More thoughts on Midd Confessional

4 thoughts on “More thoughts on Midd Confessional”

1. I agree totally with you about how Midd Confessional changes my perspective of the student body. I too walk around campus thinking about who posted what comment on what thread. It is really interesting too because one day when I was walking down the sidewalk, I imagined that every student walking around me were avatars in reality and had little names floating above their heads. Of course, Midd Confessional is anonymous, but I just imagined what the world would be like had it not been anonymous. Any thoughts?

2. To continue along in the same thread as Stephen’s comment, the concept of anonymity is the essential one at the heart of Midd Confessional: unfortunately, the only purpose I see the site serving now is as a playground for the psych department.
   (upcoming seniors: thesis topic?)

   Maybe I am just being incredibly cynical, but for the most part, I think everything on there is made-up. And the only reason I like Post-Secret is the artful way in which they design the postcards: I don’t attach any validity to most of the statements.

   Public domain and anonymity breed exaggeration, and I think there are much better outlets for students to voice legitimate concerns than a “confessional site.”
   However, I think it does provide invaluable insight into the psychological development and attitude of the typical “midd kid.”– even if it is a less wholesome one than the pictures on the official Middlebury website would have you believe.

3. Is anyone willing to take over managing the site to make it a more productive and community-based outlet? I think Jason’s question is a poignant one, and some middkids are voicing their frustrations with the current state of midd confessional. Take this recent post:
   “Hey guys,
   I have been hearing about this site a lot lately, and I really dislike it. Anonymous posting brings out the worst in people. A lot of the posts have been malicious and hurtful toward midd students. Think for a second before you anonymously rip on someone; it’s cowardly and can cause someone a lot of pain. This is not what Middlebury is about.
   – Baird Kellogg”
   I know Baird vaguely and from he’s mentioned in class he is genuinely upset that the forums reflect middkids as unprofessional and hurtful, which I’ll agree is not usually case back in the real world. The 1st comment was “20$ says Shane Mandez wrote that.” Well I know Shane a bit better and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he did in fact fabricate the post.

   The problem with trying to use this forum in a productive manner, and I know this is obvious, is that you can’t tell whose serious and whose not. 99% of the student body and faculty/staff could rally around the site as a place where serious issues can be dealt with, but it would only take one bad apple to completely undo their work. Unlike wikipedia, there is no function that allows the students who take the forum seriously to delete/edit posts and keep the forum clean.

   This brings up a KEY question in my mind: Is the best course of action to give a group of dedicated midd students or faculty/staff special admnistrative privileges to scrub down the forum? I’m a firm believer that, in general, the more intervention that is required in any kind of system is a sign of poor design. Why try to change the course of a river with a series of dikes and damns when we can just create another river that flows along the course that we want it to? The beauty of the programming is that a software engineer(s) can learn from his mistakes and create something that is better suited to perform the intended purpose. A lack of consequences and accountability for what we say is something that I feel must be eliminated from any forum before it can be used in a serious fashion. Of course if we did that, it wouldn’t be “middlebury confessional” anymore.

   That being said, unlike Melissa and many others, I don’t think has to be a place where people voice legitimate concerns in order to be beneficial. My reasoning is this: just like in midd confessional, there are plenty of people in the world who say hateful things, lie, etc. I’m not condoning this behavior – I’d love to see that element of human society change. But I call it how I see it and I’m just saying that, at least in the foreseeable future, every one of us will always be hated buy certain individuals for what we look like, who we are attracted to, what we believe, etc. Some people might even hate you for something that isn’t even true. Yeah, I’ve been called a “faggot,” I apparently “love donkey penis,” and I’m “in love with his no doubt nauseating self.” Even after all that I still support the forums as a valuable door into the real world from the bubble that is Middlebury College. Being happy with being yourself even if people hate you for it is hard to do and I suppose middlebury confessional has helped me in developing this valuable skill.
   Thanks for reading and thanks to all of those who have defended Kyle Howard and made me laugh.

4. I have already seen myself less “transfixed” by Middconfessional–I haven’t spent nearly the time i was last week surfing it. But, I think the general campus is still checking it out multiple times a day. I stopped checking it for a few days, and now i feel like it would be too hard to “catch up” to see what all the current issues are.

   I don’t think it should be taken down like it was at other schools, but there needs to be someway to have quicker turn-around between the time we request to delete a post and the time it actually is deleted.

   On a different note, i really like the Shark vs. Alligator thread. i think it’s hilarious, but there have already been a few knuckleheads that have put people’s names on it.