Shall remain nameless
Online anonymity has empowered Northwestern students to take on the institutions they’ve seen fail them. WRITTEN BY ELISE HANNUM DESIGNED BY CYNTHIA ZHANG
Content Warning: This story discusses experience and topics related to sexual assault.
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hen Olivia Stent messaged @NuPredators on Twitter, she wasn’t looking for them to share her story. Instead, she wanted to know if they knew anything about the person who assaulted her. The Weinberg third-year had read posts from the account before — enough of them to feel safe reaching out to its anonymous moderator to see if there were any other experiences like hers. “It’s bad; you don’t want it to happen to anyone else. You don’t want that to be an issue for anyone else. But if it did, and you’re not alone, it’s more valid,” Stent says. “I feel like that kind of helps. It’s not comforting but just makes you feel like ‘Wow, you’re not crazy. That wasn’t okay, what happened.’” The account messaged her back: They hadn’t, but they would post her story if she wanted. Stent declined; she thought the odds were too high that people would recognize her, even without her name attached to the tweet. “If that happens, and they follow me on Instagram, and then their
friends follow me and they’re saying, ‘Why would you say that?’ and ‘That’s not what happened.’ I can’t deal with that,” Stent says. Stent, like many other college students, grew up in the age of the internet and, by extension, anonymity. She and her peers up-voted the latest gossip on Yik Yak. They spent sleepovers sitting face-to-face with complete strangers on Omegle. They fielded each other questions they’d dare not ask in the cafeteria on Ask.fm. As this generation moved onto college campuses, that comfort migrated onto Snapchat and Instagram, with accounts devoted to airing out whatever thoughts they wanted to share with the world — from stream-of-consciousness rants to snapshots of college debauchery — without names attached. Now, especially at Northwestern, anonymous social media accounts
have taken a more serious turn: transforming into forums to hear students’ voices as they share experiences with racism, sexual assault and the institutions that have failed them.
Perhaps the most recognizable anonymous social media account of all is the “confessions page,” where users can post their thoughts anonymously. They’re so recognizable, in fact, that they’ve even reached academia. A Northwestern study in 2015 entitled “Is it Weird to Still Be a Virgin?” found that the majority of questions on these Facebook pages solicited opinions — “what do you women think about guys who smoke weed? turn off? turn on? neutral?” — or were rhetorical: “Why can’t I ever feel pretty? The guys always go for my friends.”
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