Here's what I mean: Facebook has been a great way for me, personally, to "keep up" with friends, to see pictures of their new baby, their new house, or their new dog. I've used it to reconnect with old friends. I fairly regularly find interesting scientific, social, political, or even, frankly, fun and silly articles by scrolling through my newsfeed. Occasionally, I even find weird or interesting events happening near me and wind up attending. Instagram is something I use for both my actual social circle and to follow restaurants, fashion brands, travelbloggers, photographers, etc. Twitter is something I use very rarely, but I follow quite a few comedians and celebrities. These uses all fall under "love."
But let's flip the coin. Studies have been done, and articles have been written, to the effect that the more someone uses social media, the more likely they are to be depressed (here's one from Forbes). The theory is, according to the study quoted in the Forbes article, that exposure to "highly idealized representations of peers on social media elicits feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier, more successful lives." More than once, in fact, have I heard from a friend or co-worker a variant of, "How do you travel all the time?" or "Is your life really as awesome as Facebook suggests?" And even though I don't consider myself a particularly jealous person, it's hard to look at the Instagram feed of someone like Jenny of Margo and Me and not dream of what it would be like to be her.
At the end of the day, social media is curated by most. It's a collection of someone's best and happiest moments—and if there is pain, it is pain that the user has chosen to share. It's not a lie, per se, but it's only a part of a whole. For every gourmet homemade burger recipe I post, there are a hundred toasted (and, if we're being honest, slightly-burnt-around-the-edges) bagels with muenster or chive and onion cream cheese I haven't posted. For every beautiful scenic view, there are a hundred streets and alleys, or of hours spent on the train or in traffic. And for every decent picture of me that I actually share on social media, there are a hundred I hate in which my eyes are closed or I'm doing something else really awkward with my face.
When I was last in LA, I visited the Museum of Ice Cream. The Museum of Ice Cream is a pop-up "museum"—really, a collection of displays that are centered loosely around ice cream—and the brainchild of a Laguna Beach native, Maryellis Bunn. The "museum" first opened for 45 days last summer in NYC and has been in LA since April 22, 2017.
Museum of Ice Cream
2018 E. 7th Place
Los Angeles, CA
Every room is highly Instagrammable: the very embodiment of the hashtag #DidItForTheGram. Some of the rooms are fairly kitschy, but each of them is fun, with a few dessert samples "sprinkled" (see what I did there?) along the way. Another unexpected surprise: many of the LA exhibits are different from the ones the NYC iteration featured last year. One standout from NYC that was missing in LA was the room of dangling ice cream cone lights, paired with edible candy balloons (imagine that Instagram post!). The equivalent in LA was probably the room of dangling bananas and swings, complete with scratch 'n' sniff walls. (Sorry, a picture of this room won't be included in this post because I didn't take enough pictures to compensate for my natural and prevailing awkwardness in photographs.)
Outfit details: J.O.A. striped one-shoulder peplum top (On Sale at Saks Off 5th) | kate spade new york Flavor of the Month Ice Cream Cone (Sold Out but check secondhand/consignment websites like Poshmark, Tradesy or eBay) | kate spade X KEDS kicks (Collection at KEDS)
One famous exhibit that showed up in both NYC and LA is the Sprinkle Pool, which is basically a pool, complete with a "diving" board (please don't dive off it, though) and pool toys and floaties, filled with, well, thousands of plastic sprinkles. It's like an updated ball pit from your childhood, except clearly conceived of for social media (everyone in the pool was on Boomerang) and simultaneously softer and more bothersome: those sprinkles will get and stick everywhere, so be careful what you wear. I went several weeks ago, and I literally found what I hope to be the very last of the plastic sprinkles only the other day.
Unfortunately, LA tickets are currently sold out (although there are rumors that the Museum will stay a little longer in LA than originally anticipated), but the Museum of Ice Cream hopes to visit San Francisco and Miami this year and eventually open a flagship (and more permanent) location in NYC—so stay on the look-out for your chance to swim in the Sprinkle Pool. You can sign up for their newsletter, which will provide these types of updates, here.
