Like many of my peers, last year I discovered a Twitter account called “ND Makeouts.” At first, it seemed like harmless fun, a chance to see what everyone else was up to on the weekends. Quickly, I began to realize how truly humiliating this account is. What started as a way to joke around with your friends in an “I know what you did last night” kind of way turned into a sport by the end of the semester. By the end of last year, I witnessed groups of people crashing parties sans invitations for the sole purpose of capturing an “ND Makeout” to post online, judging and disgracing people they didn’t even know.
For those unfamiliar with “ND Makeouts,” I’ll explain: you’re at a party and you see your friend hooking up with some guy she may or may not have just met. You snap a picture to laugh about in the dining hall the next day at brunch, but in true Millennial fashion, you decide you have to share it with the whole world online. You quickly tweet the picture with a funny caption and make sure you tag #ndmakeouts or @ndmakeouts so they will retweet it for all of their followers to see. Hilarious, right? Not really…
In college, where we often have little privacy to begin with, documenting someone else’s intimate moment and sharing it with the world is not the nicest thing you can be doing with your time. I know, I know, if those people didn’t want their privacy violated, they could have left the party, they could have gotten a room, etc, etc. But think about it: you can’t go back to a room without attracting even more attention, there is the issue of roommates being around and parietals, and if your friends are anything like mine (*ahem,* really good friends), they won’t let you leave with ANYONE other than them, no matter how much you think you like him. Plus, at a place like Notre Dame where inter-gender relations are scrutinized so harshly, even the way in which you talk to guys in public is dissected and analyzed by everyone who knows you. You can be judged for even saying hello to a friend of the opposite sex on the quad.
Moreover, this is often a vehicle for slut-shaming. A guy rarely gets any flak for showing up on ND Makeouts; some might even get a slap on the back from their buds. A girl, however, gets labeled: slut, whore, skank, and every other name in the book. Maybe her closest friends know the true story, but everyone else who sees that picture immediately judges her, “Look at the slut who got too drunk at CJ’s and hooked up with that tennis player.” What seems like innocuous fun can actually be very damaging to girls’ reputations and futures. After all, nothing you post on the internet will ever go away.
Yes, as a member of 21st century media, I am 100% in favor of freedom of speech. I love the fact that I can post anything I like on the internet and not have to explain it to anyone. But just because we have this freedom does not mean we can abuse it. Damaging someone’s image just for a laugh is misusing a system we take for granted. When you post a picture online, it’s out there forever, no matter how hard you try to delete it. Keep that in mind next time you’re out on a Saturday night, and please – as Ms. Norbury urged us – think before you tweet.