With Valentine’s Day around the corner, single students are brushing up on their flirting skills in hopes of finding that special someone just in time for the 14th. This year, there’s a new outlet for publicizing their crushes, and it has come in the form of a new website called LikeALittle.com.
The website began last October when Evan Reas, a Stanford University student and CEO of the website, got together with a few friends to commiserate over the challenges of starting up that first conversation.
“It is difficult and awkward to make that first move, and we knew that first-hand from seeing girls and neighbors around us and just being too shy to say hello. We decided to try to come up with interesting ways to connect people in the world around them, and the rest is history,” Reas said.
The whole concept to the website is simple enough. Students can go to LikeALittle.com/loyno for the Loyola page and browse pages upon pages of anonymous flirting. If they want to post a flirt, the website asks if the person of interest is male or female, the color of their hair and where they were spotted by the poster. (For example, it could be a blonde female in the Monroe Library.) The user then posts a flirtatious message and other users can comment on it. It’s all completely anonymous.
The website is divided up by school, and each page is moderated by the student who founded the page. Samara Jacobovitz, mass communication freshman, runs the Loyola page after founding it last semester. “I just thought the whole idea was cute, the anonymous flirting,” Jacobovitz said, although she maintains that she has never actually posted anything herself.
Being the founding member, though, comes with the responsibility of removing negative posts – usually sexual in nature or “rude, inappropriate comments,” according to Jacobovitz.
The power to monitor the posts hateful in nature, though, provides a positive juxtaposition to other popular anonymous forums like CollegeACB.com or the now-shut down JuicyCampus.com.
“Keeping it positive is our main priority,” Reas said, and added that in addition to the founding members’ moderator privileges, the website uses algorithms to block out negative posts and gives community members the option to delete posts as well.
Reas says he has heard many success stories from couples who met through the website, and Loyola students are actively posting in hopes of their own romantic successes. On December 16, 2010, a user posted: “That strut of confidence really turns me on. Hope I see you as a sideline reporter on ESPN” to a brunette female in the Communications/ Music Complex.
Michelle Gingras is mass communication junior with brown hair who spends the majority of her time in the Communications/ Music complex. She aspires to anchor for ESPN one day and doesn’t deny the fact that she is a confident woman.
“If it is me that they’re talking about, I guess it is flattering,” Gingras said. “But I wish they would have approached me in person.”
Reas, however, sees the ability to flirt online as a helpful outlet this Valentine’s Day.
His advice for shy students? “Go for it. Give a smile to somebody, post it on LikeALittle and see if they are more interested. You’re anonymous, so there’s no downside.”
Melanie Ziems can be reached at [email protected]
