“It’s been fun,” wrote the anonymous poster. “We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve yelled (mostly yelled), but all good things must come to an end. All bad things too, for that matter. So thank you all for wasting my time. That wasn’t sarcastic, either.”
Thus went the last post on the Wesleyan Anonymous Confession Board, the online phenomenon that for nearly two months has been a message board, venting space, and subject of ongoing debate.
The board, actually a post on the Wesleyan community livejournal (www.livejournal.com/community/wesleyan), invited users to comment with “whatever secrets, confessions, opinions, rants you want here, and make sure that you do it anonymously!” It reached its 5000-comment maximum on Tuesday night, and though a new board has already begun, the original has reached an official end.
Caroline Shlager ’08 started the board after reading its equivalent at Oberlin, which filled its comment maximum in less than six days.
“I thought that maybe a few Wesleyan students would have some amusing, honest confessions, if they even used it at all,” Shlager said. “I can’t say that I expected to see the ugliness that ended up oozing from it.”
The Oberlin board, which was started at the end of last year, mostly elicited confessions of love and reminiscing. Wesleyan’s board, on the other hand, quickly became a collection of rants, insults, political discussions, and fights, in addition to actual confessions.
“I didn’t think about its possible political or moral implications, but just that it seemed like a fun thing to do,” said Mad Weiss ’09. “I expected mostly dirty confessions that I could take a guilty pleasure in reading.”
It started confessional enough: “I talk about people behind their back. A lot,” wrote the first poster. By the second page, however, posts like “I hate fat girls who revel in their sexuality” began popping up. Next came the anonymous personal attacks and insults against queer students and students of color, which resulted in page-long debates between a series of anonymous posters.
“I guess it’s human nature to start backstabbing each other when nobody can possibly see, but it disturbs me,” said Aaron Tabak ’08.
The power of anonymity to foster abnormal behavior has been widely studied in the field of psychology.
“The board’s offer of anonymity loosens people’s inhibitions, leading people to say things they otherwise wouldn’t say or to be provocative in saying things they don’t believe, just to see what kind of reactions they can elicit,” said Professor of Psychology Scott Plous, who specializes in social psychology. “As a norm toward outrageousness develops, others then take their cue and reinforce this tendency even further.”
Though all posters—other than those who chose to identify themselves—have been able to speak out anonymously, those students who were attacked by name on the board have not been as lucky.
“What I found most frustrating was that the anonymous writers felt they had the right to use my first and last name to personally attack my character in a public forum,” said one student who was insulted on the board and asked to remain anonymous for that reason. “While I fully appreciate and understand the importance of anonymity, the fact that I was not also given that right was unfair.”
Even students who were not targeted on the board were disturbed by the personal attacks.
“It’s dangerous because even if you’re posting something complimentary, bringing up a person’s name opens them up to attacks from everyone else on the board,” said Janet Dewar ’09. “I think the best way to deal with the threads is to be nice or shut up.”
Particularly when it came to discussions surrounding identity politics, however, the debate started to look like the one surrounding an old Wesleyan institution: chalking. Chalking was the practice of writing messages on campus sidewalks in chalk, from announcements to deliberately inflammatory or insulting statements. When chalking was banned in 2002, much of the protest centered around the fact that queer and student of color groups had used provocative chalkings as a way to speak out in ways they could not in a white, heterosexual-dominated culture.
President Douglas Bennet’s request for students to be “polite” in their chalkings was disdained by some students, who said that Bennet’s idea of “polite” was a “white male, upper class, academic, heterosexual concept of how one speaks.”
A similar argument emerged on the confession board regarding posts that responded to perceived attacks on certain gender and sexual identities.
“When you say that everyone should remain civilized, I can’t help but to think that means playing by the rules that the already dominant identity structures have laid out,” wrote one poster. “And I’m not interested in that game. ”With its potential for anonymous yet powerful statements, the confession board resembles a new version of chalking.
“I think it’s pretty much the same thing as chalking, but transferred into a forum in which other people can respond,” said recent alum Max Goldblatt ’05. “In that sense, I think it’s an improvement.”
Beyond the controversial political debates and personal attacks, the board has featured a stunning variety of posts, from confessions of crushes and personal hygiene to a long-running debate about the merits of circumcision.
“My favorite kind of post, I think, is when people actually confess to things,” said Laura Shapiro ’09. “Sex things, food things, other random secrets. I like secrets. Not rants.”
“I don’t even go to Wesleyan, and I’m obsessed with the board!” said Frankie Thomas, a USC student whose friend, Shapiro, introduced him to the board. “It’s just fun and titillating to read anonymous people’s secrets.”
The board’s anonymity became a double-edged sword for many posters, both a source of freedom and paranoia.
“What bothers me most is that I can’t imagine who is posting some of this stuff,” Weiss said. “Someone complains about being overweight and insecure about it, and someone responds saying how ze wouldn’t sit with hir at lunch. I can’t imagine any of my friends saying something that cruel and irrational, so who is?”
“At first it was flattering to have something written about me, then after a little time I found it slightly odd,” Goldblatt said. “At this point I just think it’s funny. And the game of it is that you have no idea who said it or why they said it. And, in the end, I have to say that I sort of like the ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s like an unsolved crime.”
Though a new confession board has been started, whether or not it will have the same popularity is still up in the air.
“Most of the people I’ve talked to thought the first board got too mean, and won’t be involved in the new one,” said Marianna Foos ’08.
Given the ephemeral nature of internet trends, it might be reasonable to assume this may die the way Friendster did.
“One minute WesMatch is the big thing, then Friendster, then MySpace,” Goldblatt said. “Eventually, people get bored of everything.”
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