Rebecca Dance
For the reader’s convenience, I will recap my 2013 middle school experience: Yik Yak is an app that connects you with people within a certain geographic radius. The purpose of the app is to share and create discussion threads that can be participated in anonymously. Naturally, we loved it and used it to confess crushes, ask for anonymous ratings, and other middle school shenanigans. As often happens, the app experienced issues and service was discontinued. But that’s not the end of the story!
Yik Yak has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and our campus is not afraid to use it. In the past week, whispers of “how funny it was that it’s come back”, and “it’s a hilarious throwback to childhood that allows us to share our current opinions”. Woefully, Yik Yak is only available on iOS, and I am the unfortunate user of an Android phone in an iPhone world.
While I strongly believe Android’s are the better choice, I’m regretting I can’t currently access Yik Yak because what I’ve heard so far is entertaining.
There are anonymous discussions on Greek life, sports teams, and Roanoke College faculty and staff. I’ve heard mixed reports on the quality of things shared, but the conclusion that I’ve reached is that it’s eerily reminiscent of middle school, but the opinions shared are a little more aggressive and a little raunchier.
In my opinion (unable to be shared on Yik Yak), it’s a good thing (despite the pitfalls of anonymous online participation) after more than a year of fear and concern over the fate of the world. As college students, we’ve been dealing with a lot: COVID, climate change, and a political minefield, to say the least. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that amid crisis, we’ve returned to our middle school comforts. They remind us of a life that was a little simpler when all we had to worry about was whether our crush liked us back. A little bit of oversharing never hurt anyone.
Yik Yak is back, baby.
