Saturday, October 25, 2008

Juicy Campus= Perez Hilton on a Smaller Scale

Who says you have to live in a small town to know just about everything about someone’s personal life? In today’s fast-paced, growing world of media outlets and the increasing amount of online sites that aid to the attacking of other people, it’s simple to put your opinion out there. Two of the most popular sites for opinions (and not always in a good way) are Juicy Campus and Myspace.

Why have young adults stooped as low as writing degrading posts on public web domains just to attack one single person or an entire organization? Thanks to Juicy Campus, Greek organizations, sports teams, and famous singled out individuals can all become topics of conversation by being posted items on the site. Not only can someone become a posted topic of interest, but all people are allowed to give their opinion. The remarks are rude, degrading, and anonymous.

Anonymous posts? Yes, it is true, secret individuals that will never be known by their victim, and nothing can ever be done to stop the site. Juicy Campus was created by a Duke University Alumni that wanted to promote, "the simple mission of enabling online anonymous free speech on college campuses." There are over 60 campuses that are enabled to act on this “anonymous free speech”, but the personal attacks being posted, I hope, were not what the creator had in mind as “free speech”.

In the month of September our campus was filled with worry about who would be the next person to be posted on this site.. Though this seems to be the latest fad in online gossip, I only hope that something may be done for stricter guidelines on the Juicy Campus or that groups can ban together to not even use the site at all.

This guest blog was written by PRowl Public Relations firm staff member, Jade Barnes.

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