When you hear the words “Dartmouth bubble,” several iconic images come to mind: maybe lunch on Collis Porch, flitzing or pong. But for better or worse, a little bumblebee flying over an app called Fizz gave me my first impressions of Dartmouth.
When I first got onto Fizz as a member of the “worst class ever,” I was bombarded with Greek house tier lists, psyop-ing, m4f-ing and crush-posting. I was stunned by the toxic culture on Fizz.
As an incoming student who understood Dartmouth as a home to academically achieving and rigorous students, Fizz stood for anti-intellectualism; it was dissonance that did not belong at Dartmouth. I was appalled, then mildly amused. And then curious.
Fizz is a campus-specific anonymous social media feed, similar to “Librex” and “YikYak” on other campuses. To make an account, individuals must use a valid college email or verify their enrollment.
The app is a mixed bag, to say the least. Like any social media platform, it has stolen jokes, light-hearted humor, polls and negativity. It is simultaneously a pool of toxic irony and a hub of earnest community. Some students find the negativity of Fizz unappealing, including Emily Lam ’28, who said interactions on the app “negatively impacts campus culture.”
“People will brag about their personal achievements, and then everybody will shoot them down immediately,” Lam said. “If somebody’s asking a genuine question that they’re anxious about, say about citations or undergraduate advisor selection, they’ll be relentlessly made fun of for asking.”
On the other hand, Vikram Chetnani ’28 said his experience with Fizz has been “mostly positive.”
“I’m a rapper-producer, and one of the ways I got my name out [was making] Dartmouth parodies in fall term and advertis[ing] them on Fizz,” Chetnani said. “Because Fizz is anonymous, some people hate just to hate, but I personally don’t mind.”
Chetnani uses other social media sites more often, however.
“‘Real’ social media [platforms] like Instagram and Snapchat are tied to a person,” Chetani added. “My profile has my name, my face, my ‘about me.’ On Fizz, all of that is wiped. It’s anonymous, essentially, so it’s a bit less relatable.”
Lam said her usage is limited by the lack of content on Fizz compared to other social media platforms.
“Instagram has this near unlimited amount of content available. Meanwhile, Fizz only updates every so often,” Lam said.
Despite all of this, Fizz holds a role in Dartmouth culture that draws students towards it. To better understand why, I spoke with writing professor Chris Drain, who teaches the first-year writing course “Ethics of the Internet.”
A key phenomenon to understanding Fizz’s enduring popularity is the “psyop,” short for “psychological operation,” a subtle behavioral manipulation tactic employed by advanced militaries. The typical Dartmouth psyop, by contrast, consists of a transparent attempt to boost the reputation of a Greek house.
“I don’t know how you would [psyop] without [the app’s local roots]. You can’t do it on Instagram,” Drain said. “You have a whole platform that is a Dartmouth platform. It just seems to allow things that happen all over, but it concentrates them.”
Because the number of posts on Fizz are limited compared to other social media sites, each one gets a greater share of the userbase’s attention and is more likely to have influence over campus. Greater relative power fosters more creative output from users. Whereas other social media platforms are mainly composed of “lurkers,” or passive users who only engage with content without generating their own, Fizz users are posters.
“Most social media companies get 1% user-generated content, [so they have] mostly lurkers. 30% [of Fizz users post], so people are really using it … which is a pretty phenomenal thing,” Drain said.
Furthermore, the locality of Fizz combines with user anonymity to generate what Drain called “norm enforcement,” upholding the culture and traditions of Dartmouth. On Fizz, students are able to articulate elements of the Dartmouth bubble they might not want associated with their names and faces and compel other students to conform.
Chetnani echoed this claim, describing Fizz as a “positive feedback loop” for the insular Dartmouth Bubble.
“With Fizz, when Dartmouth students post what they think about Dartmouth, and then other students see those posts, it just builds on itself,” Chetnani said.
Fizz is a unique place for Dartmouth’s dialogue, facilitating conversations on issues too local for mainstream social media platforms and too sensitive for typical social contexts. As the anonymous town square of Dartmouth, it creates a space for seemingly unfiltered dialogue. At the same time, this dialogue depends on its local, non-anonymous roots. The heart of Fizzing, then, is not founded in the provision of anonymity, but in the courage of the named.
