Whisper and Yik Yak: Anonymous Apps

When you work in media oftentimes you find yourself doing things you would not ordinarily do in order to keep up with the latest trends. It’s called “staying relevant” and some find it degrading but I am still young enough to find it exhilarating because it gives me a reason to do something new. The advent of anonymous apps isn’t that surprising. Given that the internet for many years was completely and utterly anonymous, people still crave that place where they can publicly say the things they would never say out loud to their friends or just to have conversations and feel as if they aren’t being judged. So, this past month after hearing about them online, I decided to download Yik Yak and Whisper.

 Yik Yak

Yik Yak is a popular app among high school kids and college students and is an anonymous app where people post statuses that are upvoted and downvoted based on your location. Here in University Place I am near the University of Puget Sound and Tacoma Community College which leaves me plenty of gossip I am not apart of to read. It is usually the banal stuff about tests, exams, not getting enough sleep, breakups, crushes, and other things you would expect from college students. The comments can be entertaining and even some of the statuses. The nice thing about Yik Yak is wherever you go the posts you get to read change. The closer you get to different parts of town there are different posts to read. Sadly, the Yik Yak right here isn’t terribly active so it can be a bit boring. I tend to just act like a college student and upvote posts and comment sparingly. It can be a helpful distraction after reading 150+ news sites a day. It very much reminds me of early Facebook in 2007 before it was public and Facebook was the catalog of campus gossip which I read actively as a freshmen at the University of Northern Colorado. If it was going down, it was going down on Facebook and now that Facebook is so much more than that, college students are still spreading gossip, they are just doing it on Yik Yak. I will note that it is not quite the social cesspool that Facebook was mostly because it is anonymous and students just don’t complain about everything the way we did.  After all, these kids were born in the 1990s/2000s so they can hardly be trusted; although I am sure that because they have 3+ platforms to talk on I am not reading the full story but it is just easier to complain about the next generation.

Whisper

Whisper is much larger and the more popular of the two apps. Whisper isn’t as popular among college students from what I understand but is still popular among younger people. On this app you will get everything from people who over use the #foreveralone hashtag to people talking about how good their lives are going and who their crush is. Whisper is extra exciting for two reasons: your text goes over a random picture that it selects or you choose from their huge library of obviously culled images from around the web. It also has a chat feature which can be rather entertaining. I spent my first few days on Whisper reading people’s secrets but also offering advice to those looking for answers. I even bitched someone out. I tend to let my psychosis out (I’m a writer for gods sakes) on Whisper but I learned how to be more careful, on the nearby images I accidentally chatted with someone I already knew and socialized with regularly. Anonymous does not always mean you won’t accidentally run into someone you know. If you want to avoid that, don’t chat with anyone or stay away from the nearby button. My productivity definitely suffered for having this app and I turned off notifications. I had another friend who had to uninstall entirely because she basically didn’t work for 2 days because she was on Whisper. As with all media, it can be addicting.

I’ve had fun on these apps and if you want a quick laugh and read people’s publicly aired dirty laundry I suggest you get over to an app store and download these apps. They can be very entertaining, just don’t get addicted; I don’t want to have to start a support group.