It’s time to boycott Overheard in St Andrews

One day, back when I was a naive little fresher, whereupon if any Facebook page or group had the words ‘St Andrews’ in the title – I’d lap it up. Overheard in St Andrews seemed to be quite an amusing page, filled with many people getting millions of likes on pictures of Hamish McHamish (RIP) and his latest escapades. ‘Awww, cute!’ I thought, and I too, succumbed to the St Andrean pressure and clicked like on every damn single thing posted there.

The day it got annoying wasn’t too long after. It all started with a long debate of whether they should or should not put more lights in Kilburn park. And then too many posts about what someone heard one posh English or American student say. Still seeing these kind of pitiful posts being posted on the page and receiving 100+ likes killed me a little bit inside. I can’t even make those kind of likes on a well-timed, fun new profile picture. 

Not just because this ‘overheard’ page makes it clear that anyone in St Andrews finds anything else (no matter how dim witted it is) about St Andrews so bloody hilarious, it’s the fact that the page is constantly plagued by lots of very annoying posts by locals. Mainly to do with how annoying they find students. And then that post attracts a swarm of locals complaining even more about students. I doubt this is going to help anyone. If anything, if you indulge in this page, you’re indulging in the popularity of this page, therefore making this page a ‘cool thing to do or be a part of’. By that reasoning, you will be encouraging students to do even more crazy, stupid things in order to be lucky enough to be mentioned by a local on the page and gain 988979+ likes and 90980989089080+ cool points. 

And yes, I will acknowledge that whilst 90% of of Overheard posts have less wit and humour than a potato, there are some gems amongst them. I too enjoyed hearing about the short sonnet sent by Tesco to some lucky students out there. What I did not appreciate was the 100+ posts already on my timeline about it, and the 10000+ posts on Overheard in St Andrews about it. We are very aware this has happened world, and I do not think I need to know that the Daily Mail and even some Canadian newspaper have acknowledges that this has happened also. The page probably crashed when the Hamish statue was announced/revealed/erected. It is the oversubscribed nature of news broadcasting of fun/quirky St Andrean news that makes it become so tediously annoying. 

My small exception to the rule is posting on this page in order to obtain a brownie recipe or thank a girl you don’t know for giving you a cupcake in the library. Sometimes, when the perfect brownie awaits, desperate measures have to be taken.

Join with me everyone, we need to boycott this page together to stop foolish activity and frustratingly stupid notifications!