In response to growing demand from students at Wesleyan and across the nation, the creators of thefacebook have developed what cool people say is sure to be the next big trend on college campuses: the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book.
According to a statement on theidontlikeyourfacebook.com, the website is “an online directory that connects people through antisocial networks at colleges.” Members can create profiles, unlist their phone numbers, and reject potential adversaries. Mark Zuckerberg, the brains behind both versions of thefacebook, said in an interview that he expects the “facebook for enemies” to attract a wide variety of students, from those who want to break up with significant others online, to those who simply want to alienate as many people as they can.
Until this week, the service was only available to assholes from a few Ivy League universities, but the the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book has now expanded its membership to other schools, including Wesleyan. Reaction here is mixed.
“As a self-identified hostile person, I’m glad that the spectrum of acceptable social relationships has widened to include the kind I often find myself in,” said Flannery O’Horowitz ’06, who joined the service yesterday. “I’ve already been enemied by thirteen people—but I barely know some of them, so I feel like it would be cheating to reject them all.”
O’Horowitz said that her interest in online networks had waned after the initial rush of discovering through WesMatch that she was zero percent compatible with every student at Wesleyan.
Oswaldo Birkenstock ’08 has rediscovered unfriendly faces from the past.
“This kid from my middle school enemied me,” Birkenstock said. “I had totally forgotten he existed, but now I remember how I used to beat him up and steal his pants. I think once I left him for dead.”
But some students, including Sunshine Flower ’07, say that the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book is not a safe space for everyone.
“I like all faces,” Flower said. “I am shocked and appalled that at a school as supposedly liberal as Wesleyan, some students don’t. If there’s an upside to the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book, it’s that we have an easy way to monitor, and if necessary track down and kill, people whose antagonism I hate. Also, have you noticed that those people are usually ugly?”
Professor Clairey Potter sees the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book as part of a larger trend toward depersonalized, internet-based interactions.
“I worry that my students are spending more and more time in their rooms clicking those mice, instead of having casual sex and meeting their soul mates on acid trips the way they did when I was a girl,” Potter said. “I don’t think making an enemy online can compare to the joy of throwing Molotov cocktails through someone’s window.”
Alumni, professors and members of the Administration can also join the-i-don’t-like-your-face-book, although few choose to do so.
Wesleyan President Doug Bennet briefly became a member, but quit when he became an “enemy slut” (a person whose enemy count exceeds one hundred) within eight minutes. In those eight minutes, however, students who viewed his profile learned that Bennet likes the book “Bridges of Madison County,” the film “But I’m a Cheerleader” and “all cheesy music from the 80s!!!” Interests include banning things and selling confiscated boxes of chalk to Hampshire College. Bennet’s “About Me” section informed students that he is “mrrrm mrrrrrrrrrm mmmmmmrmmmm and really mrrrmmm!”
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