Editor's note: This article is satire.
There exists a group on campus that can make or break your college experience. It can introduce you to your future best friend or your future worst enemy. It can point you in the direction of a nice four-bedroom off Church Street or a dingy duplex 40 minutes from campus. It can help you finally sell that lamp that you used to cram for physics late into the night (you failed) or urge you to buy another (maybe this is a sign to stop cramming by lamplight).
The group is more exclusive than the Order of Gimghoul, it holds more secrets than the Church of Scientology and it exists on a platform even more underground than BeReal.
It’s the "UNC Chapel Hill Subleases, Roommates, Off Campus Housing & Apartments" Facebook group.
You might be thinking, “But Hannah, the group has 33,487 members. That’s hardly underground.”
Sure, that’s enough people to fill a small town, but the Facebook group isn’t a town: it’s an art form. If you were in the first 33,487 people to discover Frank Ocean, I bet you’d feel pretty good about yourself. If you were in the first 33,487 people to visit the moon, you’d consider yourself lucky (since Elon Musk’s future fleet of Tesla robots will make up at least 32,000 of those). If you were in the first 33,487 people to try Popeyes' spicy chicken sandwich in 2019, people would literally kill to be you.
To be a member of the sublease group is an honor and a privilege. For those of you who have managed to get past the intense vetting process, in which you interview for two months and are questioned by a panel of five judges while hooked up to a polygraph test — congratulations. For those of you who haven’t, here’s a list of things you’re missing out on:
1. The ‘Hey guys!’ roommate mantra
Over time, the Facebook group has formed a mantra that every member knows by heart. It has the forced conformity of the Pledge of Allegiance, the nostalgia of “Hark the Sound” and the rhythm of “SkeeYee." All 33,487 members have posted a version of the mantra at least once, occasionally putting their own little spin on it but with the same core lyrics:
