Adya Sarin ‘28 and Cora Sicherman Gilbert ‘27

Somewhere on this campus, someone, or a group of people, has an omniscient knowledge of just about everyone. They know your deepest darkest secrets, your social life, or lack thereof, your opps, your exes, and worst of all, your political opinions.

The person you made brief eye contact with as you walked across the South Lawn, the girl with the beanie you overtook on your way to Heimbold, the senior you complimented in Barb, the athlete who sits across from you in class; it could be anyone hiding behind the screen, hiding behind the Instagram handle @slcanonymous, learning everything about you, Direct Message by Direct Message.

The Instagram account wasn’t always known as @slcanonymous. Instagram statistics reveal it has changed its username six times since its creation, slipping in and out of identities but remaining the same at its essence; “a void to yell in,” as written in its bio. And now, as the account surpasses its 10,000th post, we take this moment to dissect the void Sarah Lawrence students have been yelling into for almost a decade, questioning whether these voices will ever make it out.

An average day scrolling through the page consists of unprovoked political debates, lost and found items, critique on the ever-failing campus party scene and the occasional request to tone down the hostility. It’s a blend of the unabashed authenticity of Tumblr boards and the quippy humor of X (formerly known as Twitter) threads coupled with a need for communication at a school with a seemingly non-confrontational student body; it’s so Sarah Lawrence - the good, the bad, the ugly.

With an anonymous forum comes the need for an anonymous admin—or multiple, many speculate. For just one individual to carry the burden of every Sarah Lawrence student’s opinions seems impossible. As students graduate, the account is passed down, with new admins seemingly joining and retiring from the @slcanonymous administrative team every year.

Occasionally, an admin will make their voice heard. Sometimes they caption the posts with their opinions, reminding us of the human behind the screen to which we so unabashedly proclaim our deepest, darkest thoughts. “Maybe the aspect that [the admin] are ‘anonymous’ feels like a safety barrier for some people,” said Alex Fogel ‘28.

While reporting on this story, it appeared that a lot of students sending in Direct Messages, or DMs, to @slcanonymous don't even consider the admin a human being who sees the faces behind the comments. As a result, and often unbeknownst to the students, there is very little that is “anonymous” about the account: individual texting styles easily recognized by their peers, public Instagram accounts openly engaging in discourse in the comment sections, specific incidents involving individuals strongly alluded to, and, of course, the fact that the admin of the account knows exactly who is posting what.

When asked for their comments on this “job,” one of the admins said, “[R]unning the account lit asf but overwhelming.idk [sic.] I got this job a few weeks ago. I know all of your secrets. It’s freeing and caging.” Freeing and caging, yes, but self-induced perhaps. The admins appear to guard their anonymity with their lives with only a fairly select group of individuals aware of their true identities. In fact, they appear to be loyal to their position even years after graduating. All the supposed rumors we investigated led us straight to dead ends and some suspiciously obscure emails.

Content of an email The Phoenix reporters received from a rumored @slcanonymous admin. Graphic by Kat Rutschilling ‘25

Nevertheless, the resulting power held over the SLC community as an admin is not to be taken lightly. One of the @slcanonymous admins was even reportedly “fired” for misconduct on the account according to a statement posted to the accounts Instagram story on Oct. 21, that read, “We kicked the annoying admin out [sic.] Everyone say yay”. A surge of posts centered on the ethics and responsibilities of voting in the upcoming election flooded the account homepage and the admin was later removed for reasons unknown, but much to the distaste of the casual @slcanonymous viewer. The student body responded and a new, ‘better’ SLC anonymous account was created under the handle @slcanonbetter. This new account has introduced a new, “better” system of management with the opportunity for contributors to share their thoughts through an anonymous Google form.

“One of the main points of this account is to decrease the power dynamic,” the admin of this new account (@slcanonbetter), who did not share their name, wrote over DM to us. “I don’t want people to think I have a certain power over them because I ‘know their secrets.’” They added,“[the Google form] makes me feel less… I dont know, like an evil overlord?” Ironic, considering they recently changed their profile picture to Gru, the famous supervillain from the animated Despicable Me movies. “I wanted it to be better, quite frankly”, they concluded.

“Before I came to Sarah Lawrence I was just seeing all the negative stuff in the comments, I was…deterred by it,” said Fogel as they recounted feeling overwhelmed by the intensity and magnitude of the troubles so openly displayed on the page whilst scrolling through the account prior to starting the school year. Most of the content posted to the account is negative. People complain about the food, weather, administration and faculty. The page often morphs into an echo chamber, pieced together by petty squabbles and unnecessary rage-bait.

However trivial, the discourse on @slcanonymous has impacted people’s real lives. It may be hard to believe that a platform that houses so much frivolity could also be a breeding ground for disputes that disrupt people’s personal lives, but it happens more often than you would expect. In an effort to understand why one might post on an Instagram account run by one of their unknown peers in order to resolve a real issue, The Phoenix spoke to students who have sent posts into @slcanonymous.

“I wanted to spark a conversation, like a debate,” a former student told The Phoenix in a phone interview. This former student is the daughter of a woman who grew up under an oppressive communist regime. Last year, she had conversations with some students involved in communist groups and struggled to understand where her peers were coming from. “I decided to post on @slcanonymous because I was just so confused…I was curious,” she said. “I really just wanted to see where people were coming from.” Although some people use the anonymity of a platform like this to say things they normally wouldn’t be able to, she took on a more passive and curious tone in her anonymous message to get people to respond. She said, “even though I felt very strongly about [her beliefs] I was trying to be a bit more calm in my questioning because I didn't want people to get too defensive. I wanted there to be some conversation here where they're not just shutting it down.”

She got what she was looking for. Her post received a substantial amount of serious comments explaining their viewpoint. She didn’t hesitate to respond to them. Although her original message was tame, the comments section is where she “went hard,” she said. “Whatever you put in those comments,” she said, “you better be able to back it up in person, because we know who you are. We know who's saying it.” She added, “I feel like the fact that the comments aren't anonymous does add a lot of accountability.”

What does this student’s experience tell us about what happens when someone attempts to create a healthy debate on @slcanonymous? In this case, it’s still unclear if anyone really walked (or scrolled) away with a more well-rounded mindset than they came into the conversation with. However, according to this student, there were at least a couple of benefits to having this experience online. She pointed out that in-person conversations tend to become emotional much more quickly: “It normally just ends in…almost like a screaming match,” she said. Additionally, sending in posts to @slcanonymous gave her and other students an opportunity to “vent frustrations” and get things off their chests.

In this instance, the account served as a place for people with diverse points of view to plead their case. Maybe it helped them better understand each other. However, to do this, it’s necessary to open your mind to other’s perspectives, even if you don’t agree. And according to this student, it doesn’t seem like @slcanonymous is an environment in which people are open to seeing a middle ground. When asked if she viewed the @slcanonymous account as a platform where real discourse could be had, she said, “I wish people were able to have nuanced points of view and see a middle ground, not just black and white, which I feel like on @slcanonymous.” She added, “people really lack nuance, they really do. It's so hard to find someone who will see the middle ground and acknowledge both sides.”

“@slcanonymous isn't completely useless. For example, if someone is like, hey, I lost something, can you help me find it, DM me, that is productive,” Etienne Timmons, ‘26 said in an interview. “But I feel like when it comes to political discussions and that sort of thing, I think that the admin should have a responsibility to block that from being public, because it's very rare where that doesn't get toxic.”

Timmons once had an in-person conflict with a friend (which has since been resolved) which was used to discredit his argument when debating about a real issue in the comments of @slcanonymous. Timmons said he made an insensitive joke. He did not say what the joke was, just that it was “crude,” but “not a racist joke.” Instead of confronting him in person, the student brought up the joke he had made during a discussion in the comments of @slcanonymous. Afterward, the two discussed the issue in person, Timmons admitted that his joke was offensive and apologized, and all was forgiven. But once something is on the internet, there’s no escaping your words.

Timmons said, “[The discourse] spiraled, and a lot of my friends tried to defend me in the comments, and it just became a civil war between our friend groups.” The accusation that he was racist spread, and resulted in his removal from an on-campus organization he had been a part of—the Sarah Lawrence Socialist Coalition. He continued: “There are people that my friends will have conversations with… and I will be brought up, and their immediate thought is , ‘Oh, that's the guy that's racist and a white supremacist,’ and it's like, what the hell? That's ridiculous—all from @slcanonymous. You can't just say that people are white supremacists.”

Many agree that if someone says something offensive, even if it is an attempt at humor, they should take accountability and understand their wrongdoing. However, at what point does it go too far?

What is fair and what is not is up for each of us to decide. One thing is for certain— @slcanonymous holds a lot of power, and it has a real impact on people’s lives. When accusations like the one leveled against Timmons are made on the Internet, a once-private moment explodes into the domain of public knowledge, and suddenly the story takes on a life of its own. Whether or not an insensitive joke is indicative of a larger problem, we, as the audience on the Internet, can never know for sure. As soon as the Internet gets involved, the real story doesn’t matter anymore because everyone has already made up their mind.

Some of the aspects of the culture here at Sarah Lawrence may occasionally contribute to the issues that arise on @slcanonymous. Timmons said, “Sarah Lawrence is not known for having students that will, like, get in your face about things. They will only go online and spread your shit online.” There’s another issue, according to him, “there is a trend of people wanting to be better than everyone, like morally superior than everyone else.”

The characteristic of @slcanonymous that many find jarring is that all of this is happening on the same Instagram account. Take, for example, the content on @slcanonymous as election day approached. In recent weeks, there’s been an influx of posts concerning the election and arguments over voting. However, on the very same day, a message was posted which simply read: “what do you guys think of the word rear?” In this way, @slcanonymous is a microcosm of many larger Internet spaces—think of how, on Tiktok, you could see a funny video about “subtle foreshadowing” and then on the very next scroll see footage of atrocities around the globe. In the modern world it can become challenging for many people to think critically about real issues. Ultimately, the @slcanonymous platform, like all other spaces on the Internet, is a tool. It’s up to us to decide how we want to use it.

One student, Hollen Song ’28, took to his Instagram story to share an uplifting experience he had with the @slcanonymous account. He had originally messaged the account to report that he’d found a student’s lost airpods–but he decided to add to the end of his message: “Please include my Instagram account name as I’m trying to make friends here.” After @slcanonymous posted his message, Song was flooded with new friend requests on Instagram, and even has plans to get lunch with some of his new friends soon! “This experience is extremely meaningful to me… I’ve had a hard time making friends at this college,” he said, describing his experience with @slcanonyomus as a “catalyst” for getting out of his shell.

According to some students, another upside to the account is the humor. To some, the entertainment that they derive from the account outweighs all the negatives—even when the entertainment comes from finding humor in how seriously others take it. One anonymous student wrote in response to a survey The Phoenix posted via QR code around campus, “Anonymity and freedom is an addictive drug and I pray to god that the students of Sarah Lawrence continue to huff it like paint… of course occasionally there is something of substance but how much substance can something really have on an anonymous submission Instagram page…It’s truly beautiful, I love it…I could write about skibidi rizz in Ohio hawk tuah and a nice size of the student body would see it, that’s so insanely hilarious. You are not living your life in the way the good lord intended if you’re bent over an Instagram page that was genuinely arguing over an entity called Freaky Jeff.’”

XOXO, SLC Anon.