Yik Yak is a social media app made for college students that lets them post anonymous messages for anyone else on campus to see. Beloit College has its own Yik Yak, where you can engage with the thoughtful comments of other students, like “Track girls the most unloyal chicks out there” and “Baseball got the fattest asses on campus.” There is also someone who won’t stop writing about how much they hate Nebraska.
Is there anything actually entertaining on it? Rarely. Because it’s anonymous, anybody with a phone number is free to airball five jokes in a row, throw out their most vile takes, beg for dates, and write any number of terrible things.
But this is all just the scum on the surface of the pond. Let’s dive deeper and see what kind of horrible things we can dredge up.
For a very long time, the Beloit Yik Yak was dead. Its earliest post is dated to 185 weeks ago. The first person to post regularly was a user known as “yourmother,” who carried the Yik Yak on their back, being the sole poster for almost two years. They disappeared 69 weeks ago.
After about 40 weeks, the posts started to pick up. There were still only a few per week, but there weren’t gaps of multiple weeks between posts like there were previously. This period was marked by a blossoming community of people looking for love.
“I need a butch girlfriend with the energy of a startled horse when I flirt with her,” one user said.
“Who wants to cuddle up and cry together,” another posted.
“Any girls who wanna kiss other girls🤭 asking for a friend,” wrote a third.
From the low level of interaction on posts around this time, we can guess that none of them got what they were looking for. Perhaps due to the poor dating prospects, around 24 weeks ago the Yik Yak went dormant once more. But it would rise again.
In the past four to five weeks, something revitalized the blighted Yak. This time period has given us the majority of the posts, with people sending anonymous images and messages multiple times a day. This explosion of activity has spread to every corner of Beloit College, with sports and frats — especially TKE — taking center stage. A number of developments in the Yik Yak’s cultural ecosystem have taken place since this shift.
For one thing, people around campus are now “kids.” Perm kid. Highlights kid. Tuba kid. FOMO kid. Nickname kid. If you go outside, you might get turned into a “kid,” too. We’re actually making you one for reading this article. You’re article kid now. You gotta live with that.
The TKE empire has also risen and fallen. With the passing of Halloweekend, Yik Yak, once their stronghold, has turned on them. A party they had spent weeks hyping up fell flat from some poor music choice, and public opinion has yet to recover.
Despite all this, plenty of people are using Yik Yak as they always have. Looking for love, lamenting the quality of the new DK’s menu, begging for a party to go to, shouting their hatred of e-scooters from the rooftops, and clowning on our sports teams (sometimes rightfully).
We strongly recommend giving the Beloit College Yik Yak a look for yourself, even if just for a little while. It’s truly fascinating to see how the minds of these people work up close. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the rocks in their heads knocking into each other. It’s like going to a zoo.
Just try not to think too hard about the fact that the person thirsting over their Intro to Chemistry professor got into the same school you did, or the fact that their vote counts exactly as much as yours does.
Fun Fact: According to NYU’s School of Engineering, Yik Yak is ostensibly anonymous but does log your IP if the police ask for it. Be careful out there, Yakkers.
Featured image: Beloit College YikYak
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