If you are a Loyola University student, it is probably safe to say that you know what College Anonymous Confession Board is. If you don’t know what College ACB is, I urge you to go to www.collegeacb.com right now and familiarize yourself with the site. Make it fun: check to see if there are any posts about you!
As will become apparent a few clicks in, College ACB is a site that people visit to post information about various subjects with little, if any, proper citation. Usually the information in question is either slanderous or scandalous and usually the subjects in question are students and faculty around campus, except for one post titled “Skull Sex” that is actually part of a series. A typical scandal-based College ACB post:
“I HERD IN BUDDIG LAST NIGHT SOME CHICK WHENT BACK TO HER ROOM AND THER WAS SEX ON THE FLOOR WITH AN HONORS KID WJAHT HAPPEN [sic].”
That is an actual post from the site, word for word. The responses vary from the classic Yes-Man approach (“lol i heard teh same thing…”) to the Indignant Protester (“dude you are an idiot. i hope you fall down some stairs.”). Also represented are the Playing-Stupid-to-Seem-Funny Guy (“so this is how babby is formed? girl got pregnat”) and the Proud Representative (“hell yeah. honors dudes get all the [expletive deleted]. [expletive deleted] is crazy.”)
Of course the scandals aren’t really what make College ACB controversial and, as a result, popular. What really brings in comments are posts about a particular person or groups of people. These posts tend to begin with, “What do people think of that poser (insert name here)?” followed by replies that also tend to not be so favorable, since the original author has already primed his or her audience to think negatively of the person or people in question.
Even the innocent ones that neutrally ask for a majority opinion on someone or something usually degenerate into hateful insinuations.
In short, the site is wonderful.
This is not to say that I condone any of the opinions portrayed on College ACB, but I will say that those who claim that the site is a pointless, shameless cesspool of cyber-bullying are missing the point. Can you imagine Loyola if people could only express some of these horrible feelings by, say, spreading them verbally? Even if restricted to Facebook, these terrible posts would only cause harm in the long run because no one would know whether it was true or not.
Thus enters College ACB, where if it’s posted on the site, it’s probably just wishful thinking. Few people take that site seriously after all, especially those that post anything. What this means, dear friends, is that none of you should take any of it seriously either.
Let people tear down other people anonymously; let the Greek ACB fanatics continue to think “GDI” is a viable comeback in an argument; and most importantly of all, let the scandals commence. I don’t think I’m just speaking for myself when I say that without these fake scandals, life at Loyola would be a little less fun.
Chad Carlile can be reached at
