EKISD761

	She was at a new restaurant, trendy, had over a thousand reviews on Yelp. She learned of it through YouTube, her favorite beauty channel, one specializing in celebrity make-up tutorials. The restaurant had been featured in a recent video. Since watching the video she had became obsessed with visiting the restaurant, firstly tweeting in a yelling tone, then browsing hashtags bearing the establishments name; Twitter, then Instagram, even Vine, her excitement bubbling.

	She texted her group message enthusiastically, tagging a photo of the interior, its walls adorned with photos of Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, again in all caps yelling, the millennial Wilhelm Scream. The group message erupted, agreeing it was a good idea.

	Now cemented as necessity, the group message established a date. As the restaurant was five hours drive from their suburb, the date was to be in three months. She downloaded an app for a countdown, creating a millisecond accurate tracker, its title fancied with emojis. She sent a screenshot of the countdown to the group message, receiving the reply of another screenshot, a twitter account dedicated to tweeting a daily countdown until the visit. The group message erupted in crying-face emojis, and another member screenshot this, tweeting the reactions. Another screenshot was taken of the tweet and sent back to the group message, and all of the lot went to twitter and favorited it.

	The restaurant looked just as they expected, which was no surprise as they all had individually done diligent research, consuming all data there was to find prior to arriving. The car ride was the main period of research, everyone shouting “Look at the GM!” whenever a new photo revealed itself, exposing an unseen corner of the store. The grandest reaction was a photo inside the bathroom, a tampon dispenser encased by a Melissa McCarthy meme, it making some connection with blood and men or something. Reacting to the pic, a text “literally lol”, echoed in rhythmic replies of “same”. After everyone had texted “same” someone tweeted the screenshot, then the screenshot of the tweet, which everyone immediately favorited.

	The line outside the restaurant was snaking, but completely bareable as it was punctuated with podiums holding outlets and chargers, and free wifi, which was password protected, but not an issue as she had done her research and knew the password was tweeted daily from the restaurants account.

	Once inside the group message hugged and took selfies, but she resisted, as she had recently read a tweet from a Frank Ocean parody account about narcissism.
When called to order they all did so with militant efficiency, the order already home rehearsed, using the proprietary jargon the restaraunt artificially crafted. Everyone ordered gluten free although none of them had been tested, they just assumed they were intolerant.

	Waiting to receive their food, the worker explained they were far to busy to allow patrons to eat inside, and gave them prop food to take a picture of. This didn’t appear to dampen the mood noticeably. In an orderly fashion, single file and holding their plates of prop food, they waited for a seat to open. After taking the photo, its composition pre-planned, she returned to the front to trade her prop food for take out, which came in uncharacteristically drab styrofoam containers, but it didn’t seem to bother her as she had already taken the picture.

	Returning to the car, she placed the styrofoam down on the floor of the passengers side and tended to her photo, choosing the best filter and pasting her clever, labored caption. After careful audit she posted the photo, followed by an hour of maniacal updating, basking in the likes. Within the hour she accumulated her record number of likes and was satisfied, feeling accomplished and validated. She now remembered her takeout box, grabbing it from between her feet. It was  cold now, and it tasted mediocre. She didn’t mind that much anyways, she wasn’t hungry.