totally-totems.com

Est. Houghton, August 2026 — on a branch, in Sharpie

Most totems are bad.

A totem exists so five people on a dark dance floor can find each other. That is a low bar and yet. So many flags that just say PARTY CENTRAL. We can do better, and the button below has 11 billion opinions on how.

Press the button.

Space to reroll. Every totem has its own link — send someone a cursed one.

The Banana Test

Jenn has carried the same banana shaker to every festival for years. She will tell you it is a percussion instrument. It is actually a screening tool: bring it out, and the people who immediately play along with it are your people. The people who don't, aren't. It has never once been wrong.

Secondary use: point it forward in a single-file crush and shake. It is regularly mistaken for a snake, and the crowd parts.

Three rules, learned the hard way

  1. It has to be findable, not loud

    Height beats brightness. Eight feet of nothing-special will out-perform a beautiful thing held at chest level.

  2. One unexpected sound

    Sight lines fail. Bells, shakers and things that rattle work in a crowd where you can only see the person in front of you.

  3. Build it there, not at home

    The best totem of the weekend was a branch, a mini banana, and a hospital fall-risk bracelet, assembled during a beer run. See /girlstrip.

Field notes

Seven totems, observed under real conditions. Houghton, August 2026. The full accounts live at /girlstrip, which is password-protected, because they are somebody's actual diary.

  1. A banana shaker

    Jenn

    Parted a single-file crowd who mistook the sound for a snake. Doubles as a personality screen — the people who play along are the people worth knowing.

    Worked

  2. A large fuzzy white hat

    Karen

    Worn on the one cold night purely to be findable. Someone later navigated back across a dance floor by it without being told to.

    Load-bearing

  3. A branch, a mini banana, a fall-risk bracelet

    Chase

    Assembled during a beer run entirely from found materials, then signed in Sharpie by committee. Became this website.

    Worked

  4. A shirt covered in words

    Elaine

    Read and quietly tracked by strangers for three days, one of whom had been crossing the words off as they happened. Ended in a gift and a tattoo plan.

    Worked

  5. No object whatsoever

    Karen

    A theatrical stomp, belly and pelvis jutted at the treeline, performed with total commitment. Produced one friend within minutes and an entire group of Scots inside the hour.

    Worked twice, then depleted

  6. Nothing at all

    A man at lunch

    Carried no phone, took no photographs, and when asked how he planned to find the people he came with, shrugged and said he knew he'd manage it eventually.

    Unfalsifiable

  7. An official MEETING POINT sign

    Norfolk

    A permanent, weatherproof, professionally lettered solution to this exact problem, installed at public expense.

    Zero recorded successes