“Gossip Girl,” a hit TV show, states, “You’re nobody until you’re talked about.” Victims of Juicy Campus might suggest otherwise.
Juicy Campus publishes gossip through a Web site among college campuses nationwide. On the site, students practice their “first amendment rights” freely by anonymously posting gossip. Other people can then namelessly comment back. Users need no registration, and the site ensures participants will remain anonymous.
When a student first visits Juicy Campus, he or she first selects a school. Soon, five categories appear, including latest posts, latest replies, most discussed, top viewed and juiciest. Juiciest usually means vindictive and demeaning.
The site encourages readers and bloggers to post uncensored gossip and rumors anonymously. Quite often these posts become personal attacks. Yet, Matt Ivester, the site’s founder, recently posted on his official blog, “Hate isn’t juicy.”
But hate frequently appears within the site. How can a Web site with posts like, “Which sorority girls are somehow popular and look like dogs?” and “what a bunch of douches” not contain hate? Actually, Juicy Campus encourages people to transform into the worst version of themselves and to hide hate or jealousy behind a “comment.” Juicy Campus dishonestly asserts that its service extols the importance of constitutional freedoms. Free speech requires responsibility for the truth. Neither the law nor the Constitution protects false or slanderous speech. The assurance of anonymity that Juicy Campus provides creates the opportunity for free speech to become pure trash.
Pure trash results from anonymous attacks masquerading as free speech in the absence of accountability. Personal commentary slides into libel. A discussion of promiscuity crosses the line into obscenity. Student posts and replies regularly degrade to these levels due to the absence of accountability. The Communication Decency Act of 1996 protects the Web site from liability for defamatory, slanderous and obscene statements made by anonymous writers. Liability attaches to only those bloggers, who remain unknown and unknowable. Therefore, under the Communication Decency Act, and the Web site’s assurance of anonymity, the message seems clear: “Slander away.”
In other words, Juicy Campus bloggers become nothing more than invisible, name-calling cowards hiding behind the Communications Decency Act’s shield. Juicy Campus becomes little more than an elementary school playground for the passive-aggressive. It permits publication of vile statements without fear of reprisal or peer judgment. The victim’s name stands out, not the veracity of the charge or the credibility or motives of the blogger.
In the world of blogs, bloggers spread fiction cloaked as truth. Lies become truth by the sheer weight of repetition. Therefore, Juicy Campus offers two products: ruined reputations and destroyed self-esteem. For any student written about on Juicy Campus, even those accustomed to posting, the blog becomes a reality, as an online reputation remains permanent and hard to retract.
According to CNN, a freshman experienced firsthand the lasting affects of online reputations. The student heard about postings incorporating her full name and labeling her as “ugly” and “overrated.” The postings received over 1,000 hits and nasty comments. As a result, she experienced sleep deprivation, trust issues with friends and weight loss. She says the site ruined her freshman year and quite possibly her entire college experience.
In the end, it’s obvious that Juicy Campus creates negativity and devastation for college students nationwide. Before the age of technology, students read gossip on the bathroom wall, one person at a time. Today, technology allows employers, teachers and parents to view gossip by the thousands. What started with a permanent marker and a bathroom stall expanded into an electronic wall accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. So the next time someone considers posting, ask about the purpose of anonymous gossip. And for God’s sake, have some humanity!
Meredith Robertson is a sophomore journalism major. She can be reached at [email protected].
