Most people prefer to keep their darkest secrets private. Maybe some share them with a close circle of friends and family if they need to talk about it. But the wired world has kissed goodbye to privacy and it’s all out there now.
A trend set off by some Facebook confession pages of university students abroad has taken by storm Bangalore’s college campuses too.
The works
There are all sorts of confessions about hostel pranks, punctuated by expletives, description of teenage angst, gossip, romance as well as hate messages.
Speaking to The Hindu on condition of anonymity, the administrators of the IIMB Confessions, which was started last month, say that the response so far has been overwhelming. “We are getting a lot of new subscribers as well as confessions every day. Most of the confessions appear to be true and a lot of them are which we can relate to as students of IIMB.”
Anonymous submissions
All confessions are submitted anonymously by way of a Google Docs page or Survey Monkey document.
Nandini Shekhar, a professor in Mysore University, is of the opinion that considering that the way students express themselves is constantly changing, these confession websites could be seen as a great feedback forum.
Sahana Das, who teaches at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, is more circumspect. According to her, serious cases where students are lonely or depressed or have some major grievance can be addressed only when it is face-to-face. “But if these pages help in venting [their angst] for the moment and thus letting off steam, then why not?”
The administrators of the IIMB page say that many alumni closely follow the page, “This page has certainly created a buzz in the student community as well alumni and they follow it up with offline discussions in bid to identify the confessor,” one of them said.
