The Sinister Side of ‘Spotted’

There’s no doubt the Spotted and Confessions pages have provided us with a fair bit of entertainment recently. More than that, they’ve been a source of camaraderie during exam time, boosting our spirits and even on occasions doing a bit of matchmaking.

Not sure if cute…or terrifying

The pages started as a way to have a laugh and share our anecdotes about the weird and wonderful things that happen on campus. They’ve now become a convenient way for people to justify bullying, dismissing it as ‘just a joke’. We’re providing a platform for bitching and slut-shaming. My Facebook newsfeed is now reminiscent of the mean girls burn book. (Boo you whores).

What’s more worrying is that popping to Asda has now become a breakdown provoking, fashion crisis inducing nightmare. Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days when I could head out to get my chocolate milk in mismatching socks without the fear of being shunned by the Smithdown community. It was a simpler time. Walking through studentville in 2013 means you’re on full terror alert. Just when you think you’re out of danger, someone, from the safe haven of their filthy student bedroom, decides it’s appropriate to comment on the tightness of your outfit and BOOM. There goes your dignity.

Case in point

Meanwhile, somewhere else on Facebook, the uni confessions page is filled with sexist comments and drunken encounters that seem to border on sexual assault. In case this wasn’t entertaining enough for us as we’re scrolling through the newsfeed over our ready break, we can also get live updates on who the last person was to chunder up their carnifood on the way to the Raz last night. Yum.

So while we can all agree that this sort of thing is pretty harmless:

I don’t think any of us would appreciate having the size of our arses analysed by the student population when we’re in the gym, or our romantic lives (or not so romantic in this case) made public. Actually, I think I’d sooner have Edward Scissorhands put my contact lenses in.

I don’t think I’m alone in hoping this anonymous poster has contracted an especially nasty STI by now.

But as sexist, disgusting and plain spiteful as many of the posts are, the uni need to steer well clear of our lives on Facebook. We’ve seen the speed with which universities get involved in our private lives if they think there’s any risk to their reputation, yet alarmingly, when it comes to racism and homophobia on campus, they seem to be rather more lax.

So a lot of these posts are probably utter bullshit – written by bitter nerds in a desperate bid to convince themselves of their ‘LAD’ status. But aside from any other issues, all this spiteful bitching is far less entertaining that what was originally on the pages. I’d much rather have this on my newsfeed than the story of yet another drunken conquest at Med. Or worse still a picture of the infamous ‘Sylvester Stalone’ in the gym rocking his ‘meggings’.

Cute.

It’s not the uni’s job to police these Facebook pages; it’s ours. So next time you see a post that crosses the line from ‘banter’ into bullying, please don’t share or like it. We need to get these pages back to what they were intended for – a laugh.

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