Full disclosure, I am not a big fan of Facebook. I got an account for the same reason a lot of people my age did: to meet my college classmates through our class’s Facebook group. But after the first semester began, I didn’t use it at all. That is, until I heard on Twitter about the Columbia Confessions Facebook page. Now, I am embarrassed to admit that my Facebook usage is 10 times higher than what it was. My friends make fun of me for going on Facebook, the app has been added to my morning list of social media to cycle through. I dread that perhaps I have become a “Facebook user,” but it’s all because of Columbia Confessions.
How does one even describe Columbia Confessions to someone who is unfamiliar with it? It’s an anonymous college confessions page, for one, but it’s also so much more than that. It is a place where anything goes, a place for anonymous strangers to bear their deepest secrets and most inappropriate observations. In my time on the page, I’ve come to realize that most confessions are only tangentially related to Columbia, if they’re even related at all. It seems, first and foremost, to be a place where people can use the blanket of anonymity to talk about whatever they want. And by whatever they want, I do mean whatever they want.
Columbia Confessions is full of what you would expect: relationship issues, struggles with schoolwork, complaints about family members. There are many crush confessions. There are a good amount of confessions about heavy, triggering topics as well. But then there are the confessions that are so out there, so bizarre, that they make Columbia Confessions what it is.
Some recent examples include a complaint about someone shoveling snow at 4 AM, a thread (yes, a whole thread containing more than 5 confessions) about various genitalia questions and comments, and a plea for help in cheating at Zoom P.E. My favorite confession of all time is a very long post about someone who had been having supernatural experiences since they were a child, including seeing ghosts and apparitions. They were asking for advice on what they should do about it, and the comments were filled with genuine recommendations for mediums and which type of sage to burn. It was such a quintessential example of what Columbia Confessions is and what it offers, and it’s why I keep going back.
Columbia Confessions is my light at the end of the dark tunnel of any given day. There is nothing more I look forward to than clicking on Facebook and scrolling through the confessions of the day. It brightens my mood every time. And I think now more than ever, we could all use some Columbia Confessions in our lives.