Tag Archive: Yale Compliments

  1. WKND COMMENT: Suggestions for Yale Facebook pages

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    Recently, I’ve noticed an absolute deluge of Yale-related Facebook pages cropping up all over my newsfeed, mentioning my friends or suggesting I ‘like’ them. Some, like Yale Insults and Yale Back-Handed Compliments, are entertaining in a schadenfreude-y, “make you feel like a terrible person for laughing” way. Yale Compliments and Yale PostSecret are nauseatingly sweet and soberingly real, respectively, and at least two other pages exist for the express purpose of continuing a proud tradition of indirect sexual advances — hey there, Yale Crush and Yale Hookups!

    Ostensibly because I care about furthering Yale’s culture, but realistically because I’m jealous that I have yet to be relevant enough to be featured on any of these pages, I feel compelled to suggest a few more Yale Facebook pages. And, hey, if any of you feel strongly about them either way, mind mentioning it to Insults or Compliments? I like getting notifications.

    Yale Mildly Impressed

    Because sometimes people do things that are neat, but not neat enough to warrant a gushing commendation on Yale Compliments. Some examples might include watching an entire episode of The Walking Dead without cringing or getting more than three substantial food items with a Durfee’s lunch swipe.

    Yale Section Asshole

    If you’ve ever fantasized about shutting down a section asshole with a devastatingly poignant rant (and if you haven’t, you might be the asshole) but never mustered the courage to actually do so, this page is for you! Post the diatribe you have perfectly scripted in your head, or submit just their name so they’re at least aware and can begin the road to recovery or greater, reactive asshole-ness.

    Yale James Franco Sightings

    Because never again do I want to waste an entire afternoon racing pointless laps between HGS, SSS, and the YUAG in the rain with nothing to guide me but sporadic updates from friends of friends.

    Yale Petty Complaints

    We all have that one friend who responds to any complaint by launching into a diatribe about how we need to get some perspective because some people have to constantly dodge drug lords/rapists/guerilla militia generals on their 52-mile hike to fetch water and hopefully some ibuprofen to keep the malaria headaches at bay. No more! This page will allow you to anonymously vent to the internet about how there weren’t enough chicken tenders or how the ID swipe into Silliman is way too far from the gate itself.

    Someone with too much time on their hands get on these — we could all use more procrastinatory tools heading into the last month before finals.

  2. “Will Adams is simply DA BEST!!!”

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    When I friended Yale Compliments on Facebook a few weeks ago, I did so under the impression that I would be tagged in a post soon after. The red speech bubble containing the number “1” would appear at the top of the page, and in one click, I could read the kind words a friend (but hopefully my crush) had sent in.

    “Will Adams is smart, funny and caring. He’s so multitalented too, like with his music skillz and his red hair skillz and his charming demeanor skillz. But he’s so humble about it and that’s what’s great about him! Any girl would be Krazy with a kapital K not to date this studmuffin.”

    As of writing, this has not happened yet. :’(

    Yale Compliments embodies the excesses of social networking, indulging our desire to have our personae manifested on the Interwebs. I discovered Yale Compliments during Thanksgiving break, when I had nothing better to do than to trawl my news feed. It inspired the most cynical of reactions. There was its debt to the cloying, hyper-positive aesthetic of “Glee” & Co. There was its user-generated messiness: half of the compliments barely qualify as such, unless you consider having “the finest ass of them all” a truly worthwhile pat on the back. There was its meaningless function: if everyone is the BEST person at Yale, then no one is. There was its inherent narcissism: you have to be a friend of Yale Compliments in order to be tagged but not to read or submit compliments, so a friend request suggests little more than a desire to be publicly lauded. Yale Compliments’ mission involves “[spreading] joy to the Yale Community.” Since friending her, I have received nary a trace of joy. Really, whenever the daily deluge of praises of people I don’t even know pours into my news feed, I groan.

    Perhaps I’m the problem. My unwillingness to view Yale Compliments as anything beyond a conduit for self-serving validation could mean that I’m just an asshole. Recoiling when people who I think suck receive praise and 53 “likes” suggests the same. But my annoyance is only ancillary to the real problem with Yale Compliments: the implication that without it, Yale would be joyless, students would feel unloved, and Cross Campus would look like that part in “Mean Girls” when the Burn Book becomes public. Our comfort with oversharing on the Internet has reached a fever pitch. To show appreciation for someone now requires an anonymous public post that over 1,900 people can see. To show appreciation for someone showing appreciation now requires a click of a thumbs-up icon. Yale Compliments champions this kind of passive activism, a system that allows its participants get by with the bare minimum.

    Is this platform even necessary, though? I would love to receive a daily email containing all the nice things my friends bothered to write to me, which I would read over breakfast. I won’t derive any fuzzy feelings from strangers reading about how nice/attractive/extremely attractive I am. I’d rather speak for myself and prove to you that I am the person that my hypothetical submission said I was (or maybe not — remember, I’m an asshole). In short: Let’s throw Yale Compliments into a well. My day-to-day interactions with Yale students cast them in a far better light than black-on-white text will ever do.

  3. New Facebook page improves self-esteem of sauce

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    Ketchup and mustard have finally earned their well-deserved day in the sun, thanks to a new Facebook page — “Yale Condiments” — that solicits compliments for the sauces from well-meaning Yalies.

    In a nod to the popular website “Yale Compliments,” which allows Yalies to submit anonymous compliments about other Yalies, Yale Condiments offers sheepish students a place to express their love for the zesty, all-American glory of barbecue sauce or the exotic allure of a spicy Dijon.

    “Sweet Baby Ray’s, I love your mouthwatering award-winning sauce,” reads one compliment. “I put it on everything. Hell! Sometimes I even put it on celery. When I was in 8th grade, I wrote a speech explaining your beauty.”

    Though the site’s origin is unknown, its mission to “spread joy to the Yale Community” through expressions of admiration for condiments has been well-received by the roughly 60 students who have friended the site. One particularly moving post worships the tangy crunch of Yale Dining’s tartar sauce, while another praises the versatile lovability of the classic Heinz ketchup.

    With the majestic emblem of French’s yellow mustard gracing its crest, Yale Condiments truly lives up to its motto, “Lux et Condiments.” Though the page is still a fledgling in the Facebook world, it stands in a class of its own, pioneering a new medium for condiment appreciation.

  4. New Facebook page compliments Yalies

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    Next time you log onto Facebook, make sure to look out for a friend request from “Yale Compliments,” a new Facebook page ostensibly created to help pass along anonymous compliments from one Yalie to the next.

    According to the page’s information section, the goal of the page is to “spread joy to the Yale community.”

    “Simply inbox a compliment or a message of appreciation that you may have about a member of the Yale Community, and have it published here anonymously,” the section reads. “So if there is something nice you have to say about someone but don’t feel comfortable saying it to the person’s face, inbox away.”

    Less than one day after its creation, the page seems to be taking off. It already had more than 250 friends by Wednesday afternoon and had tagged roughly a dozen people with compliments. The compliments posted ranged from serious paragraphs that gushed feelings to lighthearted one-liners that were more humorous than complimentary.

    “John McGowan: You looked so great with that stash brother. Bring it back!” read one compliment.

    There’s no word on who created Yale Compliments, but the page is certainly generating some excitement.