It starts with boredom—it always does. I’m walking from Boylston to Cabot, scanning for updates on Instagram, Snapchat, and iMessage, but I have run out of content to consume. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the magenta icon tucked away in the Recently Added section of my App Library. Ignoring my better instinct, I open Sidechat.
For many on campus, this experience is far too common. Launched in 2022, Sidechat is a social media app that allows students at colleges and universities to communicate anonymously in a forum open to all students as well as through individual chats, describing itself as a service “offer[ing] public forms and other interactive communications” in its Terms of Use. The rhetoric on Harvard Sidechat varies from calm and casual to negative and condemnatory. While scrolling, I came across one of the top posts of this past week: “Just waved to 2 people I know and got no response… alright bro guess ill just kms.” While superficially bleak, confessional posts like these are what I find refreshing about Sidechat, at least in moderation.
Despite the humorous tone of many of these critiques, Harvard students often take to the app to express genuinely held frustrations with facets of college life. For the past few weeks, as sophomores have undergone the process of final club accession, countless users have lamented the cryptic and unpredictable timing of rounds, while others have poked fun at the ordeal. A post on Sept. 26 with 333 net upvotes, titled “How sophomores think they look walking to punch,” was accompanied by an image of an anthropomorphized cartoon wolf tipping a top hat, which topped Harvard Sidechat’s feed.
One’s view of Sidechat is shaped tremendously by whether one sorts by “Top” or “New.” The highest-upvoted posts tend to be funny, clever, and easily relatable, often complaining about the changing weather or the quality of dining hall food. Sorting by ‘New,’ on the other hand, betrays a far darker image of Harvard, sometimes masked by ‘brain rot’ humor and other times not. I chuckled at a post consisting of a screenshot from Twitter reading, “Mama a social climber behind you,” a reference to a popular clip on TikTok from last month. Still, the poster likely would not have been published on Sidechat if this joke were not rooted in some truth. Other posts are much more serious: “I regret coming here. Wasn’t good enough here (my advisors think so too), will probably end up unemployed because I’m not qualified for anything,” read a post with four upvotes.
Beyond self-doubt and self-deprecation, however, lies vitriol. Again, this invective ranges from light jabbing to outright condemnation. Taking advantage of the ability on Sidechat to respond to other posts, one user responded to another’s reminder to others to “log off sidechat and go enjoy what will probably be one of the last warm and sunny days on this campus” with “Average humanities major with no work.” The obvious culprit at play here is the dehumanization of others from a perspective behind the screen; since Sidechat posts are anonymous, there is no reputational check on people’s urges to directly joke at others’ expense.
The complicating factor, however, is one of Sidechat’s few strict rules: no direct identification of others. To circumvent this restriction, users often hint at the identity or identities of those they aim to criticize, as they did, for example, in advance of class marshal elections in mid-September.
More recently, a screenshot list of the supposed “Top 100 Harvard Students” began to circulate on Sidechat in both forum posts and class-wide group chats. Again, due to Sidechat’s strict no-identification policy, posters had to blur all the names of the students listed, meaning the image attached to each post essentially consisted of the title of the list and a series of numbers followed by black lines. In group chats, users have sent supposed links to the list, but according to the user Orange Deciduous Tree in the Class of 2028 chat, one commonly circulated link can steal one’s “[l]og in info.” Posts about the lists have attracted hundreds of commenters.
Is any of this culture of criticism warranted? There is an argument to be made that Sidechat amplifies voices critical of elitism and nepotism; such censure rarely has a platform on Harvard’s campus. Some posts have condemned the exclusivity and perceived indulgence of final clubs—a top post from Sep. 23, titled “POV: You show up at Bee punch as an FGLI,” accompanied by an image of Bratz characters recoiling, raises legitimate concerns about classism in final clubs. Another raises disbelief at the fact that “some of you are going to FRANCE for the weekend for FREE? To drink wine with hot women? All because these guys want you to join your club. Oh okay.”
Every day, there are a few posts spreading positivity. “[E]very girl at harvard woke up this morning and decided to wear the most BEAUTIFUL dresses you’ve ever seen. Everyone is pretty today and stitched in sunshine :),” one reads.
I reach Cabot and put my phone back in my pocket. Opening Sidechat gave me not only a quick dose of serotonin but also a few new things to be anxious about over the coming years. Since I first conceptualized writing about Sidechat, my view has changed: there is something important about having a space on campus for legitimate criticism of campus culture and injustice. Although I could not relate to the post about wearing a beautiful dress, it nonetheless lifted my spirits, as I am sure it did for many others. Sidechat is an odd, strange app, but I do not think I will delete it just yet. For better or for worse, it offers an unfiltered perspective of life at Harvard difficult to grasp in even the most open of in-person discussions.
Jules Sanders ’28 (julessanders@college.harvard.edu) posted twice about Lana Del Rey not being at the Science Center in the hopes that it would become an inside joke on Harvard Sidechat. It did not.