If you try and tell me that you haven't used social media to do a little bit of creeping, I will call you out on it immediately and remind you that you can always be honest with us here at The Daily Tar Heel.
This is a zero-shame zone; accept your creepiness. Embrace it, even. In fact, we all know that you're probably scrolling down some acquaintance's Instagram at this very moment, paralyzed by the fear that you might accidentally double-tap.
UNC students are shameless slaves to social media, but what people outside our school might not know is that their perception of us will certainly change based on what websites they’re seeing us on.
Here’s what different social media platforms reveal to outsiders about student life at UNC:
This is how you want your Grandma to view you. You post only your most perfect selfies, your finest moments and your greatest accomplishments on Facebook.
This is also where you can hold on to those people you vaguely know, but don't care about enough to follow on Instagram.
This is the place where your relatives come to post lame links on your timeline, as well as where you can discreetly check on your ex's photos and see if they've gotten ugly while you're relaxing under Tar Heel blue skies.
Whatever you do, don't forget to delete those profile pictures from the 6th grade. Those were dark, dark days for all of us.
Instagram is how you want your peers to view you, so people will try to make themselves look as cool as possible.
Even if you've been wearing the same stained Heel Yeah! sweatshirt for three days straight, you still want your friends at home to think you're living a more fun-filled, exciting life than they are.
In summary, here at UNC we all do it for the 'gram in three basic steps:
(1) Go to a party.
(2) Take 1,000 photos.
(3) Spend all week posting pictures from the same event so that you look like actually you go out instead of spending most nights on Netflix.
Easy.
From what I’ve seen, Twitter is easily the most popular social media platform at UNC.
In fact, our campus’ #1 Twitter-lover is probably Chancellor Folt, who I believe has asked the audience to follow her at every event I’ve been to so far. Mad respect for that, though.
Twitter is where you post your thoughts and where people are forced to read them whether they want to or not.
Got news to share? Twitter. Want to throw shade? Twitter. Need to get an update every single time there’s even the possibility of severe weather in Chapel Hill? Twitter.
Don’t forget to go back and delete those embarrassing, angsty tweets from 2010, though. 140 characters isn’t much, but it still surprises me how many four-letter words people manage to squeeze into a tweet.
Tumblr
This is probably the closest to the real you that a person can see on the internet.
There are two types of things that people post about on Tumblr: either the American Apparel model aesthetic you wish you could pull off but can't afford, or the strange (and rather overbearing) obsession that you have with British television shows.
Most of the time, bloggers tend to avoid revealing their exact locations on Tumblr, but UNC being the excellent school that it is, we have managed to make our mark anyways in the form post about Pit Preacher bingo has made a place for itself on the internet with 200,000+ notes.
And finally, mixed in with all of this Gary-love is your weird love for '90s anime and tagged catalog of One Direction fan fiction.
We won't tell if you won't, though.
Snapchat
Snapchat represents the side of UNC students that the outside world rarely sees. This is the behind-the-scenes of our lives in our purest, double-chin-iest forms.
Since we at the DTH care about you so much, we’ll give you a free tip. Before adding someone on Snapchat, always remember to ask yourself these questions:
- Are they prepared for this side of you?
- Will they speak to you after seeing you, nostrils flared, hair-disheveled, making the ugliest faces you possibly can?
- Will they still love you after seeing snaps documenting your nightly, stressed, 2 a.m. delirium?
To balance out our individual weirdness, we do have the UNC Campus Story. Rather than bringing a sense of community to campus it mostly just features good ol’ Gary telling us all we’re heathens.
And so, this is where images of an effortlessly cool existence go to die.
MySpace
(Crickets chirping. A tumbleweed rolls wistfully across the screen. Fade to black.)
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