons,” the answer depends on who you ask — and even then it’s almost entirely subjective. That’s much to the delight of those who use such terms, gate-keeping them for select groups that understand the joke. (And the few like Mr. Saperstone, who are willing to explain.)
None of this has stopped TikTok users from offering up their own interpretations.
“My theory is that Tamara has two jars. One is empty and one has 365 buttons. And after every day she puts one in the empty jar to show a day going past,” Caroline Ayala, 22, wrote in a TikTok. It seemed “self-explanatory,” Ms. Ayala, who works in sales and lives in Chicago, said in a phone interview.
Other users have run with the prompt and have taken up drawing a button each day or writing original songs.
Lee Tepper, a therapist in Columbus, Ohio, found the mantra to be a surprisingly “grounding, centering perspective.” (If also a little silly.)
“The kickoff meme of 2026 being empowerment and a refocus on yourself and what matters to you, I couldn’t be more here for it,” they said.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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