Rotten Little Girls

So what if there was a social networking site that was anonymous? Enter Juicy Campus. On the surface, it’s great…you select which college you are in, and then you can post anonymously on a board about your fellow classmates. Have a crush on that guy in your chem lab? Tell the world how cute he is. Annoyed by those hipster kids who always loiter in front of the campus coffee shop? Rant away. Juicy Campus is, essentially, an online bathroom wall. It’s anonymous, free, and anything goes.

While this seems like nothing more than a gossip site (and who doesn’t enjoy just a little bit of gossip?), the truth of the site is a little more sinister. As any one with dial-up can attest, anonymity on the Internet leads to a more vicious, non-P.C. discourse. Forums about feminism are trolled by misogynist pricks who seemingly have little else do with their time. Entire websites like 4chan exist primarily for nerdy boys to out-gross each other on /b/ chat. The internet is a breeding ground for prejudice, offensive language and obscenity. So I guess it’s not a surprise that Juicy Campus is quickly becoming notorious for its racist, sexist, and just plain offensive content.

To quote a recent article in the Herald Tribune, “‘Legally, Juicy Campus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users, just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms,’ said Michael Fertik, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of reputationdefender.com, a service that helps clients remove defamatory material about themselves from the Internet…Juicy Campus, he said, ‘is not encouraging people to be themselves, it’s encouraging people to be the worst version of themselves.’”

Needless to say, this online gossip mill has been getting out of control. For example, one student threatened to begin a shooting spree at his college. Yet most shocking, in my mind, is the story of Vanderbilt undergraduate Chelsea Gorman who was raped nearby campus, and then left college for a semester to heal and come to terms with her terrifying experience. However, after returning to school she found out someone had posted on Juicy Campus: “what could she expect walking around there alone. everyone thinks she’s so sweet but she got what she deserved. wish i had been the homeless guy that f***** her. [sic]“. Is this vitriol really what passes as gossip these days?

In the spirit of fairness, I checked out the site myself before writing this post. My small liberal arts college boasts only a few pages worth of posts, so I took ten minutes to skim through them. My school is close-knit and I know many people by name or at least have seem them around the dining hall every day. So, imagine my surprise when I saw posts entitled “who has the tightest puss?” and “who has the ugliest dick?” Some of the replies were harmless, but there were many instances where people named names. Some responses were downright awful, like the one that called a girl a dirty, alcoholic slut…and included her full name.

As I read through the pages, I was tense and apprehensive. I didn’t see any references to my close friends, but I did find a post specifically about the group of girls living in the housing unit next to me. It said where they lived, which is just creepy, and then the poster called them stuck-up, anorexic, and many expletives I don’t care to repeat here. Then, I got to one of the first posts: “Who would you like to have sex with?”. I figured I’d give this a look, already guessing which people would be named. And then I saw my name. Awesome. Apparently someone wants to have sex with me, and his post was detailed enough to include my full name and details about my life. Doubly awesome.

I guess I should be flattered, but if people can praise me on this site, they can also insult me. Needless to say, I’m going to exert as much willpower as I can to avoid Juicy Campus. I think the fact that it promotes prejudice and an anything-goes policy of ripping your classmates to shreds is enough to dissuade me from visiting the site often. That, and I don’t really want to know what my classmates are thinking about me. Some things are better left un-read.