An anonymous campus
A deep dive into Miami’s Yik Yak
Katie Whitehead
Samantha Medina
College is advertised as a beacon for connection. From internships with esteemed business professionals to classmates who will later attend your wedding, it provides an opportunity to develop relationships with people who are similar to and different from you.
Sure, there are in-person opportunities to develop these connections, such as university clubs, classes or Greek life, but in our digital world, social media offers a wide variety of apps that let users form connections by simply pushing a button. One of these apps is Yik Yak, which has taken college campuses by storm since its introduction in 2013.
Yik Yak is an “anonymous community app for college students that lets you post, comment and message with your campus,” according to its official website. As opposed to apps like Instagram and Snapchat, its sole purpose is to connect college students with others who share similar interests, values and beliefs.
The app initially offered many benefits. Its anonymity encouraged users to speak freely without fear. People were able to find others on campus similar to them, and students were able to have humorous, thoughtful and insightful conversations with others from all grades and majors.
However, while the platform was originally used to connect students, problems soon began appearing. Its anonymity allowed for students to post racist, misogynistic and violent posts without receiving repercussions.
In 2014, a student at Michigan State University posted that he would “shoot up the school,” leading to his arrest and a two-year probation sentence. In 2017, two feminist groups filed a federal complaint against the University of Mary Washington for “failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment and threats of physical and sexual violence” occurring on the university’s Yik Yak feed.
The hateful rhetoric on the app continued to worsen until April 2017, when the app announced it would be “shut down” until further notice.
In 2021, Yik Yak officially announced its return, but this time with a series of safety measures to prevent hate speech and violence. It also announced new community guidelines focused on “safety, respect and positivity.” Reported posts would be reviewed quickly by the moderation team, and repeated violations of the community guidelines would result in users being banned.
Since its return, Yik Yak has once again taken college campuses by storm, including Miami University.
Miami’s Yik Yak community discusses a wide variety of topics. It can be a very entertaining place, with jokes about campus life such as the “Frat Flu,” laundry prices, President Crawford and dining hall experiences. These posts tend to receive a high number of upvotes, and the comment sections are often civil and encouraging.
First-year biology major Rylie Esparza loves Yik Yak for the humorous community it brings.
“I think it’s interesting to see what’s going on around the community,” Esparza said. “I love when something funny happens on campus and everyone gets together to post about it. It feels like a big inside joke.”
In addition to humor, it helps explain concepts and experiences to first-year students that they may not have heard of before.
In a popular post, a user asked about a new business opening across from Brick Street, an uptown bar. The comment section was supportive and even mentioned job opportunities that the new business was offering. While there was one negative comment, it had three downvotes.
Despite these positive posts, the majority of messages on Miami’s Yik Yak have been vile and do not reflect the university and its students in a good light. Several posts discussed excessive drinking and warned those with fake IDs about bars that have undercover police officers.
Several posts consistently talked about Greek life, ranking both fraternities and sororities as “bouse” (bottom house) and “touse” (top house) on a looks-based system. There were also posts about sororities promising new members a spot in their organization via “bid promising” and accusing several fraternities of hazing.
Posts alleging Greek life of improper behavior are nothing new. In 2023, a user accused Miami’s chapter of Delta Gamma of making her “remove any pics[she] posted with that black girl,” so it didn’t look like they “hang out with trash.” This post quickly became viral and even received attention from Cincinnati local news stations such as WKRC. Delta Gamma soon issued a statement via an Instagram story saying the accusation was false.
Junior marketing major Megan McManaway said she avoids looking at Yik Yak when recruitment is coming up.
“Around recruitment time, people are always fighting,” McManaway said. “[Yik Yak] turns into a very negative place that isn’t fun to look at.”
The negative comments regarding Greek life also negatively affect her self-esteem.
“It makes me upset that people are judging me solely based on my letters,” McManaway said.
Social media is often used as a place to catch up on news, and with the app’s enduring popularity, it’s not hard to assume that more and more people are using it to find out what’s happening on Miami’s campus.
But how reliable is it?
In a poll on Yik Yak asking users whether they believe it to be a reliable site, 98 users said they believe everything they see on the platform, while 250 users said they do not. This unreliable information can be extremely dangerous, especially when the Miami community consistently shares misinformation and embarrassing stories about other individuals.
To test this, in a post asking users to share the craziest thing they’ve seen at Miami, one person claimed they’ve seen someone have sex on the Brick Street dance floor, while another person claimed to have seen a fraternity brother fighting someone outside of Bagel and Deli.
While this question was presented in good fun, it exposes speculative information about anonymous individuals on campus that could potentially be embarrassing and career-threatening. If users believe everything they see on Yik Yak, it could cause irreparable damage to an individual’s or group's reputation.
While Yik Yak intended to provide students with details about campus life and foster a close-knit community, the app’s anonymous posting allows users to easily lie and tends to remove human empathy. In addition, its upvoting feature allows users to boost posts they want people to see and remove posts they don’t, resulting in a skewed information distribution system that can censor factual information and spread misinformation.
Miami’s Yik Yak should not be a place for violence. It should represent what Miami is: a place of love, honor and a little bit of humor.
