Careless Whispers

Library Whispers shuts down after cases of cyber-bullying.

banter bullying cyber bullying Library library whispers oliver rees revision sexism

Anonymous site Library Whispers has today been shut down after “bullying and aggressive messages” from a “large number of individuals”.

The site has seen occasional offensive comments since its inception last year, but these have escalated recently causing founder Oliver Rees to close it down.

A statement on the site claimed that “it has turned into a forum of hate” and claimed that “the decision to close the site was taken before anything really bad happened”.

One regular user told The Tab that there were the occasional sexist comments which turned nasty, and that things had been getting worse recently.

Library Whispers was “started to give people the opportunity to break the boring revision period with a bit of interest”, and has for the most part been an interesting and diverting place to procrastinate.

Oliver Rees had no further comment other than that he was focusing a on a new project, We Are Cambridge.

End of an era: the page today

One user reacted to its closure with a Facebook status saying “Library whisperers is no more =(. Going to have to make do with listening into grad whispers in the real library. Nightmare.”

Clare mathmo Juan Ojeja told The Tab that the site’s anonymity, one of its selling points, made its demise inevitable: “anonymity incites bullying as you can completely disregard consequences, it gives people a sense of power to completely trash someone who perhaps they’ve never met.”

But it isn’t all bad news. Adam Gray, second year muso from Selwyn, said ‘I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if there was a noticeable improvement in exam results this year.’

It seems Cambridge students will have to find a new way to gossip and procrastinate in the run-up to exams.