Most people would love to reveal their crushes and missed connections, however the pang of rejection often proves too much to handle, leaving us, to be frank, SOL. A recent solution to this problem has given us the opportunity to express these feelings while having the option of complete anonymity, therefore leaving our self-confidence in tact. Thanks to a few brave souls, the UMaine Crushes & Missed Connections Facebook page was created in March of this year, and a copy cat this Fall, to let us share these secret admirations with the campus community.
Just like most other members of the community, we too have secretly been dying to be mentioned on one of these pages and were equally interested in finding out what sparked these popular pages. So we teamed up to pursue the matter and contacted both Crushes & Missed Connections pages to find out where the inspiration came from.
The original UMaine Crushes & Missed Connections page creator opened up to us and stated that his/her inspiration came from fellow crushes and missed connections pages launched by UNH and Washington State University. Even the creator of UMaine Crushes & Missed Connections didn’t anticipate it gaining popularity as it has. The creator was left in disbelief when he/she began to receive thousands of submissions and even had to share the admin responsibilities with a few unnamed friends.
The second UMaine Crushes and Missed Connections page creator was also kind enough to correspond with us. Much like our fellow students, this creator was a fan of the original page and was distraught when school began again and the posts of admiration had not. He/she took it upon himself/herself to create a similar page in order to allow students to post their feelings. Upon seeing this, the original page creator decided to reopen the first page, as they had unpublished it over the Summer.
Like much of the student body, we were left wondering if the two pages had a rivalry between them, however neither page felt this way. The second UMaine Crushes and Missed Connections page felt dwarfed by the amount of “likes” the original page has (4,148) compared to their own (1,854). The original UMaine Crushed & Missed Connections page creator often feels overwhelmed between his/her studies and the constant influx of posts of their page. In fact, the creator confessed that, “Depending on who runs [the UMaine Crushes and Missed Connections page], I would love to pass the admin privileges on to them.” However, a dilemma ensues, the creator of the original page wants to keep their identity hidden and therefore can’t just simply message the other page saying to take over.
To push our research further, we asked a few frequent crushees how they felt about being mentioned on the pages. We received answers all over the spectrum. Amy Steinmen said that she felt “flattered at first, then just creeped out.” Joe Howard shared with us, “I was pretty stoked about it, good bragging rights to go along with the Phi Kap Campus Cutie… I love the page and a few of my brothers and I have a competition of who gets more posts. I guess I’m clearly winning.” The page has even improved the self-confidence of those like Kelsey Flynn. She opened up to us confessing, “I, personally enjoy it. I do not have the highest self-esteem especially in the dating/romance/attractiveness categories. Finding out that there could be a person or persons that believe I’m attractive, or that they would like to get to know me makes me feel better about it and helps to increase my personal level of confidence.”
Our final question during our interviews, was if our crushees had any messages for their crushers. All agreed that the crushers should be brave and, as Jesse Clark said, “[Don’t] hide behind a keyboard. Come say hi!” Although, our favorite response was once again from Joe when he told us, “A message would be thanks for all the love, keep it coming!!! I do have a sexy girlfriend now. She thinks it’s funny, but says watch out ladies. All I have to say is you can’t go wrong with a southern boy with a pickup, so it makes sense why I’m a wanted guy.”
The mystery lives on but take solace in the fact that even our creators hope to be mentioned on their own pages. The original UMaine Crushes & Missed connections page exclaims that he/she is “Still waiting for it!!!” and the second one confesses, “I haven’t gotten any yet but I had two last year.”
Moral of this story? Keep your crushes and missed connections coming, but don’t forget that face-to-face interaction is still priceless.