If you’re reading strangely intimate, nameless comments about your classmates’ eating habits, midterm schedules or sex lives, you’re probably doomscrolling on Sidechat. The app is an anonymous forum for users to post about whatever is on their mind, anytime they want, to a community of predominantly Brown students. On the app, which is perceived as a “virtual quad” for college students, users can upvote or downvote different posts, respond with comments or repost something with added commentary.
Sidechat has created a digital Brown community that is more honest and accessible than the University’s real one — it’s a community Brunonians don’t even need to leave their dorms to be part of.
A brief stroll through Brown’s Sidechat page reveals that most comments fit into one of two categories — memes or jokes about Brown, and general woes about Gen Z existence. These two categories have significant overlap — ranging from complaints of loneliness on a campus with an insular social scene to memes about the competitiveness of finance clubs and “selling out.” To go to Brown without being on Sidechat is to be oblivious to the most popular exchanges of campus culture, from a running joke about President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 manufacturing sunny weather for Family Weekend to discussions about the hottest parties of the weekend. Someone who’d never stepped foot on College Hill could get a very good sense of Brown students’ humor, interests and concerns from Sidechat alone.
Therein lies the double-edged sword of Sidechat: It has changed what it means to participate in the Brown community. It has decentralized our social hub, as we effectively carry the Main Green around in our pockets instead of needing to go there in person. Interactions are now accessible to more people, but it also means students can hide behind screens while believing they’re still interacting with their peers. The result is a more isolated, more individualistic Brown — one where students tell funny stories to a virtual void instead of striking up a conversation with the person next to them in class, and learn campus goings-on from an anonymous post instead of their friends or dormmates (or The Herald!). Meeting new people and putting yourself out there is scary, and Sidechat acts as a crutch to circumvent any sort of social risk. And the reliance on digital forums for social interactions has implications far beyond College Hill — Gen Zers in the workplace have seen reduced social and verbal skills and heavy social media use is associated with increased rates of anxiety and depression.
Brown, of course, is no social utopia. First-years aren’t likely to be friends with seniors, and south campus dwellers will seldom interact with those up north. And personally, despite not being an avid Sidechat user, I still find it nerve-racking to start a conversation with someone in a lecture who I’ve never met. But Sidechat bridges these divides. I may live on a different quad and be part of different clubs from that classmate, but unbeknownst to us, we laugh over the same Sidechat memes mocking the Sharpe Refectory. The app gives students the forum to bond over these shared experiences and circumvents the technicalities that may divide us day-to-day.
And without these circumstances — grade level, concentration, hometown— implicitly attached to our words, Sidechat has become an escape from Brown’s insularity. If a joke flops, your real-life reputation won’t suffer. You can complain about being lonely or sad as much as you want, and no one will look at you differently. By letting words and thoughts spread through the Brown community without the added weight of a username, Sidechat has become a haven of free expression in an otherwise intimate (and perhaps stifling) community. College Hill is so small that it’s hard to fly underneath the radar, and Sidechat’s anonymity makes people comfortable enough to express themselves without curating their words first. We all know that Instagram is performative and TikTok is just a highlight reel, but maybe Sidechat is the closest we can get to a true mirror into the lives, thoughts and feelings of Brunonians.
Colleges have been a testing ground for nascent social media platforms since the early 2000s, from Facebook to Fizz, and for good reason: Campus and digital communities both straddle the tension between young people’s constant search for belonging and fear of vulnerability. Sidechat effectively does away with the latter while creating an illusion of success in the former. While the app may isolate our in-person community, the security blanket of distance creates another one of value. Students no longer need to have met in real life to exchange advice, memes or campus lore. Our community is changing — and we might just have to keep scrolling to figure out how much.
Isabella Gardiner ’28 can be reached at isabella_gardiner@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
