Campus Confidential Confessions

                I was going to procrastinate a bit more but the current events in the cyber world (read Facebook) have compelled me to act upon it soon. The contemporary trend on Mark Zuckerberg’s social network is that of ‘Confession Pages’; seems like every college has one. Naturally, my college has one too. So…why does it appeal to the Smartphone totting youth of my college? The answer is really simple. You can post most vicious and mean things about people, and that too anonymously! Looks like everyone is turning into a Gossip Girl. Well! I used to watch that series; and let me be honest…I quite liked it (please do not judge me on this basis). Drama and all that shit are fine on the screen. But who knew that the bitchiness would materialize in the form of a confession page!

                Let me explain the modus operandi of this page to you. There is an Administrator, let us title him/her the unprecedented Gossip Girl, who handles this page. Students anonymously send in their tips/confessions about their fellow denizens to the administrator who then posts it on the Confession Page. Most of the posts on the page are cheesy love confessions about people who seem to be at the top of the social pyramid (in their own bloody heads) and the college quadrangle being their empire. Other posts include people unnecessarily being mean and trying to pull each other down; sort of reminds me about the ‘Burn Book’ from Mean Girls. There are a few genuine and sweet confessions/compliments about people, which in fact is very rare. Some people manage to embarrass themselves and that definitely has no romantic angle. There are a few creepy posts too – “Your hair smells nice, I make myself happy (euphemism used here. The obvious meaning being *you know what I mean*) on the last bench of the class and wipe my hands on other people’s shirt, I like you and we could have wonderful babies, etcetera etcetera”. Such confessions will undoubtedly earn these folks a restraining order.

                Another intriguing thing about this page is people’s sense of grammar; horrible grammar and atrocious English, a perfect recipe for a laugh riot. The good thing about this page being that psychology students have got a lot of personalities and subject matter which they could use in their assignments. The confession page is more of a gossip generator; a device that is used by people so that they can be downright mean and ridicule others. Whoa! You bash people up by anonymously posting mean things about them on the cyber space. You must be a cool person of the highest order and NOT a cyber bully. Really! People need to get a life. As long as this was harmless fun, I didn't mind it. But people have really gone to extreme ends and posted awful things. People might have a breakdown or something. Let’s just hope that the Gossip Girl shows some restrain and censors all the mean posts. I would like to end this blogpost with a quote from Gossip Girl, the original drama series –

“Some masks we put on because it’s truly who we want to be. Some we wear because we can’t bear to face what’s really underneath. Or because it’s what someone else need us to be. And some masks we wear because we hope to stay HIDDEN. But that’s the problem with wearing masks. They can be ripped off at any moment.”

PS – I would like to thank my friend, Mohima Barua, for her inputs.