Last March, I was given a single Insomnia cookie in exchange for downloading yet another app that was attempting to launch in front of Harvard’s Science Center. Almost one year later, and what seemed like just another tech startup has produced some of the funniest and most controversial content on campus.
Sidechat, an app that allows students to post anonymously within a school’s network, has enabled students to express grievances and share out of pocket content that they would likely not otherwise share if their names were attached. One must simply enter their school email when creating their profile and they will be directed to a private network containing school-specific content.
Sidechat was first launched at private universities like Harvard, Brown, Tufts, and Princeton and has since spread to universities across the nation. Since the app launched, additional networks have been made available for anyone to join. Users can receive content ranging from sex advice to Taylor Swift fan groups. Sidechat takes the best features from Reddit and YikYak, combining community based threads with anonymity. One additional feature built into Sidechat’s structure, however, is that users’ posts are tracked and stored on the back end of the app. Therefore, programmers are able to hold users accountable and can monitor what is shared on their platform.
The trending conversations on Sidechat are dependent on the time of year and what is happening on campus. Currently, first-years are expressing their stress and excitement surrounding the blocking process. Other Harvard specific topics, like final clubs, student politics, and the eternally controversial HUDS food, remain hot topics throughout the year. Sidechat serves as more than just a social app. Students provide reactions to school wide emails and events and can also offer advice on which courses to take, serving as an uncensored replacement to the infamous “Q Guide.”
With over one thousand upvotes, the most popular Harvard Sidechat post includes an image of a student unknowingly smoking next to Dean Khurana during Yardfest, with the caption: “when u realize ur smoking next to dean khurana”
Sidechat is also used to poke fun at Harvard’s housing mania, which serves as a shared experience among most students on campus. In this post, with over 700 upvotes, a student is poking fun at Harvard’s seemingly last minute overflow housing distribution, comparing it to a DIY project.
Because all students on the main channel attend Harvard, they have all most likely experienced imposter syndrome or some sort of insecurity trying to keep up with their peers. The post below exposes a shared experience that may not have been expressed had anonymity not been maintained.
These particular examples demonstrate the importance of Sidechat’s anonymity in wildly different ways. The first image demonstrates the increase in visibility of fun—people would typically be pretty shy to attach their name to obvious smoking imagery, let alone in Harvard Yard. Second, regarding the overflow housing, the theme of Harvard criticism is particularly rampant, with students’ problems seemingly amplified tenfold (or perhaps just made more visible and realized). Finally, a student demonstrates that perfect grades are not necessarily the status-quo, with the intent on normalizing imperfections that Harvard students so desperately avoid.
Alexandra Friedlander ’25 afriedlander@college.harvard.edu is deleting SideChat after writing this article