Graphic by Michelle Brumley '24. Photo courtesy of AnemoneProjectors via Wikimedia Commons.png.
By Michelle Brumley ’24
Managing Editor of Web
It happened to me. It could happen to you. I got into an argument with someone on Fizz.
Fizz first made its debut on the Mount Holyoke College campus near the end of the fall semester, billing itself as a social media platform where college students could post and comment anonymously (if you’re an iPhone user, that is — the app isn’t available on Androids). Every school has its own board, ensuring that any posts you see are at least coming from someone with a mtholyoke.edu email address. As it turns out, Mount Holyoke students seem to be much more brave when they’re anonymous. Who would’ve thought?
I resisted downloading Fizz for two months after it made its first appearance on campus. I had two reasons for this. The first is petty: I was annoyed when I found the app’s QR code tacked to my door one morning, as it had not yet occurred to me that my door could be a potential space for advertisement. The second is that I remembered its predecessor, the Instagram account @mhc_crushes — another space for anonymous posts, many a form of bizarre sexual harassment. Upperclassmen may recall this unfortunate period in Mount Holyoke history with no small amount of déjà vu. Fizz has less of the sexual harassment, thankfully, but the rest is much of the same: soapboxing, oversharing, gossiping… and arguing.
There’s a new topic to argue about on Fizz every day — laundry etiquette, ethical masturbation and heterophobia, to name a few — and if you’re lucky, there will be more than one ongoing slapfight to involve yourself in. Fizz isn’t all arguing, of course. People post shower thoughts, deepest fears, worst moments, insecurities, hot takes, complaints, memes, more hot takes, requests for melatonin and lost items, and pictures of campus animals. Scrolling the app feels like dredging the school’s collective consciousness. It’s a strangely intimate view of the people you walk by in Blanch every day. Sometimes it feels sweet, like a real community. Sometimes it feels like a car crash you can’t quite look away from.
I’ll admit it: I’m here for the car-crash threads. It feels like “Fight Club” (or “Bottoms,” if you prefer) for people who have a hard time making eye contact. I’ll roll my eyes at the stupid back-and-forths as I scroll, smug about the fact that the participants have nothing else to do with their time than argue on Fizz, but I’m also here scrolling, so, really, who’s the pathetic one here?
It was inevitable that I’d get into an argument eventually. I saw a post that was offensive enough to me at the time that I had to say something. I couldn’t resist. I won’t go into the specifics out of embarrassment, but let's just say it was incredibly stupid, as most Fizz arguments tend to be. At some point, I came to my senses and stopped replying, but it was too late: I had inserted myself into the car crash. Worse, I discovered that the car crash was actually fun to talk about, a sort of social shorthand during lulls in conversation: Did you see –?
Part of the fun and needling risk of Fizz is that you don’t know who you’re talking to, as I was to realize. Half-laughing, half-soapboxing, I was relaying what must have been a thrilling account of my latest Fizz dispute when one of my friends went quiet, smiling cryptically at me from across the table: I had found my faceless Fizz antagonist. I was mortified, but also a little delighted; on Fizz, we were able to have a conversation, even a contentious one, without softening our own opinions out of courtesy — a disagreement we both would have let slide in person. It helped that our fight was over something incredibly petty (laundry). After hashing our differences out over chicken tenders, I felt we had become just a little closer, in part because the anonymity had emboldened us to speak frankly to each other.
After this incident, I started to see the inanity of the arguments on Fizz as an affirmation of our shared values. It may be annoying to scroll through yet another round of circular quibbling about the semantics of progressiveness, but the ideas that these disputes are built on — that we should be less judgemental, that we should be more effective activists, that we must look out for each other — are fundamentally good.
It is hard to imagine most of the back-and-forths on Fizz taking place face-to-face. It’s a small, rural campus, and we Mount Holyoke students aren’t exactly known for stirring the pot; when the odds are decent you’ll see the other person again, it’s socially pragmatic to let disagreements slide. To be clear, I’m not advocating for gladiatorial combat on campus — I love Mount Holyoke because we are (mostly) kind. But kindness should not be conflated with politeness, and Mount Holyoke students also tend to be, at least in-person, polite to a fault. Our courtesy, at times, can even be cruel; pulling our punches means less goofy arguments, but it also means we don’t trust each other enough to speak our minds. Our aversion to disagreement denies us the chance to talk about anything real. If it takes anonymity for us to finally be honest with each other, well — is that really such a bad thing?
Nobody knows the fate of Fizz. It could go the way of mhc_crushes, fizzling quietly out over the summer. Or it could be here to stay as a place for petty grievances, little joys, stolen Tweets and silly arguments. For all its flaws, Fizz gave me a chance to share things I would have otherwise never told anyone, to share opinions I would have otherwise kept to myself, for better and for worse. I hope our future Blue Lions might find the courage to be vulnerable without the comfort of anonymity, though I won’t be around to find out; when I graduate in three weeks, I’ll delete the app for good. Until then, I’ll keep scrolling, because on Fizz, everything is on full display: our capacity for empathy and consideration; our equal capacity for fault-finding and cruelty — I can’t seem to look away. Car crash indeed.
By the way, does anyone know if Blanch has mozz sticks tonight?