It’s Profane and Anonymous and It’s Come to NMC

Social Media App Gaining Traction

There is round-the-clock, semi-secret, anonymous commentary running every day on the Northwestern Michigan College campus. The social media app Yik Yak has landed at NMC and, throughout the day, students post to a live feed about everything from sex to the weather to classes.

The app gives students a new way to talk to one another, but the anonymous posts have prompted concerns about bullying on campus. Next door at Traverse City Central High School, Yik Yak has been geofenced, meaning access to the app has been blocked on cellular and Wi-Fi networks while in the school’s vicinity.

DELETED FROM HER PHONE

Some students love the anonymous app that provides users with a live feed of what other users are saying around them, and others want nothing to do with it.

"Last semester, all of a sudden, it became a huge thing," said Carlee Broughton, a 21-year-old from Wellston who plans to transfer to the University of Michigan next year roughton doesn’t read the Yik Yak feed much anymore, but she likes to come up with funny things to post.

"I like putting things that make people laugh on there. I don’t post anything negative," Broughton said. "I have been bullied on there before, but I am the type that brushes it off."

Laureen Horan, a 19-year-old from Lake City slated to be editor of the NMC student newspaper The White Pine Press next year, said she thinks Yik Yak is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a haven for bullies.

"I’ve never seen anything that has actually been, "˜Oh, that’s amazing,’" Horan said.

"There’s not really a lot of original thought on Yik Yak or really, like, thought at all. I don’t think people really think a lot of time when they post stuff."

Not that she’s seen a lot with her own eyes. Just hours after Horan downloaded the Yik Yak app, she deleted it from her phone.

SUCCESSFUL POT SMOKER?

Yik Yak launched in November 2013 and quickly grew in popularity at colleges and universities across the country. Within a year, it was among the top 10 social media apps on the iTunes App Store. At the beginning of this school year, it began to explode on phones at NMC.

Posts visible on a user’s Yik Yak stream come from within a radius of 1.5 to 10 miles, depending on the volume of comments. Posts, or "Yaks," around Traverse City seem to come from a radius closer to 10 miles. The idea behind this close proximity between users is to make the app more relevant to people’s daily lives. Users are communicating in real-time with others who are close to them in real-space and, potentially, experiencing the same circumstances and events.

A recent day’s feed lacked any obvious bullying. Posts were profane, bizarre, banal or absurd. Lots of them were about sex.

Some posts about specific women or girls bordered on harassment.

There are also serious discussions that take place on Yik Yak, conservations that might not happen without an anonymous forum.

Someone recently yakked: "Is it possible to consume marijuana and still be a successful person?" The post received some thoughtful responses.

One replied: "Just look at Phelps. Of course you can be, but keep it in moderation."

Another said: "There’s a reason it’s illegal and so many people go to jail for it."

And there were replies like: "lol only an NMC student would ask that."

Another person yakked: "is it bad that all I want to be in life is a stay at home mom?" That one got 40 replies and none of them were negative, although the conversation eventually veered off course. The replies that remained on topic were supportive, however.

A NEW KIND OF BULLYING

Travis Frank, a frequent yakker, said outright bullying on the app doesn’t appear to happen that often, but that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed, because a single incident can devastate a person.

"I don’t think abuse can ever be overblown," said Frank, a 20-year-old from Lansing who is in his second year at the Great Lakes Culinary Institute.

Frank said the anonymity of the app enables a unique kind of bullying. One person, for instance, can post about someone and then anonymously comment on that post dozens of times, making a single voice sound like a resounding chorus.

The community can police itself by down-voting bullying comments. After five down-votes, the post will disappear.

Despite the anonymity the app offers, people can take on identities or can have identities thrust upon them. Frank said one of the first days of the semester he was yakking a lot, having just discovered the app, and he was dubbed Sir Dapper because someone noticed that he was wearing a blazer that day.

The flip side of gaining an identity on an anonymous app is that, once a name is out there, anyone can claim it. Frank said he saw someone else using his nickname not long after, which underscores the anarchy of the Yik Yak stream. It is impossible to sort out what is real and what is false.

FACE TO FACE RESOLUTION

Horan said she knows one incident of serious Yik Yak bullying that occurred on campus this year.

"There was a group of girls in the dorm who people were posting about on Yik Yak, calling them whores, calling them sluts," she said. "Yik Yak being completely anonymous, there was no way to find out where these posts were coming from."

School officials got involved and attempted to sort out who was saying what.

While they were not able to determine who exactly was responsible, they were able to identify another group of female students who were the likely source of the bullying, said Lisa Thomas, associate dean of student life at NMC.

Both groups of students were brought together to talk about their problems and work out their differences, Thomas said.

"Intervention caused that behavior to stop," she said. "There’s nothing really more effective than face to face."

Thomas said she looked at Yik Yak once and found it troubling.

"There’s things that are just unnecessary to say, things about people’s looks or what they’re wearing," she said. "A lot of what I saw in that short amount of time was a lot of just unnecessary chatter that does not create a community that we’re striving for here at NMC."

A YAK ABOUT A BAGEL

The app can also be used for absurd fun. Recently, Broughton found an uneaten bagel on a residence hall floor and she yakked about "the abandoned bagel of 2nd South."

The post caught on. "Everyone would post Yik Yaks saying "˜bagel’ and there were probably 30 or 40 Yik Yaks just in about a 24-hour radius, just about bagels," Broughton said.

The bagel itself was only on the floor for several hours. Some students visited the bagel and posed for selfies, Broughton said. Because you can’t post photos on Yik Yak, those people shared the pics on Facebook or Instagram.

School staff probably noticed the posts and pitched the food item. There was concern that the craze would lead to a rash of bagel-related littering, but it didn’t happen.

"It sounds completely stupid, but when you’re a college student and you don’t have anything to do, everything entertains you," Broughton said.

TC CENTRAL BLOCKED

Just north of NMC, at Traverse City Central High School, Yik Yak’s forum for obscene anonymous comments and its easy outlet for bullying concerned administrators.

Christine Guitar, Traverse City Area Public Schools director of marketing and communications, said Central was geofenced earlier this year to block Yik Yak from campus, which means the app cannot even be accessed through a phone on a cellular network. Other apps, and most social networks, are blocked through a school’s server so they cannot be accessed from the school’s wireless Internet.

Guitar said the app has also been blocked at West Senior High.

The argument to block Yik Yak for high school-aged or younger kids is an easy one. The app’s own terms of service declare it is not intended for use by people younger than college age.

There is a page on Yik Yak’s website where schools can request a geofence and upload their latitude and longitude coordinates to have the app blocked.

"I think it’s important to note that Yik Yak is only on handheld devices, so it’s a good opportunity to remind parents to monitor their kids’ phones," Guitar said.

Guitar said she was unaware of any incidents of bullying in the school district specifically involving Yik Yak, though the district does not currently make a distinction between real world and online bullying in its recordkeeping.

TCAPS is in the process of updating its bullying policy to include online bullying. A public hearing on the new policy will take place at the April 13 school board meeting.

JUST A LOT OF BULLYING

Catherine Hansen, a Spanish teacher and adviser for the student newspaper the Occidentalist at Traverse City West, said a recent article about Yik Yak in the paper grew from a classroom discussion.

Hansen said students came to the conclusion that the app was appealing because of the anonymity it offers, but that ultimately it is a platform that makes it too easy to bully.

"Because that’s anonymous, kids were using it because they feel it’s very powerful to not have to use your name," Hansen said. "It was very popular when it came out, but kids are smart enough; they’re saying now that they don’t use it."

Emily Beckwith, a senior at West who is on the Occidentalist staff, said she tried the app and witnessed so much bullying she deleted it from her phone. She says she sticks to Facebook and Instagram.

"It was just a lot of bullying," Beckwith said. "They could say the name of the person they were bullying, but you wouldn’t know who it’s from because it doesn’t say your name on there. Honestly, no, I don’t see anything good about it. That’s why I got rid of it."

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