If you look back at your phone's photo gallery from about eight years ago, you'll probably see a lot of blurry shots of outdoor festivals or maybe just a really nice avocado toast. June was a weirdly dense month. Honestly, looking at a calendar for june of 2018 feels like staring at a time capsule of a world that was just about to shift into a much more chaotic gear. We had the World Cup kicking off in Russia, the height of "peak TV," and some of the most intense political transitions of the late 2010s all happening within the same thirty-day window.
It started on a Friday. June 1, 2018.
Most people don't remember the specifics of that particular Friday, but if you were into Kanye West, it was the day Ye dropped. It was the "Wyoming Sessions" era. This set a specific, frantic tone for the month. We weren't just checking dates; we were checking refreshes.
The big shifts in the calendar for june of 2018
When you actually sit down to map out the calendar for june of 2018, you realize how much the world was changing. On June 12, history actually happened in Singapore. That was the day Donald Trump met Kim Jong Un. It was the first-ever meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Regardless of how you feel about the politics, that Tuesday was a massive pivot point for global optics. People were glued to live streams. The news cycle was moving so fast back then that it felt like every 24 hours brought a new "once in a lifetime" event.
Then there was the sports. Oh man, the sports.
The FIFA World Cup started on June 14. For basically the rest of the month, the calendar was dictated by match times. Russia vs. Saudi Arabia kicked things off with a 5-0 blowout. If you were in an office during that time, productivity basically hit a wall. Every break room had a TV on. Every Slack channel had a "World Cup" thread. It wasn't just about the games; it was the vibe of a pre-pandemic world where gathering in massive crowds to scream at a screen felt totally normal and safe.
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A month of tragic losses
It wasn't all global summits and soccer goals, though. June 2018 was heavy. We lost Anthony Bourdain on June 8. Just a few days before that, on June 5, Kate Spade passed away.
Those two deaths, occurring so close together, sparked a massive international conversation about mental health that the calendar for june of 2018 will always be remembered for. It felt like a collective gut punch. You’d walk into a coffee shop and people wouldn't be talking about the weather; they'd be talking about Bourdain's influence on how we travel and eat. It was a somber middle to an otherwise loud month.
And then, on June 18, the music world was rocked again when XXXTentacion was shot and killed in Florida. He was only 20. Whether you liked his music or not, the sheer volume of "what just happened?" energy on social media that Monday was staggering. It felt like the month was just relentless.
Why we obsess over these specific dates
Why does a random month from 2018 matter now?
Because it was the last "normal" summer for a lot of people before the world got really, really loud. If you look at the calendar for june of 2018, you see a world that was still heavily invested in Facebook (despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal being fresh). People were obsessed with Fortnite. Season 4 was in full swing, and everyone was trying to figure out what the "Omega" skin meant.
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It was a transitional period.
- June 1: Kanye drops Ye.
- June 5: The world loses Kate Spade.
- June 8: Anthony Bourdain passes away in France.
- June 12: The Singapore Summit happens.
- June 14: World Cup begins.
- June 18: XXXTentacion is killed; Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson confirm their engagement (remember that whirlwind?).
- June 24: Saudi Arabia officially allows women to drive. This was huge. A literal cultural shift on a Sunday.
Basically, if you weren't paying attention for even two days, you missed a decade's worth of news.
The tech and entertainment bubble
On the tech side, June 2018 was when Instagram launched IGTV. Remember that? They thought long-form vertical video was going to kill YouTube. It didn't. But at the time, on June 20, it felt like the "next big thing." It’s funny looking back at how much we pivoted our lives around these digital launches.
In theaters, we had Hereditary scaring the life out of everyone starting June 8. Then Incredibles 2 finally came out on June 15 after a 14-year wait. Families were flocking to theaters. It was a massive box office month. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom also stomped through later in the month.
The calendar for june of 2018 was a peak for the "monoculture." We were all watching the same movies, mourning the same icons, and watching the same soccer matches.
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Actionable insights for the nostalgic or the curious
If you are looking back at this specific month for a project, a scrapbooking effort, or just to settle a bet about when "In My Feelings" by Drake actually started taking over the world (it was released as part of Scorpion on June 29), here is how to use this info.
First, verify your dates against a reliable source like the Associated Press archives if you're doing historical research. Memories are fuzzy. We often think things happened in July that actually happened in June. For instance, the Thai cave rescue began on June 23 when the soccer team first went missing. That story gripped the world for weeks, but the anxiety started right there at the tail end of the June calendar.
Second, if you're trying to recreate a 2018 "vibe," look at the charts. The Billboard Hot 100 was dominated by Post Malone's "Psycho" and Cardi B's "I Like It." Playing those songs while looking at a June 2018 calendar is an instant time machine.
Finally, acknowledge the weight of that month. It wasn't just 30 days. It was a sequence of events that defined the late 2010s. From the heartbreak of losing cultural giants to the weirdness of celebrity "shipping" (the Ariana/Pete era was peak 2018), it stands as one of the most concentrated months in recent history.
To get the most out of this retrospective, go through your own digital footprint from that time. Check your Google Photos or your old tweets. You’ll likely find that your personal calendar for june of 2018 was just as packed as the global one. Comparing your small moments—like a graduation or a summer job—against the backdrop of the World Cup and the Singapore Summit provides a weirdly grounding perspective on how fast time actually moves.