Camfess is back with a boom

Camfess lives on! The Facebook page has been silent since Friday 13th October, meaning the freshers miss out on a quintessential pillar to Cambridge life. Considering it went 23 days between posts, people were worried that Zuckerberg struck again. Luckily, this was not a repeat of 2022 when Camfess was taken down from Facebook for “inciting violence”.

Camfess or 2Cam2Fess, the continuation of this original Facebook page post-removal, was posting consistently until Friday 13th October. The final post was a Camfesser looking for friendship advice – a post that doesn’t really delve into any topics that violate Facebook’s Terms of Service. I speculated with a friend that the Eduroam post was the final straw, but there has definitely been more choice language and content on Camfess in the past.

Camfess went silent, sparking a third rendition of Camfess: Camfess three: Tokyo Drift, the rather disappointing cousin of 2Cam2Fess. As I’m writing this, it has already gained 469 followers and has 267 likes, which goes to show how attached Cambridge students are to questionable discourse, rants and interesting opinions about the university.

Early Camfessions on the new page read “we’re losing camfess pages at a terminal rate” and “What happened to camfess two”, with a camfessor saying “the previous camfess was down for a while because of system infrastructure”. Camfess three was actually gaining traffic very quickly when it became cast aside for the return of Camfess two. Camfess three’s infinitely more populated older sibling began posting again on Sunday 5th November. They appear to be posting every Camfess that was submitted during the break, resulting in a boom of posts. This is absolutely awful for my productivity – I had a friend say “I like Facebook as you can run out of things to do”. Not anymore.

With people on Camfess three asking “explain what is going on with the old camfess?” we are no closer to answers. The great mystery of the beloved Camfess two came to an end, as a Camfess was posted and peace and order instated upon the Cambridge Facebook ecosystem.

While talking to my friends, the general consensus is that Camfess was missed for the time it was gone, despite the tendency towards airing complaints and personal issues on the page – one friend told me she was “really sad” that Camfess stopped posting, while another said “Camfess was my only personality trait. Without it, I was literally meaningless”.

Live reaction to the loss of Camfess (Image credit: Iris Rogers)

On Camfess three the admin has hinted at what happened: “you can all thank me for scaring them into returning”. Why did they leave? Who is the admin of Camfess three? How can you be a Camfess admin and not post camfessions? Unfortunately, the admins of Camfess are (understandably) anonymous and hard to get hold of.

We may never know what happened to Camfess, but at least the chosen tool of our procrastination is still running.

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