A new Chrome extension developed by two UNC students will allow you to block any Dance Marathon related content from your browser.
Owen Barrett and Janelle Harraway, both junior computer science majors, created the extension after meeting in a class this semester. The two sat next each other without ever speaking for most of the semester until Harraway broke the ice.
“It was so random! One day as I was sitting down in class, I complained about the Dance Marathoners in the Pit and it turned out we both had problems with the organization,” said Harraway.
She says she is still scarred from being yelled at by the Dance Marathon bathroom monitors while participating as a dancer during her first-year.
“I had diarrhea from the undercooked food they served us and the [bathroom] monitors wouldn’t let me sit on the toilet. I had to stand,” she said, seeming a bit shaken by the memory.
Owen has loathed Dance Marathon since being snubbed in the morale captain selection during his first-year.
“Everytime I see Dance Marathon in the pit it just reminds me of how they disrespected me. I used to just wish that I should block them out,” said Barrett.
“But that can’t be done IRL, obviously, so we’ll just have to tolerate it,” added Harraway, “But that doesn’t mean we have to see it when we’re online.”
Inspired by a trend of similar extensions that allow users to filter out content related to Justin Bieber, the Kardashians and even Donald Trump, they did some research and learned that coding an extension that would do the same for Dance Marathon related content would pretty easy. They finished it in about 3 days.
“It’s so relaxing to live in an online world where Dance Marathon doesn’t exist. There’s no dumb posts about events or fundraising,” said Barrett.
On March 1, the extension became available on the Google Store and has been downloaded over 300 times already. Teagan Randolph, a sophomore, was one of the first to download the extension.
“I actually just stumbled upon it. I had been googling how to block content, specifically for Dance Marathon, and it popped up,” said Randolph, “I was so excited that I called my mom!”
“Plus, it’s nice to scroll through your Facebook feed without being reminded of a dying child every 5 posts,” she added.
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