In a recent column entitled “Having the Last Yak,” Brennan Edel decries the use of Yik Yak, a popular app used by people within a certain radius of a college campus to post anonymously. However, Yik Yak is what people make of it, and it is a symptom of — maybe even a potential cure for — the ills facing our university.
Edel begins by claiming that the University community is in trouble because of high enrollment and the loss of traditional University culture, but the tradition of the University isn’t constrained by any one place or person or idea; it belongs to the students and is shaped by them. If the tradition changes due to increasing enrollment, this simply means that more people can learn from our community and contribute to it. There is no one way to present Mr. Jefferson’s ideas, and Yik Yak allows us to share our individual interpretations of them.
Edel continues by saying Yik Yak is violates the Community of Trust. The logic behind this is that not stepping up and taking credit for one’s thoughts is a form of deception. However, anonymous posting, even for apparently trivial reasons, is still useful because it allows opinions that would have not otherwise been made public to be made public. Whereas Edel implies that Yik Yak is the cause of these opinions, I argue that it is the effect of thoughts that exist independently of Yik Yak. The community is made aware of these thoughts because of Yik Yak, without which the community would have otherwise remained ignorant.
Yik Yak further strengthens the community by allowing us the opportunity to recognize and respond to criticisms. Edel claims that an inflammatory and bigoted Yak shames all of us and the anonymous nature of Yik Yak prevents us from adequately responding. In actuality, an inflammatory and bigoted Yak lets observers realize that there are cowards in our community, and promotes dialogue about that topic in the hopes that the author or someone who shares that opinion will learn from the dialogue.
Yik Yak goes beyond community-wide issues and addresses those that are important to each individual. Countless Yaks have been posted about how lonely a student is or how he is struggling, and it is always uplifting to see how the members of our community — even though they will never get credit for it because it is anonymous — respond to that person with kind words of encouragement. Yik Yak provides such a means of informal advising, like an anonymous RA, as a place one can go to with problems or issues or questions when too afraid or embarrassed to use traditional means of advising such as CAPS or an academic advisor.
Most importantly, Yik Yak provides a distraction. For every bigoted Yak, supportive Yak or mean Yak there are dozens of funny one-liners that have a negligible impact on the world outside of Yik Yak. They will live out their time on the feed and then fade away into oblivion without having made a difference in anyone’s life. These are the Yaks that people look for when they need a break from a paper or assignment they are struggling with. It gives them a break and they get to reestablish themselves as part of the community, if only for 5 minutes. They can go on the app and laugh and temporarily feel good. The app lets people know, whenever they need it, that they are part of a larger community, and it allows people to feel the presence of the community. Edel claims that because the posting is anonymous, all students take some credit for every yak. So, by Edel’s logic, we all deserve recognition for our part in the 1/15000 of yaks that make someone’s day better.
This is the fundamental nature of Yik Yak that Edel ignores. The high minded assumptions he makes look and sound terrific, but in the end Yik Yak is just an app, and as such is what people make out of it. So we can either see what people in our community are thinking and try to understand it, or we can pretend nothing is wrong. Regardless, it all boils down to the fact that we use Yik Yak to amplify our own individual voices, simply to make more people laugh.
Sawan Patel is a Viewpoint Writer.
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