The Chase for Happiness: a profile of NParlin22

NParlin22 is a peer in school as well as sports. He is extremely outgoing and loves to converse with everybody around him. He is a basketball enthusiast when not with friends or family. He works steadily in order to fund his ever growing shoe collection in which he takes pride in. Along with playing basketball he enjoys video games like NBA2k.

When he was planning his avatar he included elements that relate to his emotions. They either represent it through objects or colors but always have more than one meaning within itself. For example, the sun and ocean represent his interests in astronomy as well as a nice day or just happiness. The blue clouds and blue waves are there for both his inspiration in the color blue, as well as a nice day at the beach. For Nparlin blue doesn’t line up with the happiness theme within his avatar. “Blue for me means like sadness or coolness”. It is there to also represent the reality in life that there are sad moments but the clouds and waves will always continue to come and go. He also mentioned that clouds remind him of basketball shoes, Nike in particular for their marketing with “air”. “I love picking out new basketball shoes every week and the clouds remind me of Nike”.

The picture itself consists of an ocean landscape with two clouds, a sun, the water, and waves. The simplicity within the avatar grabs my attention because now learning about it makes it even more interesting. The symbolism is raging out of N’s avatar and it’s not easy to understand at first glance. He chose the sun because it represents a star in our solar system as well as the shining rays which remind him of contentment. “Astronomy has always been interesting because it represents our place in the universe”. The blue clouds were chosen because they are blue as well as the ever changing weather they have. Sometimes they rain and remind him of sorrow while other times they are right next to the sun on a nice day. Later on he added the Nike connection to the clouds. Lastly the ocean and waves were chosen for his interest in swimming and the color explanation as stated before.

Nparlin’s avatar work relates to mine by being constructed around our emotions. To summarize, his work is about the happy and sad days as well as some personal things like astronomy and basketball shoes. Mine is based around competing and trying to win which can be related if talking about sports and basketball. I admire N’s avatar more than mine since there is so much unforeseen symbolism placed into it. My avatar is more of a symmetrical flag in which someone could understand one of the three elements. Nparlins is a landscape with objects that have different meanings. N’s work also can be understood as his hunt for having good days with the people around him. 

“Happy!!!!!!!!!!!” by M Reza Faisal is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0