If you’re a fan of social networking, go to UT and don’t live under a rock, chances are that you’ve heard of a new Twitter account that is taking students’ newsfeeds by storm: UTampa Crushes. This user encourages people to use a survey site to anonymously admit who they are crushing on (yes, using full names) by posting the confessions that are submitted to them. Essentially, you can tell the world of Twitter that Johnny from chemistry makes your beaker boil over, and the only name we’ll see associated with it is UTampa Crushes.
A word of caution to anyone who is running to their smartphone to see if their name is there: This isn’t your grandma’s crush confessional. The majority of the posts are raunchy and sexually graphic. The words “beautiful” and “handsome” and anything that makes you go “aww” are a rare gem on the page. You are much more likely to come across the phrase “so-and-so can do whatever he/she wants to me,” or #DOMENOW. And I’m trying to keep it clean here, people. Most of it can’t be put in print.
You don’t have to scroll too far to realize that the majority of the posts are from underclassmen. If a name isn’t used, crushes are often referred to by location. Residence halls like Smiley, McKay, Vaughn and Stadium are mentioned frequently. In fact, I think I have yet to see any mention of Straz or Rescom, the dorms which house the most upperclassman.
Outside of things that are explicit yet still vaguely complimentary, UTampa Crushes has been seen posting submissions that range from sarcastic to just downright insulting—all the while still using full names of those being talked about. It seemed like another form of cyber bullying. This is what first piqued my desire to track these people down and get their side of the story. I started making elaborate plans to get all 007 on their ass when luckily, they tweeted an email address in search for employees to tackle their ever-growing list of submissions. I jumped on it.
Now admittedly at this point, I had little respect for whoever was running this page. At best, I was expecting a response with massive amounts of spelling and grammar errors with an “LOL” at the end of every sentence instead of a period. But I found myself pleasantly surprised, and yes, even a little humbled, at the quality of their response. They refused to meet with me in person in an effort to protect their identity, but allowed me to conduct an electronic interview. One of my most pressing questions was to find out whether or not UTampa Crushes is a he or a she, but I found myself again corrected when it was revealed to be not one person, but a group of people.
Wondering about some of their more insulting posts begged the question about how the posts were filtered. If the ones we are seeing are this bad, what about the ones that never make it to the page?
“If we did not filter the submissions we would be facing defamation suits,” responded UTampa Crushes to questions about how they select what will and will not be shared. “Many of the crushes we receive never make it on Twitter. We receive many tweets talking about how students are ‘ratchet’ or ‘gross,’ etc. and we won’t post those. We have been told that ‘somebody is a rapist…but he’s hot so it’s ok.’ We have been told that she or he ‘has herpes’ or ‘has STDs.’ We do not appreciate these crushes and hopefully people will receive that these don’t get posted. We are willing to remove some posts if people ask the proper way and they are worthy of being deleted.”
Suddenly, some of the posts that I’ve seen don’t seem so bad. But still, there are things said about people that you would never want on the internet about yourself. Once it has been seen, it can’t be unseen, even if removed. It is fortunate, however, that UTampa Crushes drew the line somewhere, as I can imagine other users might not (such as the ones submitting these kinds of things in the first place).
Like me, I’m sure many of you have thought, “There is NO WAY that the school is letting this happen.” But UTampa Crushes thought of that, too. And so did the lawyer that they have on staff. “We are not breaking any laws currently,” said UTampa Crushes. “We have not broken school policy. Our lawyer monitors all tweets daily and if for some reason we post something we shouldn’t, it is removed.”
So how far will this thing go? It seems like people could get bored of it, submissions will slow down, or that students could simply take it too far. “We do this as an entertaining thing, but also a way for people to channel their crushes,” said UTampa Crushes in explaining their purpose, expressing their desire to bring students together or give them a boost of self-confidence. “We don’t do this to hurt anybody. We feel that currently it can be doing more good than bad, and thus we have and plan to continue until we feel otherwise.”
And as for the men/women behind the mask? It is a mix of different backgrounds, some studying music, business and a variety of other subjects. They all have experience with social media. I wouldn’t bother trying to track down their identity. I’ve heard five or six different answers from sources who claimed they knew for sure because their friend’s cousin’s friend’s roommate’s friend knows them. Our school may be small, but it isn’t THAT small.
I have to admit, talking to them did change my opinion. I was prepared to hate them and their motives, but they convinced me that their intent was far from malicious. Still, I definitely don’t agree with how some of their submitters speak about other people. We all know there is some nastiness in this school, but really, it doesn’t need to be advertised. If you want to post something, try playing nice, kids. We all know this school could use it.
Hannah Webster can be reached at hannah.webster@spartans.ut.edu
Hello there. My name is Yua Arfu and I am the Assistant to the Director, of the website “ask.fm” of which students of your University, the University of Tampa, make use of to post their anonymous messages regarding to a site called ‘ UTampaCrushes’. I was required to deliver this message as methods to reach out to the school have backslid. Unfortunately, many users have reported improper behavior by this username due to either continuous internet oppression and over-adulterated content. This has consequentially lead to a breach in the system by one we suspect might be a student at the ‘University of Tampa’, causing there to be a leak in the programs coding system. We at ask.fm are trying to fix the problem but as at now, the system unfortunately has the usernames of all whom have contributed exposed and continuous improper use will have the website dismissed, and possibly the twitter account closed.
Please endeavor to bear with the system failure, as well as restructure the use of your site before restrictive methods are forcefully used. Thank you.
Regards,
Yua Arful
I am actually a member of the UT crushes team. Its funny how you comment on the fact that there are little upperclassman presence because I am actually a senior member of the UT crushes account. Most of the upperclassman posts don’t get published because they are so raunchy. The fact that we have a “lawyer” on the team is a complete lie… I don’t know who told you that. UT crushes is actually backed by an admissions staff member (would like to remain unnamed) and President Vaughn actually has said he “thinks its hilarious”. The admissions staff likes UT crushes because it makes high school students want to come to UT because they hear about all the attractive people that go here. The crushes account will one day expose all the people that submit the crushes. This will be at the end of the year. It will be fun for everyone to see who fantasises about them. We realise no one will trust us again with their crushes, which is fine with us because we are tired of posting these crushes every minute anyway.