09/29:
A female student lamented how she felt that she had “missed the chance to make friends” and was met with a lot of support. Some indirect via upvoting and some direct with people replying, asking for her to DM them to start chatting. Others offered advice and insight.
One student commented on the large amount of work they had to complete while stating business majors had to “count how many toes they have,” with the tag #unfair, to which a lot of users upvoted. A non-anonymous individual replied, telling the original poster to “stop complaining and pick your poison.” Only one reply followed clearly taking the same view as the original poster. Another similar post made later in the day — again, obviously satirical — was met with over 500 upvotes.
09/30:
A poster asked if “Anyone [remembered] when those beta brothers hate crimed that kid,” which many students upvoted and a few replied to. Another poster added a screenshot of a news article describing the incident in detail, gathering even more upvotes. Some of the replies to this second post seemed to point out that a few individuals had not heard of or were not at the university during the incident, of which was recounted to them. Later, commenting on the conversation one poster said that Beta’s “covering up” reaction would only “give all fraternities terrible reputations.” A lot of the replies were reaffirming this message. Many students remember when Beta was shut down at the end of last semester only to see them quietly reopen at the start of the fall.
One student said that they, “[Don’t open] Brightspace so I don’t see my grades the same way I don’t open my bank app so I don’t see my balance,” confirming the broke, confused and blissfully ignorant college student stereotype. The post received no comments but over 300 upvotes.
10/01:
A student posted a screenshot of a Turning Point USA announcement of their stop at the University of Maine titled, “You’re More Pro-life Than You Think,” with the added, “actually not!!” as a caption. The post received almost 300 upvotes and over 30 replies in agreement with the poster. A lot of comments had a sentiment of unwelcomeness towards Turning Point, one commenter even saying “Do not come to my town.”
A huge number of posts contained the motif of “The lion” and how it “does not concern itself with” something. Almost all of these posts related to not wanting to go to class, do homework, be at school, etc.
One student commented on the fact that Hilltop had, “f*ck all after 6:45,” to which one student replied saying how they did not miss dining halls because of their early closing habits. They said that especially for a student who had late classes it was frustrating for dinner to be “literally an apple and lettuce.”
One post consisted of a photo of a man breaking free from chains with the caption, “me when I lie on yik yak.” Receiving 132 upvotes.
Some of the conversation from Turning Point USA’s visit continued later in the day. One student posted about how they “love abortion,” because they love that “people are allowed to bring new life into the world when they want and the time is right for them.” This sparked some interesting conversation with many replies falling outside of the two-extreme argument that usually devolves out of a conversation of abortion. One student commented that they are “50/50.” Unfortunately, a lot of the comments took on angry and rude tones when people were met with a diversity of opinions. Words like “irresponsible jackass,” “stupid as f*ck,” and “unpatriotic,” flew around, all on an anonymous platform.
10/2:
A student criticized the reckless driving they have seen around campus, especially at night time. Getting a lot of upvotes and some comments playfully agreeing with the original poster. Interestingly, none of the responses, nor the original post, took the subject very seriously despite the genuine danger it could pose to students.
“I’ll delete this shortly but I wish my girlfriend knew how genuinely beautiful I think she is,” followed by much more compliments like this was met with overwhelming positive support. Many replies told the poster to “never change,” and how they wished that others were more like this person.
10/03:
One student commented on how they could not receive their package because The Avenue — an off-campus apartment complex — had odd sets of rules and is slow with processing packages. One reply said, “do not withhold my packages from me.” While this is a more mundane criticism, there was a significant volume of upset toward the Ave and other off-campus apartments in their relationships to their tenants.
