I’m feeling like the focus of my blog is somewhat shifting from American Culture to college culture but since the college experience is in many ways very different from the European university experience I’m still en par with what I set out to do. Earlier this semester my attention was brought to a site associated to Middlebury but it’s my understanding that many colleges (or rather college students) run pages like this: MiddConfessional. This site, I feel, also ties in well with the paper on Mean Girls I just wrote. At first it seemed like a fun place to procrastinate – a bit like TMZ just about people one might actually know – but as naive as it may sound I’m finding myself increasingly disturbed by it.

For those who don’t know it, even though I really doubt any Middstudent could be unaware of it, it’s an anonymous site where you can post secrets or statements and everyone gets to comment; anonymously as well. You have crush lists, people actually sharing their feelings about their experience here (suicide as of recently seems to be quite the topic) and then inevitably you’ll find posts on people that can become rather vicious. I guess that is to be expected, a site like MiddConfessional is pretty straight forward about being gossipy. I haven’t followed it long enough to make a longterm judgement but I do feel it’s getting particularly nasty as of late. I wonder what it must feel like to be called anal whore by your peers or have your penis size commented upon – I guess it’s not exactly a great feeling.

Without trying to go all Pollyanna on you guys but I do find it stunning that people take the time to write stuff like that. Also I’m wondering what an impact it actually has. Initially I was told that it’s mostly used by freshman but the people who are talked about on there are mostly upper classmen. I guess it’s a guilty pleasure everyone secretly participates in. Including me obviously.

With regards to our millennial-themed class it does make me wonder though. Have we become that socially incompetent that we can’t even gossip in person anymore? Do people realize that even though the site is only for Middstudents it’s not exactly private. And now there is this AddSeven thing, a partner matching page. This is supposed to be a nicer version of MiddConfessional. With facebook, confessional and AddSeven it seems actual interaction becomes more and more redundant…