UEA Confessions: Why so addictive?

Why are we so obsessed with UEA confessions?


Everyone has heard about the UEA confessions Facebook page. Within only a few hours of being put up it had close to 1000 likes and 10 days later this number has more than doubled to over 2000. But what makes this page, and pages like it, so popular?

Most people have stories they like to share with friends because they are shocking or funny. This page provides a forum where you can anonymously share a story you would usually only share with your closest friends and get the response you would usually get from those friends from people you have never met before.

As to why us readers find this page entertaining, one reason is obviously the sheer hilarity of the stories posted, some by the page itself sent in anonymously and others put on the pages wall by its many readers. The stories range from interesting club experiences and drunken ventures to more intimate tales of often failed sexual encounters.

We enjoy these stories for the same reason they are put up, because everyone has some of their own. We all have our own stories, but we like seeing others, we like comparing our experiences with theirs and having the thoughts ‘oh yeah, that happened to me once’, ‘that is nothing compared to what I did’ or ‘I can’t imagine what I’d do in that situation’.

Even if we haven’t got similar experiences, we can picture ourselves where most of the confessions happened, on our very own campus, at the LCR, the terraces, or the union bar. But the confessions aren’t just limited to what we know on campus, they include the many clubs in Norwich, Wonderland, Tau, Lola Lo’s, all places most of us know and love. We like that these things happened where we have been and how we could potentially have been nearby when it happened.

These stories represent a side of student life that is removed from our daily studies, the side that everyone knows about and acknowledges as part of the ‘student lifestyle’, but is rarely actually put in the spotlight. UEA Confessions puts that spotlight on it and lets everyone enjoy it as it should be enjoyed, publicly but anonymously.

However, as much as it should be enjoyed, we do also have to note that the experiences the page shows are not all good, and while most may be funny, some of them should double up as cautionary tales to bear in mind when we go out and get plastered, so we don’t end up being ‘that’ guy or girl who wakes up in the bushes the next morning without their shoes.