Want to be able to chat with other students at Princeton? There’s an app for that.
Want to parody these students at Princeton? There’s a yak for that.
Yik Yak, the newest location-based social networking app, has taken colleges (and high schools) across the country by storm. It provides a chat room for users within a 1.5-mile radius. The latest social media fad, the app displays short, 200-character posts from local users. Users can “yak” — or post — as well as comment and upvote or downvote other posts.
But what makes Yik Yak so distinctly different from apps such as Twitter?
Anonymity. No name, no age, no social security number needed. You just download the app from the App Store and you’re almost instantaneously ready to become the new Yakmeister.
After all, a large part of why people yak is to garner widespread fame, popularity and, well, street cred. Make it consecutively to the hottest Yaks and you’ll find that even your RCA will be quoting your Yak, as my friend Anyssa Chebbi '18 animatedly pointed out.
Yaks can be about any variety of topics. Popular themes include mocking Forbes, mocking Harvard and Yale, mocking people passing by on the Street and, from time to time, mocking your friends.
Certainly, a good number of posts on Yik Yak are not mocking but are in fact witty, hilarious and even crudely humorous. But a good number of posts are indeed mocking, and even offensive. From racism, often in the form of racial microaggressions, to homophobia to cyberbullying and death threats, this new trend has its dangers.
These can be attributed to the anonymous nature of the app, which raises concern. With Facebook and Twitter, it’s possible to link a post or tweet with a particular profile or account. But on Yik Yak, no such possibility exists, ultimately instigating and facilitating hate and bullying, even if the Yakker was just trying to be funny.
Anonymity provides people with a guise and even refuge from direct attack by an audience by allowing them to post freely and often rashly. It gives people the impression that their words will have no social consequences; hence, they can make bigoted posts without having to consider who that post will inevitably hurt or offend.
According to a study cited in the Economist, “anonymity frees people ‘from traditionally constraining pressures of society, conscience, morality and ethics to behave in a normative manner.’”
This ultimately contributes to a culture of insensitivity and bullying. If we have the temerity to post such comments, then we should do so without the guise of anonymity, as we do on a plethora of other social media sites. We should be willing and ready to face the repercussions of what we say.
That being said, Yik Yak serves as a great venue for some comic relief. Yakmeisters and Yak-amateurs provide users with funny, all-too-relatable observations and pearls of wisdom while climbing the ranks of the social media hierarchy. Plus, the anonymity allows them to say what they want without fear of castigation or ostracizement.
Nonetheless, Yik Yak is a double-edged sword. As my friend Chance Fletcher '18 pointed out, “I think that Yik Yak is great, but it is wrong if someone uses its mask as a way to say hurtful things that could upset someone; of course it may be funny, but it isn’t funny if someone is being bullied or hurt, and people need to realize the possible effects on others before posting a Yak.”
Even with the interminably growing popularity of Yik Yak on campus, Undergraduate Student Government is planning an anti-cyberbullying initiative, in light of recent controversy with the app. Paradoxically, people took to Yik Yak to denigrate USG with Yaks like “USG goes to bed at 9.”
The solution seems extraordinarily easy to me: think before you Yak, and Yak at others as you’d like to be Yakked at. And don’t consider anonymity an excuse to cyberbully. If you wouldn’t normally dare to tweet what you’re considering Yakking, then don’t Yak it.
Yaks come and go, but the (Yak)arma lives on.Sarah Sakha is a freshman from Scottsdale, Ariz. She can be reached at ssakha@princeton.edu.
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