In school, when nature calls, or sometimes you are just bored (don’t lie, you’ve been there), one might take a stroll down the hallway to the nearest bathroom and find a familiar face staring back at you in the stall. Frequently, there has been a collage of pictures of iconic celebrities ranging from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Bob Ross, and I, for one, have heard many a chat amongst the female student body in the hallways about who could possibly be responsible for this comedic bit of genius.
A little while back, I figured out who is behind these “shrines” as she calls them and was able to ask her about the reasoning behind them. In short, she made them because she “was bored,” but as the conversation developed, it was revealed that she put together the shrines to make people laugh and spread some happiness as they take a three-minute break from the stresses of school. “Quite honestly,” she admitted, “I just personally found them amusing.” Little did she know that they would be a phenomenon talked about in anticipation for the next one.
She reflected on all of the shrines she put up: Pablo, the infamous penguin from the children’s TV show “The Backyardigans,” Bob Ross, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in great pride. The Pablo shrine was the first one she put up, and the one to spark the rumors about where these photos came from. She claimed the reason she did Pablo was because during this time, “International Super Spy,” the song sung by Pablo from “The Backyardigans,” was trending on TikTok, and “everyone couldn’t stop singing it, [herself] included.” On a more personal level, her younger cousins were obsessed with the show, and the previous weekend she had spent a lot of time with them, thus sparking the idea to make this Pablo shrine in honor of them. She also said that she “thought it would have a great public response,” and boy, was she right.
The second shrine she put up was Bob Ross, an iconic American painter that is recognizable anywhere with his big hair and light-colored collared shirts. This shrine, while not as talked about as the Pablo shrine, was instantly talked about the morning it was put up. She claimed that she “simply loved Bob Ross and thought he deserved to have a shrine where everyone could acknowledge his greatness.”
The most recent shrine she put up, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, claimed to be the most work due to her next-level action of making a QR code that would bring the student to a one-hour loop of the song featuring The Rock titled “Face Off.” This song appeared to be what sparked the idea, along with the many trending memes of “The Rock.”
Now, after putting up three different shrines, she still has limitless ideas of who to put up next, some being The Lorax, Vector, Scooby Doo, and the Adam Driver “good soup” meme, and looks forward to doing so. She found the feeling of hearing people talk about the shrines in the hall “hilarious” and “entertaining” as she is this big secret that people are dying to figure out. With the fourth shrine coming soon, she is learning from her past mistakes and talked about the time she got caught putting up the Dwayne Johnson shrine and the “sheer embarrassment” she felt but how funny it was. She confirms that even though some people don’t understand the shrines in the bathroom and “find them stupid,” they will not be going away and will only get bigger and better.