Why are people using YikYak to hook up?

St Andrews singles are filling up our yak feed with pleas for human contact. I’m all up for finding love but is this the safest way to have fun?  

It gets to a certain point in the evening when the lecture yaks stop and the begging for sex begins. For me, asking an online community for a bit of “how’s your father” is not only the peak of desperation but a sordid affair.

An icon of blue oars flashes up asking your name and you’re supposed to swoon? Where are the details? The romance? What do blue oars even make these days? When you do meet, how do you even begin the conversation? “Nice day for it” … “Didn’t I get you last time?” … “You could have at least told me you weren’t human!”

The level of awkwardness is too much to bear – nothing is appropriate! But it’s not like that for everyone…

When you put out a yak asking for a quickie, you’re not after romance. So what is that drives our little town to such lengths just for a one night stand? For a naïve mind we could suppose the motivation is a sense of fearlessness but really it’s just sheer desperation.

Yik Yak’s response to the hook up posts share a similar opinion, agreeing that sourcing sex via an anonymous forum is just plain needy.

I asked people why

I like to think that we have better things to do with our Saturday nights than troll Yik Yak for someone to satisfy our cravings. Then again, everyone’s at it. It seems most universities up and down the country have their fair share of insecure sex addicts.

Oxford is lonely:

Not so prude

Durham isn’t hanging around:

Minus likes

Liverpool’s getting forgetful:

Nice

And Dundee can’t decide what it’s more desperate for…

Only at Dundee

It’s a new phenomenon sweeping the nation but I prefer the days when dogs take up my feed, rather than “shag me, I’m lonely”.

We should also consider stranger danger here. Every time I see a lonely heart yak I have flashbacks to PSHE lessons. We all know the rule of thumb: don’t talk to anyone you don’t know online. So how did we get from such a cautious stage of cyber protection to offering ourselves out on Yik Yak for quick fling?

I know if I dared to post such a yak anywhere near my hometown, some random beer-bellied 40-something, with a half drunk can of Stella, yelling ‘Alrigh’ luv?’ would be banging on my door. There’s definitely reasoning behind the idea that in a student town the quality of your order will be better and safer. Fair enough, it’s still a gamble but the odds are that one lonely, horny student will find another and they’ll share in a glorious night of passion (or something like that).

A much greater worry is that the person you’re meeting may be too young. With two schools in the area we need to be careful that vulnerable teens don’t get caught up in this. Yik Yak has a filter that flashes up every once and a while telling us we’re near a school but close the app and re-open it again and it’s gone.

Oops

Call me a dreamer but I’m not ready to accept this is what our Yak scene is all about. We’re better than this! So I returned to the feed and yet again found another lonely heart but this one was different.

They tried

68 replies and counting! Certainly not your average Yik Yak hook up. Channelling all the lonely souls into one speed dating yak may even be a safer idea. OP clearly wants to lend a helping hand and it certainly tidies up the desperate yaks. But hang on, we’ve got Tinder for this.

Perhaps a University specific lonely hearts page would be a better idea, safety is something the Yik Yak hook-ups lack. So, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, should we be pre-empting a torrent of desperate pleas filling our Yik Yak feed?

You reach Friday and you think why not. Just take heed (lads and ladies!) of a few tips to make sure you have a good time …

1) Arrange a neutral meeting place.

2) Have a couple of friends on standby

3) Make sure your needs cannot be easily met with a chocolate binge (you’ll feel less guilty about this in the morning)

4) Have fun but don’t make it a habit. Trying to explain that you met each other on Yik Yak to the kids is going to be a tough one.