Scrolling through his most recent timeline, 20-year-old public relations major Eric Bourgeois starts with a smile and then begins to shake his head as the smile fades.
"I thought we left bullying in high school," he said, closing Yik Yak, the newest application to sweep the University of Memphis campus.
Launched last December by recent college graduates Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, the app is a location-based anonymous virtual chat app where nearby users can connect through GPS tracking on their smart phones.
Like a pole on the corner of a street or a wall littered with flyers in a coffee shop, the app is intended to be a safe haven bulletin board where locals can connect and share content.
However, on and near the U of M campus, the virtual posting board has morphed into a breeding ground for hate speech and slut shaming among fraternity and sorority members. Similar to an episode of Gossip Girl, users fire off slandering shots of demeaning comments that can be immediately seen by other users.
Yik Yak is similar to Twitter, but without the handle. Anyone with the free Yik Yak app on an Android or Apple device can post 200-character "Yaks" to a continuously updated live feed. The app allows users to upvote or downvote posts depending on whether they agree with them or not. The more popular a post becomes, the more points it gets and the higher the poster's Yakarma score gets. A high Yakarma score indicates that someone has popular posts that are frequently upvoted.
More so, the app only extends to users in a 1.5 mile radius of each other. For example, someone in Bartlett could not see a post near the University campus.
On many accounts, users name individual female students on campus. Under one post titled "Closet freaks of Memphis," users made comments such as "heard she fucked the entire football team" before continuing onward to say that the individual is "the biggest closet freak (and) whore on campus."
On another occasion, users posted about a female saying, "If you have a dick and go to U of M, you'll eventually meet her."
But the content isn't all directed towards the female students at the University. Based strictly from the posts, it appears that fraternities fire back and forth at each other, making rude comments in the manner of schoolyard bullying.
One user posted that "Yik Yak should be Greek exclusive."
Due to the anonymity of the app, it can be difficult to tell who is in fact a member of a Greek organization and who isn't, but many of the postings are directed towards Greek life at the U of M.
At The U of M, Bourgeois is one of 500 students who have downloaded Yik Yak within the recent weeks and one of the many who can admit he has been mentioned on the app more than his fair share.
"I take the comments in good stride when they are about either me or people I know," Bourgeois said. "In the end it's just social media, and if you take it seriously it'll become a major depressant."
The anonymity seems to play a large part in the uproar by masking those who post statements on Yik Yak that they may not make elsewhere.
Buffington defended to CNN the decision to make posts anonymous by calling it a "major feature" of the app because "that guy in the back row of your science class might be the funniest guy you never hear." But hopes that the app would be used as a "virtual bulletin board" or a "local Twitter for campus" seem to perish with every post on Yik Yak, especially within the Greek community.
Lambda Chi Alpha President Domenic Martini found out about Yik Yak when a fraternity brother informed him that his name was being posted. While Martini admits that it takes more to offend him than it may for other people on campus, he believes the posts can be "harsh," especially when directed towards the women at the U of M.
"The app is making the Greek system at the U of M look terrible," Martini said. "Fraternities and sororities teach values-based education and then none of that is backed by what is posted on the app. We're a small Greek system that has to support each other, and Yik Yak does nothing good for us."
According to Martini, Lambda Chi is banning brothers who are caught posting on the app from going to their formal this semester.
"It definitely devalues fraternities," Martini said. "We're trying to prove to non-greeks that stereotypes aren't true and that app just proves those stereotypes right."
To Associate Dean of Student Leadership and Involvement Justin Lawhead, Yik Yak has grown to be nothing more than "confidential subtweets," or students expressing opinions about other individuals and organizations that they typically wouldn't if not anonymous.
"I think it important for a student to have some realization of the impact that they are having on individuals and the experience they are creating," Lawhead said. "Confidentiality doesn't remove you from criticism because it's become so commonplace."
Lawhead encourages students to make positive decisions while using social media. While he believes that Yik Yak may be a fad, it is one that is occurring close to recruitment season, and it could have a negative effect on Greek life at the University.
"I think our staff will have some conversations with leadership," Lawhead said. "The identity they portray will have an effect on people wanting to be involved with their community and how people regard them."
Yik Yak was designed exclusively for college campuses, and while the app restricts access to nearly 130,000 primary and secondary schools across the nation at school official's request, many middle and high school students, primarily in the south, have found access to the app.
In California, a high school student was charged with three felony counts after anonymously posting that a shooting would occur at two local high schools. In March, the creators of the app disabled its use in the Chicago area after numerous reports of cyber bullying occurred.
Locally, the app has made its way into high schools. Christian Brothers High School quickly shut it down due to the inappropriate content that was posted.
James Crone, an 18-year-old senior at CBHS, found out about the shutdown of the popular app within two days of discovering it himself.
"Yik Yak went too far," Crone said.
Martini, a graduate of Bartlett High School, downloaded the app while in the area to see how it compared to the content at the University.
"Bartlett High School students were talking about how bad the U of M Yik Yak was," Martini said. "That's a terrible perception for a possible incoming freshman to have."
Although the U of M may play a small role in the Yik Yak community nationwide and some simply write the app off as useless nonsense, many fraternity and sorority members have grown concerned about its use across campus.
"It is extremely hurtful and a horrible example of what our Greek system is," Panhellenic Council president Win Burrow said.
Alongside Burrow, Victoria Maher, a senior psychology major and former Pi Beta Phi sorority president, is astounded by Yik Yak, calling it an app based on tearing others down, especially within the fraternity and sorority community.
Advisor of the Pan-Hellenic Council Tori Griffith said she has only heard negative things about the app that she calls a divisive tool for tearing the Greek community apart. Although she is unsure on why the app is targeting Greek chapter members, she believes it is the nature of the Greek community at the University of Memphis.
"Our Greek community is so small, and it breeds challenge among the chapters on all fronts," Griffith said.
Griffith is behind the Pan-Hellenic Council as they draft a letter denouncing negative use of social media, after multiple complaints about the app have been filed to the Pan-Hellenic Council.
The app announced that they have raised $1.5 million in funding. With the investment, they plan to improve current features of the app, while expanding user growth within the U.S. and to other countries.
According to Yik Yak's terms and conditions, users must be 17 years or older to use the app, although that has had little to no effect in many locations.
It also states that users must not "transmit any pornographic, obscene, offensive, threatening, harassing, libelous, hate-oriented, harmful, defamatory, racist, illegal, or otherwise objectionable material or content" as well as "transmit or encourage the transmission of unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature."
For Angela Humphreys, a sociology instructor at the University, social media has been integrated into many people's daily lives, and whether it is between Greek organizations or not, the way that students of the current generation choose to treat each other online is pivotal in determining the positive or negative growth that inevitably will come from it.
"(Social) media can be used to continue to divide our society or create a better one," Humphreys said. "Anonymous sites such as these allow bullying and harassment to occur without accountability. We need to create ways to combat bullying and harassment within all of our social institutions, including the media."
