Students 'like a little' online flirting

Have you ever caught someone's eye while walking to class and wished you could get to know them a little better, or had a crush on someone you see around campus and wanted to tell them how you feel? Well, on Jan. 19, the first message on Hamline's Like a Little wall was posted, starting an extensive chain of online flirtation.

Likealittle.com (LAL) is a website designed for students to go online and post a short description of someone they admire, in the hopes that they will see it and reciprocate. Most descriptions include the place where they saw the person, their hair color and their gender. Underneath, students can write a little something about this person or hint at who they are, and people have the option to comment on it. Users can create their own account if they want, so that they can get notifications when someone comments on something they have posted or liked. In the settings after users make their account, they can also follow a certain location, such as Klas or Sorin Dining Hall, and all of the posts that tag that site will appear in their updates section. LAL also has a chat feature, where students can talk to other people who are on the site.

LAL users can easily maintain their anonymity because each time they comment on someone's post or chat with someone, their screen pseudonym is the name of a fruit or vegetable. However, this can pose a problem if they want to find someone again after they've talked to them.

When asked what LAL makes him think about the way students communicate today, Dean of Students Alan Sickbert talked about LAL's similarities to other social networking sites.

"I think it's kind of a carry-on from Facebook to some degree in that, instead of people talking face to face - seeing each other and actually saying things - people rely upon, you know, these social networks to kind of do their work even when it's somebody across the hall or that they pass every day in the library or see in class," Sickbert said. "It's kind of a crutch for a lot of people when I wish they would do it more face to face."

Hamline's page hasn't been around very long, but there are already a lot of posts by people around campus. Although LAL discourages using full names, offensive or sexually explicit posts or other inappropriate language, some of the posts have already become somewhat provocative. 

Posts like "I saw you inside the bathroom. Awesome," and "I carved your name into the inside of my wardrobe," suggest that people may already be taking this too far. However, anything users are offended by or wish to delete can be easily taken off the site by clicking the "remove" button under any post. 

Other Twin Cities colleges such as St. Thomas, Bethel, Northwestern and St. Cate's have had pages on LAL for a while now. However, the nature of their posts tend to be a little different than Hamline's. 
For example, Bethel's LAL page is full of mostly tame, cute comments about people, like "Wish you would notice me more often and be my Valentine. You are funny, attractive, and seem to be a man of God. Maybe by this time next year we'll be something," but Northwestern's can be surprisingly vulgar, with quotes such as "lost: key to chastity belt. jaw sore."


SOURCE: Hamline University Oracle