This week’s article about a Wesleyan freshman’s decision to purchase the rights to the Wesleyan Anonymous Confession Board—as well as the traffic of competitor site Juicy Campus—raised some serious issues regarding the recent rise in popularity of anonymous confession boards on college campuses in the U.S., and the ways that they are shaping students’ college experiences. 

One point of contention is the seeming disconnect between the way that people condemn the ACB in public and the amount that they actually use it in private—when discussing the ACB among their peers, students tend to speak about it in a haughty, almost condemnatory tone, but all evidence points to the fact that, behind closed doors, their opinions shift considerably.

Simply put, the ACB and its various competitor websites are allowed to thrive on the basis of simple supply and demand: students want it, students use it. But this posits an interesting question akin to that timeless one about the chicken and the egg—does the ACB’s popularity among the student body reflect a fundamental human desire to gossip about each other, or does the ACB’s existence as an available medium foster and encourage slanderous commentary where it might not have otherwise arisen?

The urge to seek out and uncover private details about other people, whether they are our next-door neighbors, Hollywood celebrities, or politicians, is one that stretches back through time and across cultures. Open a Jane Austen novel, pick up a tabloid in the express lane at the grocery store, or eavesdrop on a café conversation for five minutes and you will find that this is true. In this sense, one could defend the ACB on the grounds that it simply provides a space for this type of conversation to take place—and that if not the ACB, then some other medium would allow people to gossip about the same types of topics.

The online anonymous forum is not a unique or recent phenomenon. For years people have used Internet chat rooms to discuss a whole host of various topics, slanderous or not, under cryptic screen-names that allow them to detach their identities from the things they contribute. What is unique about the ACB, however, is the fact that it is inscribed within the parameters of a physical place, which corresponds to a distinct community of real people. There is a difference between someone posting a comment about “Susan” on an anonymous Manga-phile forum, and someone posting the same comment on the Wesleyan ACB, whose readers are likely to identify that name with an actual person they know.

Talking to just a few Wesleyan students about their opinions of and attitudes toward the ACB reveals a curious psychological phenomenon about its users. One student, while admitting to the fact that he/she regularly read the posts on the ACB, said that he/she would “never actually post anything on it” because it made him/her feel “gross.” One would venture to guess that his/her comment is a fairly accurate reflection of a larger ambivalence toward the ACB that results from a collision of two distinct and contradictory reactions—helpless intrigue and disgust.

Another student stated that the ACB is “basically entertaining and enjoyable to read,” until it becomes “a part of your life”—i.e. your name is mentioned in a less-than-favorable light. The anonymity of the ACB, it seems, allows for a kind of voyeuristic indulgence in scrutinizing the private (though mostly utterly mundane) details of the everyday lives of our peers.

An interesting comparison to make is to look at the types of comments that pervade the pages of Facebook, which is just as popular if not more popular than the ACB, and compare them to the types of comments that appear on Juicy Campus and other colleges’ anonymous confession boards. There is a disturbing disparity between the two—disturbing because the comments are, for the most part, posted by the same people. The entire premise of the Facebook culture is constructed around people’s identities, while the ACB’s operates under namelessness, and it seems that that difference is enough for someone to log on to their Facebook account and post something like “Hey Sweetie! Haven’t seen you in forever, wanna get lunch next Thursday?” on Jane’s Wall, and then for that same person to open the newest thread on the ACB and spread a nasty rumor about Jane’s sexual preferences.

What does this radical disparity say about us? The genius and allure of Facebook was that it allowed people to essentially construct and manipulate their social image in any way they wanted. And yet, once the novelty of Facebook wore off, people discovered that, in many ways, the identity they had created there was inherently limiting—every greeting posted on a friend’s wall, every comment made about someone’s photo, every uploaded story or article or quote was instantly linked back to that original identity constructed through the Profile Page. There is the fear that one may be judged for liking a particular music group, making a less-than-witty comment on someone’s wall, or holding a particular religious view. With the ability to construct a profile for oneself, there came the additional burden of bearing total responsibility for every action taken within the Facebook network.

Then the ACB came along and said, “We’ll take Facebook’s idea, but erase the faces,” and suddenly people realized that they had total license to talk shit about each other—no faces, no profiles, also meant no responsibility for one’s words or actions.  

Does the ACB really contribute positively to the atmosphere of a college campus, much less an individual’s four years of college experience? While it is true that not everything on the ACB is harmful or potentially harmful to people’s reputations and self-image, and while it is also true that not everyone at Wesleyan reads the ACB on a regular basis, it remains common knowledge that the “Anonymous Confessional Board” is somewhat of a misnomer. People do use it to confess their latest crushes or saddest regrets, but they also conceive of the ACB as a place where “it’s easy to be really mean” (according to one student) because they are relieved of the burden of identity.

There is evidence of cases where students’ college experiences have been ruined by sites like the ACB and Juicy Campus—slanderous reputations have been attached permanently to hitherto pristine identities, rumors that, once in circulation, become utterly irreversible, not to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of hours spent in wasted isolation rather than in interacting and creating real relationships with one’s peers. And while the last case might say more about the individual who chooses to spend his time in such a manner rather than any kind of evil inherent in the ACB itself, nevertheless we can safely say that Wesleyan and other college campuses would probably not suffer for its eradication.