Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will… anonymously assault you? Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I’ve been scrolling through Yik-Yak a lot lately.
Popularly emerging as the successor to CollegiateACB, Yik-Yak now stands as the hub of anonymous college gossip. As an increasingly mobile way for students to sound off about anything, Yik-Yak represents a localized Twitter without the handle. The anonymity granted has been optimistically portrayed as, “allow[ing] everyone to let their guard down and have a blank slate,” by co-founder Brooks Buffington. It’s a nice premise, the only problem being that those slates do not remain blank for the accused.
At the behest of my friend, I downloaded Yik-Yak after returning from abroad. My arrival coincided with a particularly eventful week—some combination of Duke’s loss to Miami, Greek and SLG rush and the adhan debacle left students in a flurry. While the loss in Cameron produced Yaks that could best be described as a witty melodrama, the conversation—if you want to call it that—regarding rush and adhan was distinctly disturbing. There was nothing humorous or informative in the barrage of attacks between fraternities, sororities or SLG’s, and the discussion revolving the adhan reversal reeked of bigotry.
Few students would contend that the overwhelming majority of the Yik-Yak feed is petty and often malicious gossip. The joke, opinion and occasional news Yaks that remain are interspersed in the web of textual assaults. Due to the prohibition of using names in a defamatory context, explicitly personal attacks are often removed in minutes. However, this does not preclude many social groups, organizations and otherwise labeled entities from unidentifiable vitriol.
I am a big fan of self-deprecating humor. Like my grandma preaches, if you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ll have a tough as hell time laughing at everyone else. The same thing generally goes for crude humor which, for nearly everyone not named the ACLU, makes us a laugh a little bit harder.
However, the line between satire and a diatribe should be relatively recognizable. Baseless accusations and insults that more closely represent hate speech aren’t funny. The subsequent lack of accountability is downright depressing. Giving people the opportunity to shed ownership over their words clearly encourages them to throw punches in the dark, replacing channels of discussion with venom.
Yik-Yak isn’t the inventor of the anonymous comment board, but it’s the latest iteration in what is becoming a long line of socially degrading technology. Anonymity has always held somewhat of a duplicitous position amongst journalists and communicators. Theoretically, it should be granted to protect a person who would be otherwise harmed by releasing the information. More frequently, Adam Schefter uses it to pander rumors about Jim Harbaugh. At its best, anonymity gives us Watergate. Its worst, TMZ.
The increasing opportunity to assert your opinion should come with an increasing responsibility to make that opinion measured, factual and preferably funny. Recklessly accusing your peers of drug use, misconduct or any sort of social inferiority fails miserably in these criteria.
Among the darker corridors of the Internet lie the comment boards of YouTube. They are notorious not only for the maliciousness of their contents, but also for their unwavering commitment to anonymity. I don’t know anyone who spends time down there, but briefly scrolling through reveals the posters to comprise the criminally ignorant portion of society. It’s one of the worst examples of anonymous comment boards, and one that has even catalyzed some change.
ESPN, the most trafficked sports news website in the world, hosted comment boards of similarly unsavory, albeit sports based, anonymous discussion. After nearly five years of hosting anonymous comment boards, ESPN decided last July to link user profiles to their Facebook, giving faces and names to its participants. This motion to civilize was described by website editor-in-chief Patrick Stiegman as, “want[ing] people to be candid -- actively engage in strong and thorough debate, but do it in a way without anonymity,”
The move tempered ESPN’s comments, and other major websites have followed suit. It also seemed to prove that a quality discussion, if that is indeed what you seek to promote, is best achieved without anonymity.
I’m not taking Yik-Yak at anything more than face value. Its popularity clearly manifests itself in its loose-lipped and uncensored content. However, it’s worth recognizing that it appeals to our worse nature, and remains fueled by the students on this campus. Just because the app doesn’t hold you responsible for what you write does not mean you didn’t write it, and if you are going to Yak, Yak responsibly.
Caleb Ellis is a Trinity junior. This is his first column of the semester.
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