In a world of increasingly prominent bios, status updates, selfies and emojis, the world around us has become glued to your shadow box. Everything important goes in your shadow box, up on a wall to display for everyone who comes around.
Like any good crafty person, you go to Hobby Lobby and select the best, most beautiful scrapbook paper to be your background. No one will want to be friends with someone who uses an ugly, boring background, right?
Once you choose the snazziest, most intriguing background paper, you look for adornments to go in your box. Your favorite color is blue, but you don't want people to get the wrong idea so you keep with the pink theme, despite the fact that pink makes you look like a pig in a blanket. Gotta keep up appearances.
Next, you go to Walmart so you can print out some awesome pictures for the shadow box. There are some great memories that you'd like to put in it, but they weren't cool...just memories of family vacations and sleepovers. So, you resort to the few pictures of a not so great vacation touring the Caribbean like the well to do person you are trying to be. But hey, the pictures look awesome and prove that you went on a great vacation. People would for sure think you were so cool!
After printing out the pictures, you go home and assemble the box. After realizing that you don't even have momentos or ticket stubs or anything to go with the lousy but aesthetically pleasing vacation, you resort to printing out fake cruise tickets to go with said vacation. You didn't want to remember this trip, and you have nothing to remember it by, but hey, you look so cool.
You're pleased with the bang-up job you've done at setting up the profile of your awesomeness in a wooden box, so now there's only one thing left to do...
wait for the likes to pour in.
You stake out in the hall, waiting for people to walk by and notice how cool you are for sticking to the status quo. You might not like what's in the box, but by gosh you hope the people around you do! You spent a lot of time perfecting angles and forging tickets of awesomeness.
You find yourself swimming in likes, some which come from people whom you may not have expected. You're overwhelmed with comments such as "looks like you had a blast!" and "we need to hang sometime!". Wow, what a little craft supply and imagination will do for your appearance!
Later on, after developing friendships with these people who saw that shadow box and thought you were cool because of it, you start to feel regretful for those pink adornments and that fake cruise ticket. Mainly because you find yourself in a nail salon getting pink mani-pedis with the girls in preparation for your cruise.
The walls start the come down a little when you announce that you want a mint blue nail polish. The people who saw your shadow box are shocked because the thing was practically covered in pink everything. Days before the cruise, you ask those friends if the group could just hit the beach and relax instead.
Before you know it, the shadow box has collapsed and all that are left are your family vacation pictures and chipped mint blue nail polish.
This happens to everyone. Every day.
(don't deny it!)
Only instead of a shadow box, it is a Facebook profile, Twitter feed or Instagram account. We tend to post things that are aesthetically pleasing, in pursuit of likes and <3s. We gravitate towards the people who give them to us.
Not only that, but we have become a society that thrives off of these meaningless compliments. So much that we focus on perfecting the ideal image in order to obtain them. No one posts about a subpar vacation, nor does someone ever post a video of themselves butchering a song cover. We only want to show the good parts.
Now, I've never assembled a shadow box or been on a cruise, but I can say that we all have experienced this social media friendship. Friends who seem compatible until you reach the surface. Very few friends make it past to the surface. But when you find the ones who do, keep them close, because those are the ones worth keeping! Even if they don't like your stupid picture or <3 your witty status!
