CONFESSIONS OF A YALE 2020 FACEBOOK CELEBRITY

A.O.

The glitz. The glamor. The mystique. Imagine: everybody on campus knows you. You walk by a girl. She smiles. You nod. Back in June she asked for the address to which she should send her vaccination form, and you knew. PO Box 208237. You fucking nailed that question. Another “Thanks you’re the best!” but it’s all routine to you. You run this place. You run the world. You’re the guy to be. You’re the Yale Class of 2020 Facebook Group Celebrity. That’s right, back the fuck up Mr. Grad Student “Moderator.” You run the show now. Yale is yours.

And then you arrive on campus. And your whole world falls apart.

You’re no longer the guy with all the answers. That girl you passed before? She asks her froco about her meningitis shit now. People actually understand preregistration. Plus, with student organizations and protesters posting left and right, nobody responds to your weekly check-ins. The empire you built has crumbled beneath your feet; now you are left with answers, so many answers, but with nobody to hear them. Will you ever recover the world you once ruled before everybody knew you were a loser in person?

You try and connect offline. Unfortunately, communicating with people in person proves much more difficult than sending them Facebook Messenger stickers while you describe the role of Heads of Colleges (which, admittedly, you still don’t fully understand). Your Tinder matches can’t take you seriously. On the rare occasion you meet someone you haven’t communicated with online, they immediately exclaim “Hey! You’re the guy from Facebook, right?” 

You wonder if there are others like you. Social justice warriors, oft-confused gap-year students, out-of-the-closet Republicans who earned a reputation through their frequent questions or firestorm comments. You ponder reaching out via Facebook message, but your mom told you to stop doing that. They’re out there though. Other icons of freshman naiveté, bastions of Facebook dominance. Your world may be dark today, it may be dark tomorrow, it may be dark until everyone forgets your staggering online presence last summer, but there is still hope. You can still be a normal Yale student.

The first step: you delete your goddamn Facebook.