reddit's physical manifestation
on high school bathrooms and impermanence
High school bathrooms:
Patchy coats of barely opaque paint covering hastily-sprayed graffiti and the sticky scents of grape and mango-flavored vapes that cling to every surface like bad perfume. The droning, constant buzz of florescent lights, messages scratched into the mirror because whoever wrote them knew the school didn’t have enough money to replace the glass. Writing scrawled onto bathroom walls.
The stalls feel more like confessional booths than anything; with their mildly claustrophobic, contained spaces.
Reddit physically manifesting itself — An anonymous communal diary, collecting anecdotes and advice like dust that can be scrubbed away at any moment. But online forums cannot be erased, so maybe the impermanence of the bathroom walls is what makes the activity so appealing.
My favorite interaction is someone innocently asking
“If I have friends, why do I feel so alone?”
The answers range from complete sincerity, to comments on the melodrama of it all.
“Trust the process”
“Just wait a while”
“This is corny as shit, get yo shit together bitch!”
“Be there for yourself”
Another confession, written in large letters, simply states:
“I THINK I’M PREGNANT”
This was responded to with a hesitant
“Congrats?”
And demands for updates.
“Johnny please fuck me” Is written above a phone number.
There’s something unifying about it all, maybe this is what the internet could have been; disembodied spheres to bond over shared experiences of stupidity. But it isn’t: it’s farther than “isn’t”, the internet is the antithesis of solidarity.
Maybe the distinguishing feature is the confirmation of proximity; a Reddit user could be anyone, a girl writing on the stall of a bathroom may be anonymous, but she is not protected by complete obscurity. I have probably seen her in the hallway, I am able to create plausible visualizations of her environment while she was writing; maybe she was caught in the flood of students rushing through the building between 3rd and 4th period or in the middle of a pre-calc quiz she decided to skip.
The girl’s bathroom is a a congregation to gossip and shared information. It’s scuffed tile floors, and walls, visibly made of glazed cement blocks, are more than that. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and school bathrooms really are just a place to piss and get high.
hehe i love this!!
loved this!