Freshman Mackenzie Hepker wanted to get something off her chest, and “Hey You’s” weren’t enough for her. When she saw a link for LikeALittle on her best friend’s Facebook, she knew that this website would the perfect outlet.
Hepker found out that her friend, a current student at Stanford, had met Evan Reas, a graduate of Standford University and CEO of LikeALittle, a new anonymous social working site. Emails were sent, and Hepker brought the site to Puget Sound. “My heart flutters when I see this guy and I just want to say so,” said Hepker to Reas when explaining why she wanted an account for Puget Sound so badly.
Reas was happy to give Puget Sound a spot on LikeALittle. He started up the website only a few weeks prior, and Puget Sound was the fourth school to subscribe. Now a multitude of campuses in 30 states and across seas use the website. Reas wants the site to expand as much as possible and asks that people link it to Facebook to spread the word. He thanks Mackenzie, calling her a “viral marketing rockstar!”
This is how LikeALittle works: each person can get an account and gets assigned a random fruit name every time they post. Posts are directed to certain areas on campus, gender and hair color are specified and a flirtatious message is attached. As simple as that, a shout-out has been made in an instant over cyberspace, allowing students to express their hots for each other.
Puget Sound acquired its account on Tuesday, Nov. 9 and within the first day, 65 posts were made and now there are way too many to count.
Here is an example of a typical post: “At Diversions: Male, Brunette. I’m usually not into hipster guys…but you look damn fine in that baggy flannel and those huge glasses…makes me wonder if anything else is oversized. :)”
Basically, LikeALittle is a constant virtual version of “Hey You’s”, run by and catered to Puget Sound students. However, seeing as comments do not go through an approval process, anybody who has a Puget Sound account on LikeALittle can delete sexual, specific, or offensive comments, not just the administrators. Puget Sound students are responsible for keeping content appropriate.
A few years ago, JuicyCampus.com was a hit on Puget Sound’s campus. It was a website very similar to LikeALittle; members could post anonymous forums on particular individuals with almost no consequence. Discussions would start about whether or not so-and-so was cute, gay, a slut, unique, etc. People started to lose tact and began to either post extremely critical posts or untruths altogether. Everyone looked for posts about themselves on JuicyCampus just as students are doing now with LikeALittle, but after only a few weeks of uncensored posts, the website was shut down because of defamation violations.
Some students disLikeALittle not because of cyber bullying but because it is an extension of the digital revolution of technology overpowering reality. To them, LikeALittle takes it a step too far. Multiple negative posts about the phenomenon have been made on Puget Sound’s LikeALittle, one being: “Everyone who has written a serious comment on here, either build up the courage and tell them in person or wait until the weekend and tell them when you are drunk. Telling them through this will do nothing” (grammatical errors corrected). One user argues that LivingALittle would be a better path than partaking in LikeALittle, in which students would actually use their interpersonal skills to act on their crushes in the real world.
Whether or not students like it a lot or hate it a lot, one thing is for sure: “Never has a website made people question their hair color more,” Elly Hendricks said.