YikYak "fun"

Hey everyone. We had an RA conference on campus today and it turned out pretty well. Of course, there are always some hiccups, like students getting sick, but that's something that kind of comes with the territory. It was apparently a day where if you gather people together for a thing, people will start complaining about it on YikYak.

If you're unfamiliar, YikYak is a mobile app where you can post things like Twitter except everyone is anonymous. Your posts are tracked by distance and generally you can see posts from others who are nearby. As you can probably guess, a service that is seemingly completely anonymous could stir up some major trouble, particularly if posts included hate speech, bias language, threats, etc.

The app became really big on campus last year, and a bunch of us downloaded the app in order to keep an eye on what students were posting. However, since it was usually filled with negative comments of all varieties, I didn't re-download the app when I changed phones. I know some of my colleagues still have the app as well as several RAs.

So jumping to lunch today, we had finished the morning of the conference that included roll calls from each school, a time-filler game, and a keynote speaker. One of our RAs pointed out that they checked YikYak and saw a number of negative comments about the conference so far. Most of them were directed towards the keynote speaker and I will agree that the presentation could have been modified to better serve the audience, but some of the comments were apparently very rude, in addition to the negativity.

My initial reaction included shock since the comments were coming from RAs, who should know better in regards to finding the right time and place for criticisms. It didn't help that several students were on their phone while the keynote speaker had asked everyone to put their phones away. I'm not saying 2 & 2 have to make 4, but I think the equation can be pretty simple. Anyway, I know that students may not be excited about an RA conference on a Saturday, especially since the keynote presentation didn't really reach out to students on a non-religious RA level, in my opinion. At the same time though, I wish the upset people would have at least respected the time of everyone who made the conference happen.

Of course, there's the other side to consider - people are entitled to negative emotions (like frustration, boredom, or annoyance) and those feelings should be expressed rather than bottled up forever. Being surrounded by 100 other students and staff with similar jobs may not seem like the best environment to vent, so some may turn to technology as the next best thing. Plus, some students may think that YikYak's anonymous nature would free them from personal ownership of their expressed frustration. I'm not saying it's the best logic, but there's logic behind it, in a way.

Fortunately, many of the comments had already received negative downvotes by the time my student checked the application. With enough downvotes, a post will be taken down, so that was comforting that at least some others disagreed with either the frustration or the way the frustration was presented.

I don't feel like I'm doing this topic justice, but that's kind of where my mind is at right now. We'll have to see how tomorrow goes with it being another deadline day for grad school. Tomorrow will also be I Love to Write Day and National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day.

DFTBA