Let’s be frank. These days if you want to hook up, there are numerous apps available to help you find a conquest. Click, click then bang. Pun intended. As of late, communication with romantic interests is done almost always through technology.
But what if the person you have been secretly crushing on never comes across your Tinder screen? What if the person you like doesn’t even know you exist? God forbid you actually have to talk to them.
A University of Oregon student, who has chosen to remain anonymous, recently started a Twitter account through which students can post about their secret crushes. The Twitter account, @UOCrush, currently has over 2,800 followers and is expanding daily. The founder said he got the idea for the account by seeing other popular accounts run by students at other schools.
The account works like this: Students anonymously submit their message via the website ask.fm. The Twitter account’s operator then sorts through the submissions and posts the messages on @UOCrush. In 140 characters or less, students are able to let their secret crushes know that someone has their eye on them. The messages can range from sweet to downright raunchy, leaving some students with a raised eyebrow.
One message reads, “Lily in DG is so sweet and stunning.” While another is decidedly more suggestive, “Jason in DTD. I am DTF.”
“I think (the tweets) could be sexual harassment. Some of the stuff that is posted on there is pretty vulgar. Especially when the tweets are about girls. Some of that stuff can be offensive,” Taeler McGinnis, a sophomore said when asked about the account.
The anonymous operator of the account believes that by not revealing his identity, the account is able to maintain a sense of novelty and mysteriousness. However, the anonymity of the account doesn’t hold him back from interacting with his many followers.
“If someone was to direct message me and ask me to delete a certain tweet, which has happened, I would delete it,” said the founder in response to the idea that the account could be seen as a form of sexual harassment. “I don’t necessarily go through and monitor everything I tweet, but if I do see something too raunchy or too broad, I won’t post it. I just copy and paste. I haven’t received any complaints yet.”
On the other hand, some students see the account as a lighthearted form of amusement.
“I think it’s funny,” sophomore Addie Marsh said. “I tend to look at it when I see that my friends are on it. I don’t take it seriously.” @@name checked@@
When friends see that they’ve been posted on the site, Marsh said, “They kind of just laugh at it. They just wonder who wrote that about them. They don’t really take offense to it.”
The founder of the account would agree with that kind of lighthearted reaction. “The idea behind it is that people enjoy the fact that it is anonymous. I think that if they wanted to approach the person and say this stuff, they would not do it through the @UOCrush account.”
By Camille Lieurance
You can follow Camille on Twitter @CLieuranc