It’s hard to describe what exactly MeowWolf is. Over the past several years, you’ve likely seen some pictures of this place, mostly on social media. MeowWolf describes itself as Immersive Art Experiences and Interactive Exhibits. While this is certainly true, it feels like one of those IYKYK (If You Know You Know) types of places. Pictures like these give you an idea what to expect, but it’s impossible to understand what going to MeowWolf is like without actually going there.
More than anything, the place is extremely artistic, and just random. Around every turn there is a door, another room, or even a crawl space that leads to another completely different exhibit. There’s a lot of it too. Some have spent over five hours in this place.
My favorite part was the Pizza and Pals section, a place where I suddenly found pizza singing at me.
The place also had an optional interactive component, with a story about four worlds that it would take a much deeper dive to understand.
Still, I couldn’t help but reflect on how well this place matches our current cultural moment.
First of all, it certainly caters to an ADD (which seems to be all the rage right now) type of crowd. With all the different immersive art, any visitor can just abruptly change what they are looking at by turning their head or walking through a door.
Yet, it seems to match this historical moment on a much deeper level. Sure, it is the perfect place for Instagram, something that people seem to have been looking for for a little over a decade now. However, it seems to speak to an even deeper craving that has developed during the 2020s. After nearly two decades of looking at and sharing pictures on social media, people are now looking for something that is more of an experience.
There is also something to be said about an experience that a person cannot truly wrap their heads around just by looking at pictures or even hearing about the experience. By knowing this place cannot even be remotely understood through social media feeds, it establishes itself as being about more. While this place may be great for social media, it points to a life beyond social media. The emergence and increased popularity of this place appears to be sending a cultural message along the lines of…
“We still want great photos to show our friends and family, but we are craving in real life interactive experiences. We want something unique. Something imaginative. We want something beyond what can just be seen in a photo or a video. We are ready to be done with just passively consuming content. And, we’re tired of the flattened culture where everything is the same!”
This, I believe, culturally, is where we are in 2025.
The Action Story 