When tragedy divides a student body, it comes back together stronger than before.
Around midnight November 20th, 2014, lockdown sirens went off; the kind that warn of imminent danger, or something out of an apocalyptic film. A man’s voice boomed like thunder over an intercom, though his words were inaudible from within my bedroom. The moment was chilling, the sirens a sound I’d never heard before in Tallahassee, and it wouldn’t be until ten minutes later that a vague FSU warning alerted students of a situation occurring on the main campus.
Around midnight November 20th, 2014, lockdown sirens went off; the kind that warn of imminent danger, or something out of an apocalyptic film. A man’s voice boomed like thunder over an intercom, though his words were inaudible from within my bedroom. The moment was chilling, the sirens a sound I’d never heard before in Tallahassee, and it wouldn’t be until ten minutes later that a vague FSU warning alerted students of a situation occurring on the main campus.
I live near Doak Campbell, maybe a mile or two outside of campus. I recently downloaded Yik Yak, an anonymous social media platform where local populations create posts without revealing their identity, and other users up-vote, down-vote, or comment on posts. The subject matter typically deals with events in class, relationship sentimentalities, college football, and sardonic one-liners. The platform is real-time, and refreshing every few seconds consistently reveals brand new posts. It’s akin to Twitter, but freer in that any thought one has, he or she may post it and moments later gauge the Tallahassee/FSU community’s reaction to it, without having to attach their name to the thought.
Minutes before and after the sirens went off, this app showed its brilliance. When I heard the sirens, I opened both Twitter and Yik Yak, and the latter’s feed was crawling with new posts.
Minutes before and after the sirens went off, this app showed its brilliance. When I heard the sirens, I opened both Twitter and Yik Yak, and the latter’s feed was crawling with new posts.
Everyone posting on the app was alarmed, frightened, and anxious. No one knew why the sirens were calling or what was going on, and so everyone took to the app to express their concerns. Everyone was consoling one another in the absence of information.
Speculative posts began trickling in, mostly source-less information. Reports of a situation at Strozier, of gun activity, a shooting. Everybody equally in disbelief. Everybody skeptic. The frequency of these posts increased, and while at first any details were fuzzy as time went on they become more focused. More frequent information was upvoted, one-off outliers downvoted. There was no denying it; something awful had occurred on campus.
Speculative posts began trickling in, mostly source-less information. Reports of a situation at Strozier, of gun activity, a shooting. Everybody equally in disbelief. Everybody skeptic. The frequency of these posts increased, and while at first any details were fuzzy as time went on they become more focused. More frequent information was upvoted, one-off outliers downvoted. There was no denying it; something awful had occurred on campus.
Suddenly posts from inside Strozier began appearing. Four shot, three shot, two shot, shooter apprehended, killed, on the run, one of many. A trace amount of misinformation was being cast, but the bones of what had happened were clear: a shooter had fired bullets within Strozier and more than one individual had been shot. Amazingly, all this information was available an hour before any news outlets were reporting on the scene, or had verifiable information.
Twitter sparked with life, and all the information present on Yak was being confirmed, denied, and given body to. These took my attention away from Yak as tweeters within and around Strozier began “reporting:” posting pictures (an eerily abandoned Strozier, armed officers within the main floor of the library), and providing primary accounts of the situation. One never expects the unthinkable to infiltrate their world. Twitter made the unreal of Yik Yak very real.
After the news spread, posts from other college Yak communities, from UF, UCF, LSU, BC, TCU, started to appear.
Students from colleges across the county were manipulating the GPS on Yak so that they could post on our FSU community’s feed and wish us well. Simultaneously, FSU camaraderie began spreading, and posts reading SeminoleStrong, FSUnited, and Unconquered, filled the area’s Yak feed. It’s here that the lack of identity amongst users really shined through. Users were all nameless, but identified as one group, the collective body of Florida State University.
Aside from any fear mongering and melodrama, Yik Yak proved to be a novel real-time source of the spread of local information, faster even than Twitter. Yakkers informed students in the dark, and though Twitter posts that followed proved to be more journalistic and reliable, Yik Yak proved an interesting social media experiment.
-Bryan Díaz , Editor
-Bryan Díaz , Editor