Bathroom Shrines

Submission 43,271

About

Bathroom Shrines, sometimes known as Restroom Shrines, refers to a humorous practice of establishing improvised shrines dedicated to real people and fictional characters in public bathrooms that resemble memorials for the dead. The practice was inspired by a series in 2018 showcasing a Danny DeVito shrine hidden in a "secret" room connected to a college bathroom.

Origin

On October 9th, 2018, Twitter^[1] user @terreeslavie posted a photograph of a small shrine dedicated to actor Danny DeVito located in a "secret room" at SUNY Purchase College (shown below), with @terreeslavie inviting the actor to visit the college. The tweet received over 320 retweets and 2,000 likes prior to the profile being set to private.

On November 11th, 2018, Twitter^[2] user @pisslorde posted a video in which she and a group of her friends climb through a hole in a college bathroom wall into an adjacent, unused room, where the shrine is set up. The post received over 6,900 retweets and 16,900 likes prior to being removed (video reupload^[2] shown below).

On November 13th, 2018, Twitter^[3] user @slackerdook posted four photographs of the shrine to Twitter, with the post gaining over 141,000 retweets and 483,000 likes in three years (shown below, left and center). On November 16th, following widespread coverage of the shrine by media, Danny DeVito tweeted^[4] a post of appreciation for the shrine that accumulated over 80,900 retweets and 266,500 likes in three years (shown below, right).

Spread

The Danny DeVito shrine at SUNY Purchase College inspired students at other schools and colleges to create improvised shrines for people and characters in the following years. For example, on November 25th, 2019, TikTok^[5] user ladollyvit4 posted a video of a shrine hidden in a broken tampon machine which received over 331,600 likes in two years (shown below, left). On December 4th, 2019, TikTok^[6] user tnoneya posted a video of an improvised shrine dedicated to What Would You? host Jon Quiñones which gained over 669,100 likes (shown below, center).

The trend experienced its first burst in prominence in May 2021, when several viral TikToks of improvised shrines in school bathrooms were posted. For example, on May 12th, TikTok^[7] user vampsoxks posted a video of a bathroom shrine dedicated to Harry Styles which received over 523,000 likes on the app in five months (shown below, right).

The trend experienced another surge in late October 2021 after on October 10th, 2021, TikTok^[8] user fizzy_apple_juice and Twitter^[9] user @WEBBYMCGEE posted a video and a photograph of a Hatsune Miku bathroom shrine. The posts received over 206,800 views and 45,300 likes on TikTok and 9,800 retweets and 70,200 likes on Twitter, respectively in one week (shown below, left and right).

The posts inspired more bathroom shrine TikToks and posts in the following days; for example, on October 26th, 2021, Twitter^[10] user @livdeadgrll posted a photograph of Megamind shrine a bathroom at her school.